Life, Interrupted

I have been privately wrestling with the question of how to ask my agent how he's doing with negotiating rights on e-books, end of contract, etc. It's been fifteen years since he's done a contract for me. I was even thinking about asking the intrepid Kris Rusch about doing a post on "reconnecting with your agent" for those of us who have been trapped in Life, Interrupted for a few years.

Of course Kris has already touched on that subject here. This is part of her series on surviving the transition into the new publishing era. This isn't her most recent post, but what I needed to know is here, and I found her thoughts and specifics calming, because they confirmed my suspicions and gave me some simple game plans for the future.

I am also immediately going to buy a copy of her revised book The Freelancer's Survival Guide and her book Surviving the Transition. I will not be disappointed in these books -- I've merely held off because I'm supposed to be writing fiction, not sucked into reading the business info.

Once I taught mini-seminars on what to look for in contracts. Now, I'd rather get back into fiction and let Kris educate me with all she's learned in her years of running her own business.

Think this is all confusing and scary as Hell?

Correct.

SFWA comments:

http://www.sfwa.org/2009/11/sfwa-statement-on-harlequins-self-publishing-imprint/

RWA and MWR comment, via Pub Rants:

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2009/11/harlequin-news-flash.html

My thoughts? Shades of the late Scott Meredith Agency, where nothing from the "Pay for Manuscript Review" side ever reached the real agents.

http://tinyartdirector.blogspot.com/

Enjoy. His toddler does critiques of his work, demands changes, etc. He's also collected a bunch of the stuff and made a book of it -- proceeds to go to his daughter's college fund.

http://my.ev1.net/english/news/newsarticle.asp?articleID=50258751&subject=entertainment

One of the things that irritates me the most about this is, why in heavens' name didn't this young woman write her own book, using the tropes of a transition family from India? I can see the owner of my favorite Indian restaurant coming up with a plan to Get His Granddaughter A Life -- it's pure culture.

Instead, she not only mimicked books from her teen years, she apparently borrowed entire passages wholesale.

And some editor paid her six figures to do this? Do you realize how many books a novel in this price range has to sell for the publisher to make any money at all?

I certainly hope that that editor is around when *I* release my next manuscript to the NYC Wars.