Long Barn Books Blog

Publishers nowadays often give or sell for a modest amount, the text files of a book they have published, to others who have bought the rights in different countries but sharing the same language. This saves everyone typing and setting their own book. We have just bought two crime novels from a small American publisher who included their text files free when we bought the rights. This is unusually generous. We charged a very large American firm £400 for our text files but we have given others to small publishers.

Having bought the rights to a US novel from the author`s agent, we asked if we could buy text files from the US publisher  - a large one. Yes, we could - for  £1,000. This is as much as we pay in an advance for any book we buy. So of course we have declined as they will not negotiate. They therefore get nothing at all, zilch, zero, not a penny - whereas we would have paid them £500. That is £500 for doing nothing. But they prefer - er - nothing.Meanwhile, we type and set our own version of the novel, which does take time and costs, but nothing like as much.  Funny old world, publishing.