Thursday, April 06, 2006

Subsidiary rights and wrongs

Poddy Girl reports that iUniverse has hired a subsidiary-rights expert to provide an extra service for some of those writers who choose to publish their books through the iUniverse machine.

Poddy Girl says, and she ought to know, that iUniverse is the only POD publisher (other than small presses) who has taken this step, and she wants to know why PublishAmerica, for one, hasn't followed suit. Good question.

The new service applies, it seems, only to those books which pass a quality test and get on to the iUniverse Star Program. In other words, by the look of it, you can't just pay to get in on the deal.

The person hired to carry out this extra marketing is Judy Klein, who spent 12 years with prestigious publishing house Farrar, Straus & Giroux. During that time, she served as vice president, director of subsidiary rights, director of paperback publishing and director of audio books. Klein is also the former editor-in-chief of the Literary Guild Book Club and the Booksonline Book Clubs. In other words, an absolutely top-drawer professional.

Poddy Girl also reports that Klein has already sold such rights for a number of iUniverse titles, including Torpedo by Jeff Edwards (including audio rights), Vlad Dracula by Michael Augustyn, and Mark Alan Morris's The Ghost Next Door, as well as others.

By the way, if you're interested in iUniverse, you ought to take a look at Pubguy.

1 comment:

Buffy said...

Love this site. Don't know why I haven't stumbled across it sooner.