Book Contracts

More than a year ago, I started working on a book about AppleScript Studio, having signed a contract with a certain publisher—let’s call them Publisher A—stipulating the amount of advance, royalties, schedules, and so on. After I turned in the first batch (maybe one-fifth of the book), the publisher said they’d had a change in their strategic direction and were no longer interested in publishing Mac programming books. So they dropped the project and my manuscript was orphaned.

My ever-diligent agent decided to shop around for a new publisher, and several—let’s call them Publishers B, C, and D—expressed interest. Publisher B made me an offer, but had a condition in the contract I couldn’t live with (more on this in a moment). Publisher C offered high royalties but a low advance (more on that, too, shortly). And then Publisher D offered a reasonable amount of money and a great contract, except for one tiny little phrase that I absolutely refused to agree to and they absolutely refused to change. Thus, after having gone through four publishers, the project is once again orphaned (for now, at least).

The problematic phrase in Publisher D’s contract (which was also one of the sticking points with Publisher B) basically indemnified the publisher against claims of breaches of my warranty that the material is original and free from copyright violations. In other words, it means that if someone were to sue them claiming that I violated a copyright, then even if the claim were completely unsubstantiated, even if I proved in court that I did nothing wrong, and even if the claim were in fact completely frivolous, I would still be responsible to pay the publisher’s legal fees for defending the suit. This cost would almost certainly be far more than I’d ever received for writing the book in the first place.

Although it’s extraordinarily unlikely that such a lawsuit would ever occur, clearly something of that sort must have happened at some point, or the publisher wouldn’t have been so adamant about leaving that language in. I know several other authors who reluctantly agreed to this language because refusing to do so would amount to a career-limiting move. But I said no, because I don’t think it’s ethical to hold an author financially responsible for actions over which he or she had no control whatsoever. Nor is it ethical for me to put my financial security at risk to protect a big company against unscrupulous litigants. I can warrant that my work is original, but I can’t agree to pay legal fees to fight off someone who has a random grudge against the publisher.

The real pity is that I truly like and respect the publishers and editors involved, it’s just that their lawyers are being intransigent and corporate policy dictates that no contract can be signed that the lawyers don’t OK.

Continue reading…

September 10, 2004 by Books

Measuring Spiciness

As explained in this article on Tabasco sauce, there is an objective, scientific way to measure the spiciness of foods; peppers or hot sauces subjected to this test get a rating in Scoville heat units. Unfortunately, these measurements are never used where it counts: on menus in Mexican, Szechwan, and Thai restaurants. The menus sometimes have little chile symbols, or sometimes just asterisks, that are supposed to indicate how spicy a dish is. But these symbols are arbitrary, they vary from one restaurant to the next, and they are nearly always (in my experience) meaningless.

Even worse: the suggestion “Specify desired level of spiciness.” I do, but they never take me seriously. Maybe I just look like some lightweight gringo who can’t handle his capsaicin, but no matter how spicy I order my food, it’s almost never even hot enough to make my eyes water, which is beginning to approach “hot enough” in my book.

A case in point: One day I went to a Thai restaurant and ordered the dish on the menu with the most chiles next to it. The waitress asked how hot I wanted it. I said, “Extremely hot.” She looked at me with a concerned expression. “Extremely hot?” she asked. “Incredibly hot,” I replied. The concerned expression turned to a puzzled, worried look. “Wait a minute, do you want it extremely hot or incredibly hot?” Clearly, we were experiencing a communication failure.

I tried a different tactic. “I want you to make it as hot as it possibly can be,” I said. The waitress paused for a moment to let this sink in, then gave me a horrified expression, as though I had just asked her to set me on fire. Finally, she said, slowly, “You mean…like death?” “YES!” I exclaimed, delighted that my message had finally gotten through. “Hot like death. Exactly. Please.” She regarded me severely for another moment, wrote something down on her pad, and disappeared into the kitchen.

When the dish arrived, it was noticeably spicy—I’m going to go out on a limb and say maybe two out of four peppers. But not death. Not even “pass-the-hanky” hot. What a disappointment.

September 9, 2004 by Food & Drink News

Cat Replacement

When you’ve been married for a while and are comfortably settled, inevitably you start longing to hear the pitter-patter of little feet. So naturally you think about getting a cat.

I’ve always been allergic to cats, but not severely so—as long as I wash my hands regularly and the the cat doesn’t, like, lick my face, I’m in pretty good shape. Years ago I had a cat, though, that apparently intuited my level of sensitivity to dander and out of pure spite took to sleeping on my pillow with me. Bad cat.

Anyway, Morgen and I have so far had an imaginary cat, which was until today the only kind our landlady allowed. After considerable pleading, sweet-talking, and solemn promises of diligent carpet care, we finally got a phone call today saying it would be OK if we got a real cat after all. This is exciting, because in my opinion, the occasional sneeze or sniffle far outweighs the benefits of cat ownership, which include distracting you from getting work done, supporting your local pet shop, and keeping your home free of imaginary mice.

But more importantly, owning a cat will give me the only possible excuse to buy a gadget I’ve always wanted: the LitterMaid electronic self-cleaning litterbox. Oooh, and maybe one of those robot vacuums to pick up all the hairs, as well as tease play with the cat when we’re away. Just thinking about the home-automation possibilities fills me with joy.

So in the near future we’ll make a trek to the local shelter or SPCA to have a look at some kittens and then, perhaps, a little gadget spree on eBay.

September 8, 2004 by News

How to Succeed in Publishing Without Really Trying

I’ve always marveled at the role sheer randomness has played in my career.

For example, when I got the contract to write my first computer book (about 10 years ago now), it was only because I happened to be in the right place at the right time. I was doing tech support for Nisus Software, and I happened to be answering mail sent to one of the company’s email addresses. A publisher wrote to the company at that address to ask if we knew of any Nisus-using authors who might be willing to write a book on the program. I mentioned a few names, and then said I myself would be extremely interested. One thing led to another, and I got the gig. And the fact that I’d had one book published gave me enough currency in the publishing biz to do a second one, and so on.

In today’s mail I found my copy of the October, 2004 issue of Macworld magazine, featuring an article by yours truly—my first for the magazine. Again, the way I got the assignment was pretty random. I’d written an ebook on dealing with Spam in Apple Mail, and just before the ebook was published, a Macworld editor had joined our Take Control authors’ mailing list. She read about my ebook and told me that another editor at the magazine had been looking for someone to write an article about spam, and would I be interested? Absolutely—I’ve wanted to write for Macworld for a long time.

But here’s what I find interesting. For its first couple of months, Take Control of Spam with Apple Mail did not sell particularly well. However, its publication led to interviews for radio shows and Wired News, not to mention the Macworld article, so it’s had the biggest PR impact of any of my titles. After the companion ebook Take Control of Email with Apple Mail came out, the two titles seemed to boost each other’s sales, and now both are quite successful. So even though the ebook by itself didn’t generate a huge amount of interest, it spawned other processes (so to speak) that indirectly reinforced its sales. And with the upcoming publication of these two books together in printed form from Peachpit, I’m hoping the exposure we get from appearing on bookstore shelves will make even more people aware of the Take Control series and perpetuate the cycle further.

September 8, 2004 by Books News
Joe with a small Canadian flag
Joe Kissell is a best-selling, award-winning, hyphen-overusing author and technologist, and the publisher of Take Control Books. He enjoys making complicated topics easy to understand. He’s also a husband, dad, and dreamer. Having lived in numerous places in the U.S., Canada, and France, Joe has now settled in Saskatoon.

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