A couple of posts ago I linked to an article that took me to this post from Dean Wesley Smith, in which he informed us that the current industry standard in traditional publishing is “life-of-copyright,” which basically means that we will never regain the rights to our work, regardless of the publisher’s intentions for our books, and that the most we can expect in the way of advances is $5000 or so.
I’ve posted questions about these claims to a couple of active blogs on the business of writing, including to an agent’s blog, and will be posting to others. In my searches, I came across this post about how indie authors should expect agents to protect their rights, which is directly relevant to these issues.
This appeared on the web site of the Alliance of Independent Authors. I’m following their blog and will share interesting information.
Just Can't Help Writing 
Good info. One thing indies might keep in mind is that there have been a number of authors who were traditionally published many years ago, were able to get their rights back after the books went out of print, and are now selling them online on their own. But I assume that has to be negotiated up front.
LikeLike
I’ve got a great response from Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware on this. I’ll post it tomorrow.
LikeLiked by 1 person