publishing

A look back at the Valancourt case

This entry was posted in Publishing and tagged books copyright law publishing on by

This post presents the finish of a story that I first blogged about in 2018. Court cases can take a long time to reach a resolution, and I missed it when the decision came out last year. Before the resolution of Valancourt Books’ lawsuit, the US copyright office demanded a free copy of every book published in the US. It was uneven in pressing its demands; for reasons I don’t know, it came down hard on Valancourt, a small-run publisher. The requirement was especially burdensome for such publishers; it costs a bigger part of your assets to send out an unpaid copy when you print a hundred copies or do print-on-demand than when you print a hundred thousand. Regardless of the number, it was a clear-cut violation of the Fifth Amendment, which says the government can’t take private property for public use without paying “just compensation.”

In 2023, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia agreed with this reasoning and said the requirement for free copies was unconstitutional.
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Update on Smashwords and Draft2Digital

This entry was posted in News Selling your work and tagged draft2digital ebooks publishing smashwords on by

Smashwords is now saying that some accounts will be automatically moved to Draft2Digital. A May 1 email says:

On June 1st, we’ll begin automatically migrating some Smashwords author accounts to Draft2Digital. If you desire more control over the migration process, or want to have your account migrated sooner, please complete the brief questionnaire that was previously sent to the email address associated with your Smashwords account.
 
When Draft2Digital acquired Smashwords in March 2022, we announced that the integration of the two companies would be completed in three phases, with the final phase involving the migration of Smashwords author/publisher accounts over to Draft2Digital. Given the vast number of Smashwords accounts, the migration process itself must be divided into phases to ensure maximum effectiveness and efficiency.

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Migrating from Smashwords to Draft2Digital

This entry was posted in Writing Writing as business and tagged draft2digital ebooks publishing smashwords on by

A few days ago I got an email from Smashwords saying I’m now eligible to migrate my self-publishing account to Draft2Digital. “Uncomplicated” accounts were eligible to migrate in February. Mine must be “complicated,” which surprises me. Maybe it’s because the two Thomas Lorenz novels constitute a series. In any case, if you’re a Smashwords author and think you may have missed the notification, check out the Migration FAQ.

The good news is that Smashwords says your existing links will continue to work. It would have been very annoying if they didn’t. However, it isn’t clear what the benefits are. The FAQ says, “After you update your manuscript through the Draft2Digital interface, only the ePub format will be available to readers.” That sounds like a downgrade. There’s nothing about whether migration will eventually be mandatory. If you have books published on Smashwords, read the information and use your judgment. This article on selfpublishing.com provides information which could help, though it’s a couple of years old. I’m content to drag my feet.

The craft of children’s books

This entry was posted in Techniques Writing as business and tagged books publishing writing on by

I just learned that my friend Debbie Ohi, a writer and illustrator of children’s books, has a Substack. Even though I never plan to write a children’s book, I was fascinated by her article on understanding picture book format and construction. I’d never realized there were such strict page requirements. If you’re thinking of getting into this field or know someone who is, you should find her articles very interesting.

R. L. Stine: Bowdlerization without consent

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged bowdlerization publishing on by

While I’m on a roll with articles on recent bowdlerization, let’s take a look at R. L. Stine. I’d heard that his publisher had made changes to improve supposedly offensive passages in his Goosebumps series but assumed that he had made them himself or at least consented to them. According to Stine, he wasn’t even informed of the changes till after the fact.

Book contracts almost always let the publisher edit the book, and the language is vague on how much they can change. The publisher, Scholastic, was probably within its legal rights, especially since I haven’t seen Stine say otherwise. Past reissues have included minor changes in wording that didn’t affect the meaning. Still, making significant changes to a book by a living author after it’s been in print for a long time, without telling the author, is unusual and arrogant.
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The latest bowdlerization target: Agatha Christie

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged bowdlerization publishing on by

The bowdlerizers won’t stop. The latest is HarperCollins, which has cut words like “black” and “native” out of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple novels because they offend a mysterious group they call “modern audiences.” The majority of today’s readers aren’t “modern audiences” by that measure. Agatha Christie

If it were only a matter of replacing words that have come to be considered offensive with other words, it wouldn’t be so much of an issue. Old books are sometimes modernized to replace obsolescent words with more understandable ones, and this wouldn’t be much different. But at least part of the goal seems to be to eliminate any nastiness in the characters. HarperCollins has said, “Sections of dialogue uttered by often unsympathetic characters within the mysteries have also been cut.” The article mentions the updating of some lines by Mrs. Allerton in Death on the Nile. In the original, she says, “they come back and stare, and stare, and their eyes are simply disgusting, and so are their noses, and I don’t believe I really like children.” In the expurgated edition, she says only, “They come back and stare, and stare. And I don’t believe I really like children.” That’s not a matter of offensive words, but an offensive character.

Are HarperCollins’ sensitivity readers aware that every Agatha Christie mystery novel includes at least one murderer in its characters? Murder mysteries necessarily include nasty characters, and there need to be nasty ones besides the murderer in order to keep the reader guessing. In the first half of the twentieth century, it wasn’t unusual to judge people by their eyes and noses. Pretending otherwise does no good.
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More bowdlerization — this time, in educational materials

This entry was posted in Publishing and tagged bowdlerization education publishing on by

The sanitized version of Roald Dahl’s books removed a reference to black tractors, apparently because it was deemed racially offensive. That’s problematic, but wiping relevant racial information out of factual material is much worse. An educational pamphlet produced by Studies Weekly was revised to omit any reference to racial issues in a capsule discussion of Rosa Parks.

The revised text says: “Rosa Parks showed courage. One day, she rode the bus. She was told to move to a different seat. She did not. She did what she believed was right.” There’s no mention of why she was told to move. A child reading that today might think she had sat in a seat reserved for handicapped passengers.
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Bowdlerizers on the march

This entry was posted in Commentary News and tagged bowdlerization publishing on by

As I noted last week, Penguin Random House partially backed off on sanitizing Roald Dahl’s books, promising authentic editions in addition to the expurgated ones. But it isn’t just kids’ books that are getting this treatment. The Spectre of bowdlerization is now haunting Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Ian Fleming Publications has announced a new edition of the Bond novels that remove any suggestions that Bond was ever prejudiced against black people. If the Telegraph article is to be trusted, his prejudices against every other group, including East Asians, women, and gays, have been allowed to stand. In some cases, black people have just been erased. “Detail is also removed from Goldfinger, where the race of the drivers in the Second World War logistics unit, the Red Ball Express – which had many black servicemen – is not mentioned, instead referring only to ‘ex-drivers’.”

A disclaimer to be included in the books says, “A number of updates have been made in this edition, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set.” That’s nonsense. Keeping as close as possible to the original text means using the original text.
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