Monthly Archives: January 2018

BUSINESS OF BOOKS: TAKE FOUR WRITERS

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Sometimes when writing a regular column you get sick of the sound of your own voice. Well I do, anyway. However much you dress it up I am just one author on one career path and although other writers contribute wonderful guest columns to the Business of Books there is no sense of continuity to their experiences and I wanted to remedy that.

So a few months ago I put out feelers in the author groups I belong to on Facebook to see if there were writers with books being published in 2018 who would be prepared to write monthly updates. I wanted to cast the net wide; across genres, across routes to publication and with the new books coming out at different times during the year.

The first volunteer and first to be inked into the schedule was writer of literary women’s fiction, Claire Dyer. Claire has featured in this column before and is a good friend – but she also has an interesting story to tell. Her first two novels were published by Quercus but sadly the second one fell between the cracks when they were taken over and it seemed as though her career had stuttered to a halt. Now with a new agent and a new deal with The Dome Press for The Last Day she is set for an interesting year. And if early indications are anything to go by, a very successful one too.

Given that I’m a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association many of my contacts are in this genre so my next task was choosing a single representative for romance. I have to say that I struggled initially but then one story piqued my curiosity. Linn B Halton, already a successful author with Harper Impulse, was about to embark on a parallel career as her alter ego Lucy Coleman, signed to Aria Fiction. Linn has two feelgood novels out next year but will be concentrating on her July launch for Frost.

Having come through the indie publishing route myself I was determined that this option should be represented, but again the issue was choosing between the impeccable credentials of the volunteers. I had two particularly strong candidates but in the end it came down to genre and as one was another romance writer, the humourist won out and I selected Angela Petch. It was particularly interesting because Angela is better known as an historical novelist (first indie and now with Endeavour Press) and this is her first foray in a new direction. That she was willing to share this potentially perilous journey spoke volumes about her courage and I can’t wait to find out how 2018 pans out for her.

I knew my final author should be writing thrillers or crime, and in an ideal world I’d have liked a debut novelist but none came forward. Whether they felt they’d be too busy trying to navigate uncharted territory or weren’t sufficiently ahead with their social media when I put out the call I don’t know. But in the end it’s worked really well because I’m able to feature Scottish crime writer Jackie Baldwin whose second novel for Harper Collins’ Killer Reads, Perfect Dead, is due out in June.

Over the next few weeks each writer will introduce themselves but in the meantime if you can’t wait to find out more, here are the links to their websites:

https://clairedyer.com/

http://linnbhalton.co.uk/

https://angelapetchsblogsite.wordpress.com/

http://jackiebaldwin.co.uk/

 

Four Examples of Why You Should Always Read the Fine Print

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As Tom Waits once sang, “the large print giveth and the small print taketh away”. The devious loopholes and hidden snares obscured by pages upon pages of legalese is a common enough trope in fiction, as well as in real life, where the foolhardy individuals who sign contracts they haven’t read often find themselves coping with more than they bargained for.

Nowadays though, despite all these warnings, many of us are still guilty of clicking “Accept” on lengthy End User License Agreements without ever really trying to work out what they say. However as these examples show, whether you’re dealing with a physical contract or an online agreement, it’s still vital to read the fine print.

Crappy Connectivity

Manchester-based public wifi company Purple sought to demonstrate the dangers inherent in lengthy and opaque user agreements by intentionally inserting an outrageous clause into their terms of service agreement and seeing how many people would fall for it. The company is responsible for hotspots for locations such as Legoland and Pizza Express and, for two weeks, included a clause legally requiring the user to perform 1,000 hours of community service in exchange for internet access. In that time, more than 22,000 people agreed to perform tasks such as picking up dog faeces in parks or cleaning portable toilets at festivals, whereas only one person claimed the cash prize offered for those who spotted the clause and emailed the company about it.

Bonus Betting with Bonus Print

While fine print is a staple of almost all industries, it is perhaps most vital to pay attention to it when there are large amounts of money on the line. Betting bonus offers are one great example, in which gambling companies will compete to offer the most eye-catching promotional deal, only to clarify them at further length in much smaller font. For this reason, it’s important to review all terms and conditions before you sign up to any offers, either on the company’s website or by contacting their support team. For those who like to be extra secure, it’s also wise to double-check the credentials of the casino before taking advantage of their offer. Licensed sites backed by a legitimate organisation are far more likely to have fair terms, which takes away much of the need to worry and pick through the legalese. Alternatively, many timid gamblers like to rely on third-party recommendations of various offers, such as the bonus betting offers suggested for Canadian gamblers by this site, to ensure that they are not going to be duped out of their hard-earned cash.

T&Cs (and M&Ms)

Yet another reason to pore over fine print is that, if you’re the kind of venue manager trying to book musicians like Van Halen, it could cost you your headline act! Van Halen’s contract with venues is well-known for including the hidden condition that the backstage area is supplied with a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones taken out. Given that Britney Spears’ rider notoriously requests a framed picture of Princess Diana, you would be forgiven for thinking this is just typical primadonna antics. However, in actual fact, Van Halen included this line to check to check that the venue had read the many other pages of safety requirements carefully, which were necessary given the show’s inclusion of pyrotechnics and flying harnesses. If the brown-less M&M bowl was not included, there was, therefore, grounds to cancel the show in the name of audience (and performer) safety.


“MANDM” (CC BY 2.0) by Dominic Rooney

Weapons of Musical Destruction

While you might expect bizarre fine print from small companies with a point to prove or musicians, you might be surprised to learn that the iTunes EULA also includes one very curious line, albeit for a very legitimate reason. It insists:

“You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons.”

This line is included, despite being now obsolete, because iTunes’ use of encryption technology used to mean it classified as a weapon under US law and was therefore subject to the same export and usage restrictions.


“iTunes” (CC BY 2.0) by JeepersMedia

So there you have it! Even if you don’t get out of any scrapes through reading the fine print, you might just learn something interesting in the process.