Heracles, the Hydra, and Me

One of the most terrifying stories about Heracles was his battle against the Hydra, a thing of horror with the body of a serpent and many heads. (The number of the heads varies, according to which myth you read.) As soon as a head was cut off, the beast grew another two. Heracles and his friend thought that if they cauterized each stump, no new heads could erupt. But one head proved to be immortal, so the strong man cut it off and buried it.Today I feel like Heracles, except that the heads on my Hydra, the tasks of marketing my book, never die. Most folks, I expect, don't know much about this part of the author's life.  Many have been surprised when I tell them that I have to perform jobs that seem to them unnecessary. "But the publisher does all that," they exclaim. Like Heracles, I fought an epic battle recently. The Hydra head task was reading about 500 blogs and then finding among those,  a few bloggers who might want to read my book and review it. Like Heracles, I learned a lot from the quest. Tomorrow I'll tell you more.

HarperCollins vs. Open Road

In The January 11, 2012 issue of The Wall Street Journal, Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg tells us about HarperCollins and its upcoming battle with the e-publishing company, Open Road Integrated Media. At stake is a crucial question for all publishers: "...whether book contracts written before the digital age granted publishers digital rights, or whether those rights were retained by the author and could be sold to an e-publisher." He says that as long ago as the mid-nineties, publishers were taking pains to add specific clauses that guarded their right to publish an author's books as e-books. But what if they didn't, and took it for granted that the contract automatically covered e-books? Authors who find themselves in this predicament are fighting for their right to some of the lucrative profits from the Great E-Book Revolution by trying to buy back the rights from their old publishers so that they can either self-publish online or sell their newly-acquired rights to an e-book publisher like Open Road. To read more background and details, go to http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203436904577153142705735660.html.