December 28, 2010
Julian Assange's short-sighted book deal
From The Economist:
The big news of the day is Julian Assange's book deal. The Wikileaks founder has secured more than $1m in advances for his autobiography from Alfred A. Knopf, a New York publisher, and Canongate based in Britain. A manuscript is expected sometime next year. "I don't want to write this book, but I have to," Mr Assange told the Sunday Times. "I have already spent £200,000 for legal costs and I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat." Struggling writers around the world are crying crocodile tears for this man. Woe is he and his handsome advance.
The deal is impressive, but there are signs that Mr Assange's rush to shake hands with big publishers was penny-wise, pound-foolish. As it stands, the contract barely covers his existing legal costs, which he says are approaching £500,000. Knopf will surely do its best to rush the book into print, but its cut of final sales will be considerable. A typical contract would give Knopf electronic rights and Mr Assange 25% of net profits. As the towheaded Australian already has a cult following, it might've been savvier for him to self-publish an autobiography and sell it via Amazon, which offers authors 70% of net profits for e-books sold in America (though the book must be priced between $2.99 and $9.99); Barnes & Noble and Apple offer similar royalty rates.
More here.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 11:14 PM | Permalink
Comments
I dunno - his move makes some sense to me. This way, he gets the needed money up-front, regardless of how the book turns out. With self-publishing he doesn't get income until after publication, and even that depends on it being a good book (or perceived as good).
In any case, this might just be a quickie first autobio, with a more-detailed one to be published later (covering future events he'll doubtless be involved in - assuming he isn't killed) with more favorable terms.
Posted by: Zoc | Dec 29, 2010 7:37:40 AM
All this man has done is use content (uploading it) provided by others. He even hitches a ride with the Wiki format.
How original is Assange?
Um. Hardly original. The only reason these two publishers, smaller publishers I may add, came forth is probably related to the idea that others would offer higher advances. And this has not happened. I doubt that patriotic American stores/outlets will even bother, considering that some of the world's largest (American) companies have refused to process financial donations for Assange.
I wouldn't bother paying him that much. All Assange has done portray himself as some kind of journalist. There are so many other journalists who actually do go the extra mile, rather than sit on their backsides facing computers,uploading data and passing it off as their own creative content.
Posted by: Tara | Dec 29, 2010 8:44:34 AM
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