Owmapow, The Indefatigable
by KJ Hannah Greenberg

 

 

 

Dear Publisher of Academics are Us:

 

As regards my newest manuscript, Fish Heads for Dummies, as chapters are completed, they will be submitted to national and international conferences. Revised chapters will be submitted to national and regional journals. By dint of these efforts, by the time that I send the completed book to you, I will have generated much interest in it.

 

Remember, this work is geared toward undergraduate biology majors, toward zoology graduate students and faculty, and toward other individuals interested in an historical and conceptual synopsis of sea life.

 

In the interim, I have a few questions for you about the contract.

 

Per rights:

·         Please make explicit that I retain the full term of copyright exclusive of rights granted in the contract.

·         Please make explicit whether you are including, in your English language rights, “paperback reprint” rights.

·         Please make explicit that your clamed rights include electronic rights.

·         Please make explicit that your rights do NOT including foreign translation rights, serialization rights, book club rights, and the rights for special editions.

·         Please make explicit that your rights do NOT include motion picture and television rights, audio book rights, audiovisual rights, merchandizing rights, and dramatic or performance rights.

·         Please make be explicit the details of my remuneration from the licensing or sale of rights, granted to you, which, are then sold to third parties. On the phone, you mentioned that we’d divide the proceeds of such sales. That term is acceptable but must be included in our contract.

·         Please make explicit anticipated income from third party sales.

·         Please make explicit that you intend to retain certain distribution.

 

Per content:

·         Please make explicit that I’m responsible for providing the “Preface.”

·         Pease make explicit that I’m responsible for providing the “Acknowledgements.”

·         Please make explicit that I’m responsible for providing the “Introduction.”

·         Please make explicit that I’m responsible for providing the “Tables of Contents.”

·         Please make explicit that I’m responsible for providing the fifty essays constituting the content.

·         Please make explicit that I’m responsible for providing the “Glossary.”

·         Please make explicit that your responsible for providing the “Subject Index.”

·         Please make explicit that we jointly responsible for providing the back cover blurbs.

 

Per editing and graphics:

·         Please make explicit the duties to be performed by your editors, copy-editors, and your proofreaders, respectively.

·         Please make explicit that  that I am in charge of cover design and of internal graphics and my first right of refusal for them.

·         Please make explicit the placement  of a line drawn fish head around each page number.

·         Please make explicit that we will use size 12 font. I prefer that we use Comic Sans MS, not Ties New Roman.

 

Per production:

·         Please make explicit that text delivery deadlines.

·         Also, what type of typesetting is used? What type of plates are made? What type of binding materials are used?

·         Please make explicit the meaning of “mechanical, electronic or communications failures.”

 

Per marketing:

·         Do you send copies of covers, to book buyers and library suppliers, in advance of the publication date?

·         What other types of prepublication marketing strategies do you employ?

·         Which of the following techniques do you use for “basic” publicity; press releases? press kits? reviews? buyer presentations? mailings? advertisements? direct mail brochures? conferences?  sales representative in the field? telemarketing? catalogs? web site? other?

·         Do you have a team of commission reps? Export managers?

·         How does your press get shelf space?

·         What is the projected number of copies sold the first year? The first three years?

·         What are the mechanisms that you intend to create for individual purchases?

 

Per distribution and warehousing:

·         Please specify how order fulfillment will be handled, i.e. how soon after orders arrive that books will be shipped? Are the same mechanisms in place for orders outside of North America? If not, please specify those mechanisms.

·         Please specify what will happens if there is insufficient inventory to fill orders?

·         Do you work with library wholesalers?

·          Do you work with the Association of Science Libraries?

·         Do you work with Ingram and Baker & Taylor?

·         When does your office mail the requisite number of copies to: Library of Congress? Bookdata? Whitikers? British Library? (British) Copyrights Libraries Agency? National Library of Canada? Other similar agencies?

·          What manner of sales information will be reported? How often will sales information be reported?

·         How are each of the following services executed: receiving orders; picking, packing, and shipping the orders; managing data associated with maintaining inventory and filling orders; collecting accounts-receivable; sales representation to the trade channel (usually exclusive); sales representation to special markets (usually non-exclusive); international sales representation and fulfillment, sales representation to non-trade, special sales, or export channels; and additional title-specific marketing

·         Please clarify the nature of “online distribution” for your company.

 

Per miscellaneous:

·         You mentioned something about being an imprint or having an imprint. Please clarify.

·          To which publishing associations do you belong to?

·         What do you think is the true market potential of this book?

 

****

 

Dear Dr. Brownstone:

 

We are unaccustomed to such communication, as yours, from our authors. Please consider our contract null and void, effective immediately.

 

Sly Martin

CEO Academics are Us

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