Listen to many, speak to a few.

~ William Shakespeare

 Well it’s Permuted Press royalty statement time again. The sales figures are as expected across the books I have with them. The thing that caught my eye was that there is no listing for the audiobook editions of Tankbread. The audio book rights were part of the original contract, signed over to Permuted. Some books get made into audio, but I think that has dried up a lot since Amazon took over Audible.

I queried this lack of reporting and got the following response:

The absence of Tankbread sales on your statement is due to the specifics of the agreement Permuted made with Audible for the license of those rights.  In essentials, Audible paid a large lump sum for the sale of several titles, (which were applied immediately to said titles: I can send you a statement when it was paid if you would like), under a 7 year royalty free period. It was estimated that most of the licensed titles would not earn out from this advance in less than 7 years if it had been applied as a regular advance/earn-out circumstance.  After this period, all sales are reported and paid normally.

So it’s not the contract I signed. It’s the contract Permuted Press signed. I do recall getting a royalty payment (credit against advance) for the audio book. I got the same thing when they sold the foreign language rights for a French, Italian and German edition too. The royalty rate is based on the print edition – so the amount credited to me is bugger all. I’m still have over $700 of advance to earn back (remaining advance on 6 books).

I can be relieved that for once it’s not just me that’s getting screwed, oh wait, yes it is. Like the Human Centipede, I’m at the end of a line of shit that gets less palatable once everyone further up the chain has had their chew on it.

If I had killed the narrator instead of having him produce an audio book, I would have gotten less than 7 years.

What is more alarming is that after my post about not being able to get the rights to my books back from Permuted, because “They didn’t want to set a precedent…” I was contacted by several ex-Permuted authors who also requested they be released from their contracts. All of them were given their rights back, no problem, no charge. Which means when it comes to my books, the precedent has already been set, with some minor variations:

I don’t know if those other authors had their foreign language rights sold
I don’t know if those other authors were “this close” to a film rights optioning deal for their book.

The frustrating thing is that the movie deal didn’t go ahead. Even if it had, it might have taken years, if it was ever made at all.

But, now (and this is the ironic bit) like the old man in Tankbread 3 who 200 years after the apocalypse still clutches the winning lottery ticket that scored right before the shit hit the fan – they are going to hang on to the rights in an apparent just in case hope that lightning will strike where there was only a forecast of possible cloud previously.