A Distant Soil by Colleen Doran

I pointed out in my last post that some unscrupulous former clients were reissuing my work on Kindle and had included it in the Google Book Search scheme without my permission.

Now, while you may think I am being all dog in the manger about my rights, consider that in I NEVER GRANTED ANY OF THESE CLIENTS ANY REUSE RIGHTS IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Moreover, when my other books went out of print and my contracts expired, all rights reverted to me. My ex-publishers and ex-clients have NO RIGHT to authorize the use of my work on Kindle or on Google. Yet they have done so.

Illustrations and essays years old are now being resold without my permission.

To add insult to injury, I WAS NEVER PAID FOR SOME OF THIS WORK IN THE FIRST PLACE.

No, not kidding.

Let me make this clear. Clients with whom I had bad experiences have come out of the woodwork and illegally granted Kindle and Google rights to my work, rights they do not own, in most cases for work I was never paid a dime to use.

Now, am I being a greedy mean old author who simply doesn’t want my silly little works in a search engine, or am I simply exercising my right to walk away from people I haven’t spoken to or done business with in years because they do not honor their contracts or pay their bills?

Why on Earth would ANY author want to revisit any working relationship with a dishonest client?

There are many reasons some of us would like some books to go out of print and stay there, and a major reason for me is to kill a working relationship with a client who ripped me off. If the publisher is collecting moolah on my out of print work, and I never got any money on the book in the first place, what’s the joy supposed to be in the nothing Colleen continues to get?

How happy am I supposed to be when I wake up one day and find that an author or publisher has authorized electronic reuse of my work with absolutely NO provision made for the dispensation of funds for that reuse, and no release for that reuse? I haven’t spoken to these people in years because they are crooks. Why do I want to do business with them now?

You think I want to continue dealing with these paramecium in perpetuity because Google doesn’t want my books to go out of print?

Hell, no.

All I want is my essays and illos removed from any collections I did with clients with whom I want no further contact. I do not want substandard works to go back in print because Google says so. I do not want to revisit working relationships with clients who were dishonest and abusive.

And consider this:

…those who stay in the GBS deal must waive trademark and publicity rights in their names, likenesses, character names, and the like. If you want to run ads to promote your books through GBS, Google may ask you to buy keyword rights to your name, etc. for its AdSense program; you may even need to buy these keywords if you don’t want others to buy them.

And some more ammo:

These authors had signed contracts with Random House under which they gave Random House rights “to publish the work[s] in book form.” Random House asserted this gave it e-book rights and charged Rosetta with infringement. The court ruled that this contract language was understood in the trade as a limited grant, and since e-books were a new use not contemplated at the time of the initial publishing contract, the rights remained with the authors.

Still on the fence about opting out of that Google thing?

Go here to opt out.