A sense of impending doom . . . .

Today -- Friday, 10 January 2020 -- has not been one of my better days.  Maybe that's why I'm back here, after a long and not entirely voluntary hiatus.

I wrote a long time ago that I wouldn't be doing book reviews here.  I thought about setting up a separate blog for reviews, and in fact so much time has passed that maybe I actually did that and have just forgotten about it.

The truth is, I don't write a lot of reviews of current fiction.  Most of the reviews I do write and post on BookLikes are of books I didn't like, didn't finish, didn't get past the first few pages.  There's a reason for that, and it's not a good reason.

My budget is severely limited.  More or less retired, I live on Social Security and some supplemental self-employment income from my writing and from the sale of various arts & crafts products I make.  My Social Security benefits are reduced because I elected to start them earlier than full retirement age.  The supplemental income is not reliable, and it has been made even less reliable by my inability to shake off various stressors.  Anxiety is not profitable, but it is pervasive.  I do not write as much as I should.  I do not make as much jewelry as I should.

I do not make as much money as I need.

Therefore, my reading material tends to fall into certain distinct classifications:

1. Physical books I already own, which number about 5,000.
2. Kindle books, mostly freebies and therefore many self-published
3. Non-fiction library books, whether physical copies or digital borrows.

It's that second category that ends up being "reviewed" on my BookLikes blog.  Sadly, many of those author-published books just aren't very well written.  But I did try them.  I really did.

My longer, more analytical reviews were saved for those favorite personal classics, books like Josephine Tey's Brat Farrar and Leslie Turner White's Lord Johnnie.  I loved these books when I first read them more than 50 years ago; rereading them for the purpose of close analysis was just as much fun.

The past few weeks have been filled with the drama surrounding Romance Writers of America, a scandal of sorts with its roots in racism, lack of diversity, and lack of transparency in dealing with those issues.  I'm not going to rehash any of that, or bring up my very tangential involvement, except to say that my fifteen or so years of active membership in RWA meant I made a lot of connections with other writers.  Friends? Um, not all of them, and only a tiny few of those connections have survived.  But it still means that reading a book by someone I knew back then brings in an automatic bias.  So I haven't posted reviews of many books by people I know or knew.

Let me be clear:  I would never, under any circumstances, direct an author to a review I had written of their work*.  Reviews are for readers.  But I don't have any way of knowing, unless they post it in front of me on Twitter or something, which authors routinely search for reviews of their books.  It's not likely that I'd post a really bad review of a book by someone I've had a positive personal relationship with -- whether in person or just through social media -- but even minor criticisms might be taken the wrong way.  I really do appreciate my online contacts, and I would rather not review a book written by a cyber-friend than risk that friendship.

(*I did recently inform an author with whom I've interacted on social media  that I reviewed one of their books 30+ years ago. I no longer have a copy of the review.)

But BookLikes has become more problematic today than it has been for a while.  I think I started to take it for granted again, but it's been down for 24 hours now with only a brief Facebook notification that they're working on it.

So, what to do?

Well, I have a website that I haven't even looked at for a year or more.  It's due to renew in February, and I actually thought this morning that I might let it all lapse.  Could I convert it to something more attuned to books and book blogging?  I don't know.  That's not my area of expertise; I wouldn't even know how to start.

But it's been six and a half years since the Great Purge at Goodreads, and so many of us have found a home at BookLikes.  We like the freedom, even if we don't like the spammers.  We like the platform, even if we don't like the silence from the operators.  Most of all, however, we like each other.

If the platform returns, I'll be backing up as much of my material as I can.  Some of it may end up here.  Comments may be lost, but at least the core will be saved.  Again, that's if the platform can be resuscitated.  And I'll add links to it for this post, too.  If it comes back.

I'm committed to doing what I can -- within the constraints of time and budget -- to keep the community alive, regardless.



 

Missing those very special words

A conversation with a friend this morning got me to thinking about why it is that so many authors who enjoy the benefits of digital self-publishing are so seemingly unable to accept criticism.  The accounts of major author meltdowns are too numerous to list here and are easily found with your favorite search engine.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized these reactions aren't a new phenomenon.  One of my very first writing pen-pals, back in the early 1980s, was so furious over a rejection letter from a publisher who had held her manuscript for  several months, that she threatened to throw her typewriter out a second floor window and never write again.  How dare they!

About ten years later, another acquaintance of mine was so furious about requested revisions to her contracted manuscript that she threw temper tantrums on the phone to her editor.  Her refusal to change a single word resulted in the publisher taking virtually unheard of action:  Not only did the editor make all the changes herself, but the publisher cancelled the second book on the contract before the first had gone to press.

Neither of these writers was unfamiliar with the pain of rejection, the sting of criticism.  For some reason or other, however, they reacted excessively to any negative comments.

But their actions were not the norm; most of the writers I knew, whether published or unpublished, knew that their artistic vision sometimes had to be compromised.  They also knew that their prose might or might not be deathless; it might need the deft hand of an editor.  More important, we knew our work would be edited whether we wanted it to be or not.  Dealing with an editor was part of the process.

We also understood that once published, our words were cast in stone.  Or at least in wood pulp, which was almost as permanent.  If the back cover copy listed the heroine's name as Amber and the text had her as Allison, well, too bad.  If the hero was clean-shaven on the cover painting but he is noted for his luxurious mustache throughout the story, oh well, them's the breaks.  When we got our page proofs for final corrections, we may have pointed out the typesetting error on page 220 where Queen Victoria's husband is identified as Prince Alfred, but if no one actually made the correction, it's going to be on page 220 in every single copy printed.  Tough luck.

All of that has changed.  The whole process of writing, for many people, has changed.  Instead of write, rewrite, revise, polish, share with critique partners, enter contests, revise, rewrite, polish, send to agents, send to editors, lather, rinse, repeat; it's now just write and upload.  Oh, maybe some authors hint that if they get enough complaints about the bad grammar and dozens of typos per page, they might go back and revise.  Many, however, just don't care.  Some might decide to pay a professional editor AFTER they've sold enough copies to justify it.  And the real-time nature of digital publishing allows them to do that.  Nothing is carved in stone any more.  So the first digital "edition" is full of typos and grammatical mistakes; the second has been professionally proofread and most of the errors are cleaned up.

But another thing that has changed is that digital self-publishing offers no visible mark of quality assurance.  The reader who goes to a bookstore and sees shelf after shelf after shelf of paper and ink books knows that most of them have been through sufficient selection and editing to be halfway decent.  Oh, the occasional clinker slips through, and virtually no book is without at least a couple of typos, but if the story was good enough to be accepted by a publisher, then it was good enough for the publisher to make sure the final product was clean.  In many cases, the manuscript had to be reasonably clean just to get the editor to read it, but in all cases, the expectation of a clean final product was the norm.

Another thing that has changed is that the author can't carry around a copy of the book -- or even the contract or letter of acceptance -- as evidence of quality.  I'm a romance novelist, and throughout my tenure in RWA, there was a strict division between the published and the unpublished, even though RWA admitted the unpublished writer -- even the person who thought maybe she might someday want to write a romance novel but hadn't yet actually done so! -- to full membership.  That began to change in 1989 with the formation of PAN (Published Authors' Network) and in 1994 when I started PASIC (Published Authors' Special Interest Chapter).  And believe me, there were a whole lot of unpublished members of RWA who absolutely hated that the published members had something extra.  (Never mind, as I pointed out routinely, that a published author was FOREVER excluded from the Golden Heart contest.)

RWA still maintains strict requirements that an applicant must meet to claim that "published author" status, and the sad truth is that most of the current crop of write-it-and-upload-it self-published authors are not going to meet those requirements.  Digital self-publishing does not carry the same weight as the message from an established publisher, whether it comes as email, phone call, or letter, "We'd like to publish your book"

Words as numbers, and making words count.

I want to reiterate some of the issues that started this blog, and started my return to writing, because not everyone is going to read all the old stuff and because the old stuff is relevant to the new.

The three items that prompted it all were:
1.  The report of the Dorchester boycott listed at AAR.
2.  The article about Connie Brockway's adventures into self-publishing, also on AAR.
3.  The obituary of Walter Zacharius that a friend showed me from the New York Times.

It actually began maybe a year before, when the same friend who told me about Walter's death had told me about Kate Duffy's.  That kind of prompted me to slide back toward a writing hobby -- not yet a career, if it ever really was one -- that I had been seriously, seriously away from for at least five years.  But it wasn't until last spring that the ideas started to coalesce again and I began surfing the review sites and so on to see what was going on in the industry.

On reading the Brockway tale, I discovered that self-publishing, which had for so long been considered anathema for "professional" authors, now offered a legitimate means for authors to by-pass the parasitic publishers who often did more harm than good, to the individual authors, to the readers, and to the various genres as classes.  And so I began to pursue my own self-publishing ventures.

When the issue with Dorchester arose last week, I spent considerable time locating the warning letter I had written to RWA in 1993, unaware during my search that that letter also contained the cost analysis of a mass market paperback.  The two are, of course, inextricably linked.  I'm not sure that this issue was ever examined after that 1993 analysis was printed in PANdora's Box.  I do know that I followed up briefly.

In a letter I wrote to PANdora's Box sometime after the publication of the original analysis -- my file is not dated and I do not yet know for sure if it was ever sent -- I brought out additional financial facts about royalties:

If indeed the publisher makes a profit of even a modest 10% on the sale of each and every paperback romance novel sold, and the authors of those same novels are paid the slave-wage royalty of only six, perhaps a paltry four, and all too frequently an insulting mere two per cent royalty, what I failed to see was that I was still comparing apples to Nerf basketballs. For the publishers' profit of 10% is a net profit, whereas the royalty to the author is a gross (!) income.

From that income one must further deduct all the costs and expenses already deducted from the publishers' receipts. Their ten percent is what they have left after paying taxes and insurance, printers and shippers, advertisers and distributors. Authors, out of their pittances, still must come up with agents' commissions, taxes (including the full social security contribution), postage and copying, bookmarks and RT ads, conference fees and mileage to those book signings at which we sign two or three copies.

We also have no control over our "wages." If the publisher wishes to give away 1500 free copies of our book at a conference, they chalk it up to promotional expense and we get -- nothing. Fifteen hundred fans have now saved the cost of the book, money which they will probably spend on someone else's novel. They will also share that book (just as they share their others, including the ones from the used book stores) with two or three friends. Or, if they don't happen to like the type of book we've written, it goes immediately to the used book store. Unlike the baker who supplies bread for the grocery store, we can't tell the publisher, "Hey, wait, guys! I worked my ass off for that book! What gives you the right to give it away for free?"

Why does this all this matter?  Because we as writers matter.  We are human beings.  For many of us, writing is our livelihood.  For others writing is an obsession, and I don't mean that in a bad way.  But it also matters because readers matter.  Because publishers have traditionally been the means for getting written material from the author's pen or typewriter or computer into the hands of the reader. 

We who are living in the 21st century take our technology pretty much for granted, especially printing because the printing press has been around for over 500 years.  But it hasn't been all that long ago that a musician had to perform live for anyone to hear him.  We cannot watch Edmund Kean's theatrical performances, we cannot hear Paganini on the violin, but we can read the words written about them.

The recording of a theatrical or musical performance requires the coordinated effort of a lot of people: It begins with the script writer or playwright or composer, progresses to cast/performers, crew, set designers, camera operators, and finally the distribution medium, whether that is Lionsgate Films or YouTube.  Computer technology has progressed over the past few years that allows some diminution of the process, but it hasn't completely eliminated the need for a coordinated effort involving a lot of people.

Writing, on the other hand, has always been primarily a solitary endeavor and it's only the distribution process that has required the input of others.  The writer writes, and was more or less done with the project until it landed in the hands of the publisher, when all production activity took over.  The publisher did all the work, granted the writer a small cut of the revenue, and walked away with the majority of the profits.

What digital self-publishing has done, however, is to make the publisher redundant.  Publishers, obviously, don't like this, and some writers are reluctant to take on the additional responsibility that self-publishing puts on them.  But let's look at the numbers, so that we, as writers, can at least make an informed decision.

Looking at the figures I posted originally -- based on a 1993 cover price of $4.99 (rounded to $5 for ease of calculation) -- on a sale of 25,000 copies, the author earns $7,500 in royalties.

If the author digitally publishes that novel on Amazon Kindle at $2.99 -- that's a major discount from a 20-year-old price, let alone from a 2012 price of $7.99 or $9.99 or $12.99! -- at a 70% royalty rate she earns approximately $50,000.  I say approximately because there is a download cost associated with Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing program that's based on the size of the download file.  However, the comparison kind of makes you sick to your stomach, doesn't it?  Imagine paying for a little bit of online promotion out of that $50,000 compared to buying a print ad in Romantic Times  or having bookmarks make up to distribute at conferences?  How does $50,000 in royalties compare to $7,500?

Look at another financial scenario.  Even selling on Amazon for $.99 -- a 99-cent bargain for the reader -- and only 35% royalty, that 35-cent royalty per copy is still -- STILL -- higher than a 4% royalty on a $4.99 book, and lots higher than a 2% cut on foreign sales.

Financially, digital self-publishing is a no-brainer.  Added just to the raw numbers are the considerations that digital self-publishing can be done in a matter of days and payment usually arrives in 90 days or less after sales.  Traditional print publishing requires at least six months and often as much as 18 to 24 months before a print edition is released, and royalties are paid long after that.  While the "advance against royalties" may be paid sooner than that, it is increasingly industry standard that advances are paid in more chunks and not until the completed manuscript is delivered and approved.

There are, of course, non-financial considerations.  With a traditional publisher, along with that up-front advance, the author gets cover art (which she may or may not like), proofreading and editing services (which may or may not make the book any better), and status (like membership in a "professional" writers' organization).  Oh, yes, and the delight of actually autographing print copies.

But what if the publisher, whose primary concern is the bottom line, their profit and not yours, indulges in activities that hurt your bottom line?  Looking at those 1993 Leisure/BMI editions again, they carried a UPC bar code for a cover price of $4.99 -- or even $5.99, as on the copy I found buried in my stash last night -- but I don't know what they actually sold for.  Did they reach a discount place in Kansas, as Jaye Manus reported, to be sold for 99 cents?  How did the "cover price" affect what, if any, royalties were paid to the authors?  At least I know the "cover price" on my 27,780 copies of Touchstone was actually $1.00.

As I went through some of those old issues of PANdora's Box and read comments of published romance writers who lamented over and over the eagerness of new writers to accept any terms just so they could be published and who further lamented the acquiescence of RWA on the really shitty terms and shabby treatment offered to new writers, I was quite literally moved to tears.  It's been almost 20 years since we tried to get that stopped.  By "we" I mean those of us who advocated for a stronger, more professional RWA: Margaret Brownley, Jaye Manus, Susan Wiggs, Betty Duran, among so many others whose complaints were voiced only by "Name Withheld."

I refuse to withhold my name any longer.

Old words, old pathways, old destinations

The search for the evidence that RWA had been apprised of Dorchester's shenanigans (a good word on this St. Patrick's Day) took me through some dark and shadowed avenues of my earlier writing career.  I may detail some of the other half-forgotten items I discovered, but not yet.  Some of the re-opened wounds are still too painful.

My intention, however, through all the things that happened and that I myself did, was always to honor my chosen genre and its writers as well as promote the welfare of ALL writers and defend them against the depredations of the publishers. ALL publishers.

I know now that I first notified RWA about Dorchester/Leisure/BMI almost 20 years ago.  What, if anything, was done in the five years between then and when I left RWA in 1998, I don't know.  I haven't been able to find anything.  I know that very little was done to bring Kensington/Zebra to heel when they were behind on royalty payments and had royalty rates below industry standard. 

(One of the items I found in my search was a royalty statement of my own from Kensington that shows a sale of rights to Russia, but I'm not sure yet I was ever paid for it; I need to find the time to look it over more closely.  I've also discovered that there was apparently another printing by Kensington of another of the three books I worte for them, but it doesn't show up on any of the royalty statements.  Again, I need more time to research it.)

But my point here is that from the very beginning, RWA was in a position simply due to the overwhelming size of its membership -- 8,000 or so in 1993; now over 10,000 -- to do something about Dorchester/Leisure, and it doesn't look like they did.  Too many unpublished RWA members saw Leisure, regardless its royalty rates, regardless its crappy contracts, regardless anything, as a viable avenue for publication, and publication was the brass ring that could not be moved any further away or made any harder to grasp.  And the unpublished majority ruled.

I went over to the RWA website the other day to verify whether certain subdivisions of the organization still existed.  PASIC is still there, the Published Authors' Special Interest Chapter, shown as founded in 1995.  No, my friends, PASIC was not founded in 1995.  It was founded on the evening of 13 October 1994, when the following was posted on the GEnie network's Romance Writer's Exchange Roundtable discussion board, where a number of authors had been discussing their desire to have an RWA conference for the published authors only, without the crush and bother of the unpublished:

Sent on 10/13/94 at 8:53p

All:

This may be a long post, and I really have difficult work I should be doing but . . . . . . . . .

I *think* there may be a way to have a PAN conference.  Now, I could be way out in left field and this idea just came to me and I haven't explored it very much, so I'm just throwing this out for discussion.

WHAT IF we formed an RWA chapter, just like any other chapter, only the bylaws of the chapter restricted membership in that chapter to published authors?  Then we could have a chapter conference just for published authors, couldn't we?  And we could have it anywhere we wanted, because if RWA is inc.'ed in TX but has a converence in NY or HI, why not a chapter in CA having a conference in IL or MT or wherever it damn well -- ooops, sorry -- darn well pleased?

As I understand it, there is at least one chatper that does have some kind of restrictions on membership, so hey, why not explore this angle?  A chapter can have conferences, put out a newsletter, charge dues, give awards, have meetings, etc., etc., and be under the RWA umbrella for taxes unless and until it wants to go out on its own.  Other chapters have done that, too.

Linda, scared to death and holding her breath, Hilton

Words in fading echoes

How will I ever find time for my day job?

The whole Dorchester thing sent me into my archives yesterday, but I didn't immediately find what I was looking for, so this morning I hauled out the big fat three-ring binder with all my PANdora's Box newsletters.

History, because I was there:  The Published Authors' Network of RWA was born at a Sunday morning meeting at the 1989 National Conference in Boston.  Because of the RWA bureaucracy, the actual development of PAN into a working "network" took some time, so Volume 1 Number 1 of the PAN newsletter, aka The Box, wasn't published until almost three years later, in April 1992.  As I read through it almost exactly 20 years later I am amazed and horrified at how many issues that were raised in those early editions are still on the table, still unresolved, still causing grief for writers TWO DECADES LATER.

I attended the 1992 National Conference in Chicago that summer, about which Margaret Brownley wrote in the PANdora's Extra post-conference edition, "I was absolutely overwhelmed by PAN's reception in Chicago.  Whenever I felt my body or spirit lag (from lack of sleep), someone choose[sic] that particular moment to say something wonderful about PANdora's Box or PAN.  I honestly felt I could have flown home without a plane (and given the delay of my flight, I would probably have made better time)."

PAN was so desperately needed and so enthusiastically welcomed and supported by (most of) the published authors in RWA, myself included.  Margaret should not have been surprised.

But in that same conference extra edition of The Box, on page 3, were some questions and answers from PAN workshops at the Chicago conference, and one of them caught my eye this morning as I began to stroll through the files, because at some time or other (probably around 2000 when I was writing my honors thesis on romance fiction) I had highlighted this particular question:

What clauses should a writer be especially wary of in a contract?

The agents on our panel advised writers to watch out for the option clause.  Make sure it is as unconfining as possible.  Also, pay strict attention to the amount of money held against reserves.  Make sure you understand how much money will be held and for how long.

Another potential trap is the clause that requires you to return your advance should the publisher reject the finished product.  Richard Curtis stated that should a publisher reject a finished manuscript, the advance should be considered a loss, not a loan to be repaid.

Nothing about royalties on "special sales" or book clubs, even though other issues related to subscription sales and the resultant low royalty rates were brought up in almost every edition of The Box.  Nothing about reversion of rights, even though that had been specifically discussed in a PAN meeting with Harlequin and reported on in that same conference extra edition.  Nothing about sales of subsidiary rights, especially electronic rights, even though by 1992 online communities were already developing and contracts had been written with hints of electronic rights as early as my 1984 contract with Dorchester.

And on the back page of The Box was this:

PAN Panel first of its kind

Five organizations were represented on the panel of professional writing groups.  Participants included Bill Fawcett, Science Fiction Writers of America; Virginia McCullough, National Writers Union; Carla Neggers, Novelists Inc.; Mark Zubro, Sisters in Crime; Linda Cajio, Romance Writers of America.

A lot of fascinating information was exchanged during this one hour panel.  Our only wish is that we had allowed more time.

Many of the problems facing RWA are of universal concern to all writers.  All agreed that royalty statments are a mess.  "Math errors are one of the biggest problems.  Bantam's bookkeeping is abysmal, Baen Books the most comprehensive."

The return/reserve policy is of major concern. Avon's policy of doubling the reserves against sell-throughs on the next book was mentioned.  "The better an author does, the higher the reserves."  (PAN is checking this out.)

Most writers' groups support random audits.  Four years ago, SFWA conducted a mass audit of Simon and Schuster for 200 authors.

SFWA sees audits as preventative medicine.  But it also has had great success in conducting campagns against unfair practices by naming names in their newsletter. (SFWA seemed by far, to be the most fearless and perhaps most successful of the groups in getting changes.  Maybe there's a lesson to be learned here.)

All in all, a fascinating discussion. Be watching for more panels of this nature in the future.

By October 1992, the issue of book club royalties was addressed, again, and The Box reported pretty much what I wrote in yesterday's blog: 

The cut-rate royalty paid to Harlequin and Silhouette authors on book club sales was among issues RWA representatives discussed with the publishers at a special meeting during the Chicago conference. The publishers maintained that they paid a lower royalty on book club sales because they aren't making any money on such sales.

It's more expensive to sell a book through mail order than through retailers, publishers said.  They also said mail order customers who don't pay their bills eat into the money the publishers should be making on book club sales.

But they continue to sell books through the mail.  One reason is that the publishers believe many readers cancel their subscriptions to the book clubs and continue to buy the books in stores.

I can't easily research the past 14 years of RWA history and what, if anything, the romance writer's professional organization has done in the way of advocacy for the rights and benefits of the writer or how much RWA has protected the privileges of the publishers, the agents, and yes, the unpublished writers who still make up the vast majority of RWA membership.  But to judge by what's going on with romance writing, with royalties on digital editions and reversion of rights and all the rest, RWA has been an epic fail.

The words were said but no one heard them

As this whole thing with Dorchester continues to unfold/unravel, the issue with what RWA could or couldn't have done to better protect the writers has come up.  DISCLAIMER:  I'm no longer a member of RWA and was never on the board of RWA so I can't speak for RWA on this or any other issue.

What I can do, however, is document what I personally did when confronted with some of what I call shenanigans by publishers.

I'm not sure exactly when I discovered the reissued copies of the Leisure imprints.  My records of my RWA correspondence are filed away and not as easily accessible as the books themselves and it's going to take me a few days to locate everything and sift through it.  I thought I may have see the first BMI books as early as 1991 but in fact it may have been as much as a couple years later than that.

To give some background:  There had been a lot of grumbling in RWA for a number of years about the low royalties paid on subscription or "book club" sales, particularly with Harlequin/Silhouette but also with Dorchester/Leisure and Kensington/Zebra.  Readers signed up for these subscriptions usually through cards bound into the books; after receiving a bundle of "free" books, the reader then received a set number of releases each month at a discount.  For Harlequin/Silhouette, the reader subscribed by line (Silhouette Desire, Harlequin Intrigue, etc.).  I'm not sure how the Zebra and Leisure subscriptions worked, but the premise was basically the same. 

While the basic royalty rate on the author's contract might be 8% or 6% or 4% of the retail cover price, the royalty rate on book club sales could drop significantly.  In some cases, the rate dropped to 1% or less, and of course this was all in the contract language for anyone who really cared to find it and wasn't blinded by the glamour of Being Published. 

Even though the subscription sales were recognized as a "cash cow" in the publishing industry, representatives from the publishers routinely showed up at RWA events to "explain" why they couldn't pay higher royalties on subscription sales.  Usually the explanation included something about the high cost of advertising for the clubs which included the initial free books and the high rate of non-payment on the part of the subscribers.  No matter how often RWA members asked, "Then if you're losing so much money on the subscription deals, why do you keep doing it?" there was never an answer that made any sense.  They wouldn't come right and tell us "We're making money hand over fist on these things but we don't want to give any of it to you," even though many of us suspected that was the case.

When I first noticed the repackaged Leisure titles, I wasn't sure what to make of them.

On the left is the original Dorchester/Leisure edition with the title embossed and foiled, the old cursive L logo.  On the right is the BMI edition, with no embossing, no foil.

On the left is the Leisure back cover, with the complete ISBN bar code and a retail price of $3.95; on the right is the BMI edition, with no ISBN and just a UPC bar code with a $4.99 retail price.

The Leisure edition shows a copyright date of 1981 but lists Dorchester Publishing as the copyright holder, not Harriette de Jarnette.

The BMI edition is clearly identified as such, with the same 1981 copyright date and no indication when it was actually printed.  I can only determine by comparing cover prices that this BMI edition is from the early 1990s.

These are the front and back of another example from my personal collection which appears to be some kind of reprint, at least to judge by the UPC bar code without ISBN.  The copyright page shows a date of 1987 and Gloria Pedersen is listed as holding the copyright.

I was able to find this image on the web of what appears to be an embossed, foiled cover with the Leisure cursive L logo.

And this one from Paperback Swap is clearly a BMI reprint.

I took the information I had -- which was the two editions of Golden Threshold and the Pedersen reprint -- and gave it to RWA, probably via Margaret Brownley who was the PAN Liaison in the early 1990s.  I'm not sure of the exact date on these reprints, but the copyrights are not indicative.  What Margaret and various minions at RWA were able to determine was that BMI most likely contracted with Leisure for a special sale at a deep discount, then offloaded the copies to discount retailers like today's dollar stores.  Somewhere in my files I have a copy of a note from Margaret to that effect, but I haven't been able to find it yet, and there remains a possibility that I may not find it.  Remember, I gave up writing in the late 90s and I may actually have discarded something!  (I know, it's hard to believe, but I do occasionally throw things out.)

What Margaret's research also revealed, however, was that Leisure/Dorchester was probably operating well within the terms of their contract with the authors.  Golden Threshold may have been purchased outright; Dorchester was going through severe financial difficulties in the early 1980s, which is when that book was published, so it may have been a work for hire or they may have just bought it outright.  The important point was, however, that Dorchester/Leisure had done nothing obviously wrong, absent contract terms to the contrary.   As with other standard contracts with the same terms, the publisher did not have to notify the author of the deal, certainly did not have to get their permission, and the royalty rates were set by the contract.

Like the book club sales that Harlequin was paying obscenely low royalty rates on, these "special sales" transacted by Leisure generated very very low returns for the authors.  Depending on the contract terms, it was possible that the author earned nothing at all; the royalty might be based on the publisher's net of cost, and if all they got back was the cost of printing, there was no net profit and therefore no royalty.

About this same time -- early to mid 1990s -- Kensington/Zebra was packaging books for Sam's Club or whatever the big box discount stores were called then.  A cello-wrapped collection of four Zebra Heartfires was available at a huge discount, maybe 50% off the cover price.  Again, I had notes on this, because at least one of the titles I saw was by Janis Reams Hudson, who was either VP or President of RWA and I contacted her directly.  As far as I could tell at the time, these copies were not reprints but carried all the pertinent Zebra logos.  Also as far as I can tell, I don't have any copies in my personal collection that indicate anything different, such as a non-ISBN bar code.

And again, it all came down to contract terms -- these deep discount sales were quite legal and carried very low royalty rates.

All of this was openly discussed in RWA, through email and other online discussions, and at conferences.  As soon as I have time, I will go back through all my old PANdora's Box issues and see if there was something in those.  The point is, however, RWA knew all along this was going on and they said virtually nothing.

As I wrote in an earlier blog post the contract I signed with Pocket Books in 1994 contained the same kind of language, which is what enabled Pocket to reissue 27,780 copies of Touchstone  in 2004 with a cover price of $1.00, sell them for 50 cents each, and pay me a royalty of 2 1/4 cents per copy.  Never mind that my stated royalty rate was 8% of cover -- on a deep discount special sale, the rate was based on what the publisher got.  Understand, then, that in 2004, Pocket/Simon & Schuster was able to make a profit selling the books at 50 cents each.  Their cost was less than 50 cents a copy. 

And I don't think Simon & Schuster is in anything close to Dorchester's current financial straits.  Do I have any idea who bought those 27, 780 copies of Touchstone?  No, I don't,  I do know that I have one copy, which like the BMI editions of the Leisure titles has no ISBN and the UPC barcode shows a retail price of $1.00.

My day job is demanding my attention, but I will put up scans of the two different editions of Touchstone tomorrow.

I'll let you draw your own conclusions