Publishers Go Belly Up « Career Building

Publishers Go Belly Up

Posted on October 25th, 2008 jean 6 comments

There’s been lots of hubbub lately about the economy. If you get the daily emails from Publishers Lunch you’ll have noticed that it isn’t that unusual to read a report of another bookstore going down. Occasionally, like the other day, you have a publisher declare bankruptcy.

If you are like me, you shrug your shoulders and move on. It happens.

However, as Kristen Nelson, literary agent and owner of Nelson Literary Agency, comments in her blog (Pub Rants), publisher bankruptcy can spell uh-oh for a writer. After reading her blog post and then the links provided in her comments section (Writer’s Block and In the (Red)), I became a bit concerned. You see, although writers often have a clause in their publishing contracts stating that their rights will revert back to them if something happens to the publisher, it isn’t always that simple. A judge who is overseeing the bankruptcy proceedings can declare that paragraph void and claim the income on a particular work as part of the pile of assets needed to pay off the guaranteed creditors. Yikes. Authors, as far as I know, are not considered to be guaranteed creditors. Meaning, they get the shaft.

It doesn’t seem right to me, but it is definitely worth thinking about if you are about to sign a contract with a publisher–even if the economy isn’t in the you-know-what.
career building bankruptcy, poor economy and writing, publisher bankruptcy, writers and bankruptcy
6 responses to “Publishers Go Belly Up”
- Stacey Derbinshire October 25th, 2008 at 16:00
  
  Hi there,
  
  I looked over your blog and it looks really good. Do you ever do link exchanges on your blog roll? If you do, I’d like to exchange links with you.
  
  Let me know if you’re interested.
  
  Thanks..
- Jean October 26th, 2008 at 12:01
  
  Thanks Stacy.
- Matt October 28th, 2008 at 14:23
  
  Wow, I never thought of that! The idea that an unpublished novel could fall into limbo during a global economic recession sounds like a thriller waiting to happen. Well, perhaps I’m overstating that a tad, but for the unpublished writer, it certainly seems awful scary.
- Jean October 28th, 2008 at 15:47
  
  I’m not sure what would happen to an unpublished novel–I assume it would remain unpublished. However your money making published novel–yikes! I don’t even want to think about it.
- Matt October 29th, 2008 at 07:49
  
  I haven’t read this yet, but it seems related. … http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/thebusiness/081030/
- Jean October 29th, 2008 at 07:55
  
  Wow. I’d never even thought about what would happen if an author put money into marketing and promotion and then the publisher went under before the book got published. Ack!
  
  Thanks Matt!
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Welcome to my Website and Blog

I am an aspiring fiction writer (children's, women's and commercial) and a represented nonfiction writer. I am also a member, critiquer and site moderator over on AgentQueryConnect.com. Thanks for stopping by. Feel free to jump in the conversation and leave your thoughts in the comment section.

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