Recent content by AgentPete

This is my message of the decade. Writers must own their readers. That’s really interesting. And a bit daunting for new writers, too, yet without a base. I’ve funded one or two Kickstarters (not books tho) and the experience was… mixed. One in particular stands out (for an innovative NAS box)…...

Yes, definitely the right time for some intense conversations. This guy (Tom Cox, no relation!) suggests that he has actually got some rights back, so there may be a precedent. Yeah, they’re calling royalties due from the old company “goodwill payments” and while they’re technically correct...

This is a crucial point. The publisher will tend to want to retain whatever contractual rights they have in the event of administration or “making an arrangement with their creditors” since IP assets are pretty much all publishers are likely to have left if they crash and burn. From the author’s...

M&A in publishing has been bad news all round. It’s killed off so many decent medium-sized publishers, folk who had a flair for certain genres / publishing approaches. Publishing is almost by definition idiosyncratic and quirky; the polar opposite of typical conglomerate culture.

That’s a good point. Actually, two good points, viz: 1) At the time (and today, but less so) authors really wanted the kudos of being “properly” published, i.e. not vanity. Although I know very little about Unbound, they did have a generally positive reputation in the trad (and very...

I think you’re right to be suspicious. I don’t know what happened to Unbound, but they seem to have burnt through money. Nor do I know if their publishing model ever worked properly (does anyone here know?)

Freddie Forsyth is dead. Author of The Day of the Jackal and more of that ilk. As dodgy a character in real life as any in his books. Like Jeffrey Archer, wrote thrillers for the home county set. End of an era – end of a profitable genre too, perhaps.

This topic emerged in last week’s Huddle. Before the Huddle, I knew almost zero about Unbound, other than the generally favorable buzz that most of the publishing industry seemed to share about them. Frankly, what’s happened is shocking and disgraceful. It makes you wonder what other...

Yeah. Can do. Thing about cog diss as a tool is that it actually has to work. Just throwing two utterly disparate concepts together into your story blender doesn’t guarantee any cog diss impact at all. There has to be some weird, spooky-at-a-distance sort of entanglement between them…

I suspect the fertile world of fanfic has already preempted you on that… many thousands of times…! And by now, there may well be AI videos, too... :eek:

Guaranteed to be the most intelligent conversations you’ll ever have :) Welcome, @A.Morgan, good to have you here!

Hastings this am...

I can’t see any news update on this,although it may take a while to grind through the courts. If anyone has seen anything newer, please post. @E G Logan - PM seem to be simply claiming return of monies paid under a contract that they say Brand breached and did not rectify. Other contingent...

Exactly. You’ve got them down to a T. The males would mostly just hurl insults, but the female riders simply wanted to kill you. Bloody scary. Best insult I had (from a male): “I killed three Germans in the last war, and they were all better men than you!”. Says it all.