Thursday 28 June 2018

Authors Earnings & Contracts in the News...

Authors earnings have been in the news this week with the initial results of the 2017 ALCS Authors Earnings Survey.

There's more detail to come in the autumn when the details will be revealed in more depth, but meanwhile you can read how the news and ALCS have reacted.

Richard Combes, Head of Rights and Licensing at the ALCS on the Bookseller.com website.

In the Guardian Philip Pullman is quoted "The word exploitation comes to mind..."


Meanwhile The All Party Parliamentary Group for Writers has launched an enquiry on author's earnings (UK) "and seeks to identify what environment writers need to enable them to flourish in the future".

The deadline for written evidence is 5 pm on the 2nd August.

I will be submitting written evidence.


As to contracts, the latest news is that Woman's Weekly magazine now want all rights- including a moral rights waver and the pay-cut.

This will severely damage the earning potential of writers who have already seen markets closed, submission lists restricted, and contract changes eating into rights.

For those who may not know, these fiction writers rely on being able to reuse their stories in overseas markets, and as part of a self-published collection of short stories, and then most importantly qualifying for ALCS (Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society).

It's an ongoing situation so keep an eye on the Womagwriter's Blog for more news. You can find out what's been happening so far here and also here.

If you're on Twitter and see a tweet with the hashtag #WomagWritersNeedRights please give it a retweet...


Saving the pennies...

image from Pixabay.com

Sunday 10 June 2018

The Writer's Seesaw...

It's been a bit of a seesaw week so far.

I've made progress on the novel; rewritten another chapter today (as the noisier family members were out enjoying an event some distance away) and reviewing the changes on the next chapter for this week coming...

Sadly I had the bad news on my existing published writing a couple of days ago.

My short story, 'The Wishful Spirit', currently on the Alfie Dog Fiction download site will no longer be available after July 20th.

Leaving port
soon...
So if you want to read it you'll need to buy a copy before then...

It's also likely that the One Word Anthology that both I and Serena have stories in will also go, but I'm waiting for definite confirmation of that.

Of course it does mean those stories are available for re-use at some time in the future. But for the moment I'm concentrating on the work in progress and not allowing these downs to distract me.

Trying to do a little tidying up I had a shredding session yesterday, and of course the container quickly filled up and needed emptying.

No problem, there's a bin bag half full of shredded paperwork, I'll use that and it will be full ready for going to the recycling centre.

Sadly the paper had other ideas and stopped half way out of the container on the way into the bag, so of course when I checked, the non-bagged contents made a break for it and spread far and wide...

A few
escapees...
Next time I'll call someone to hold the bag for me, or better yet I'll hold the bag and they can tip!