Thomas and Mercer is really shaking things up. Hot on the heels of their announcement of appointing Kirshbaum to run the new imprint, now we find they've signed New York Times Best Selling Author Barry Eisler.
I've seen some forums speculate that the deal was already in place when he turned down St. Martins and he had no intention to self publish - I don't subscribe to that interpretation. Here's my 2 cents for anyone who is interested....Thomas and Mercer is moving fast...very fast. My take is they saw Barry's self-publishing announcement and saw an opportunity to pull in a NYT best selling author. They are not pussy-footing around - and are going at this full-throttle.
If I were to guess...they made the royalty share on ebooks better...and more importantly...the contract more author friendly: more input on creative control, no restrictions on future works, a good or non-existent non-compete. I say this because the people that T&M have signed to date: Eisler, Crouch, and Konrath know what to look for in a contract and no amount of money would make them sign one that restricted them from future income potential.
If any of this is true this is good for authors as other publishers will have to change their contracts in order to compete in such an environment. All it takes is one high profile publisher to change - and then dominoes will start to fall. I've been saying for sometime that self-publishing WILL be good for all authors as even those published will get better terms now that there is a viable alternative. This is just one indication that we might be moving in the right direction.
2 comments:
Seriously? No one has posted on this? Mark my words folks - this is going to be a watershed moment in publishing - you need to be paying attention to what is going on here.
Oh, I think we're all paying attention. Just speechless from the shock :)
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