Ellora's Cave question
What does the statement "Grant of publishing rights is for life of copyright." mean? They own the story forever? :?:

As I understand it, it means they hold all the publishing rights until 70 years after your death -- which, for all practical purposes, might as well be forever. If it's a short story for an anthology, try to get it changed to "one time rights". If it's a novel, try to get a rights reversion clause inserted, which will return all rights to the author either after a set number of years, or when the book is no longer selling a set number of copies per annum.

Okay. I thought that's what it meant, but I wanted to bounce it off you guys. I ain't touching that with a ten-foot pole! :)

One year for epub, or as long as the book stays in print and sells a certain number of copies per year are good rules for print. Beyond that there is no practical reason for a publisher to need to retain rights to your work. If they aren't going to continue to sell your stuff there is no reason for them to continue to own the rights to it.

Basically yes, but consider their sales and prestige, the negitotiability of the contract and conditions when rights revert (e.g. if you go out of print). I would consider it a negative point but still worth considering because in most cases remaining in print with EC is a best case scenario anyway?

True. I don't know. It's a little permanent sounding... There are many other e-publishers out there with less territorial claims, right?

Yes but most of them have 10% of the sales volume or less. Being less periminant means the right to take the book somewhere else to make less money IMHO. I am generally against rights grabs but if you want a big monkey anyway being grabbed by King Kong isn't such a terrible fate.

Ellora's Cave isn't going to keep a near monopoly on the market forever. No way would I sign a contract with those rights.

I think their fall has been predicted for some time, but their sales ar still an order of magnitude higher than all but maybe 2-3 other presses. So even if they went broke somehow in six months time you'd have more expose than a decade at most other places. And I say that as someone who has never so much as submitted to them nor read even one of their books.

LOL. I haven't read any either, but I've seen excerpts. That was enough to put me off.

veinglory: "I think their fall has been predicted for some time, but ..." :o Oh really? What have you heard?

Um, my quote didn't work for some reason. But...

So I guess my next question is if EC isn't the cat's meow as most people would assume based on sales and rumor, etc, etc, then who is? This question is being asked of an author of m/f erotic romance mind you, though most pubs seem accepting of any and all well-wirtten romantic couplings.

It depends what you are looking for. Do you mean in terms of sales? By 'the fall of' I mean many, many reader blogs say their quality is falling. yet the sales figures stay high.