Negotiating Author Payments in the Digital Age

In response, published author and blogger J.A. Konrath (“The Newbie’s Guide to Publishing,” http://JAKonrath.BlogSpot.com) commented on Wikert’s post that publishers are usually in the stronger position, and writers feel too intimidated to just walk away. “With best-selling authors, they use the carrot,” he wrote. “For midlisters, the stick is liberally used.” Wikert responded to Konrath’s comment that he knows of few, if any, publishers who approach a negotiation that way.

“The key to building and maintaining long-term partnerships is to engage our authors and involve them in the process of creating new business models,” Pedersen says.

Elsevier has invested heavily in new electronic content-delivery platforms in its Science Direct, MD Consult and Scopus brands, making it, according to Pedersen, the leading publisher of science, technical and medical content in electronic form.

“Our authoring and content licensing agreements continue to evolve to encompass these new opportunities,” Pedersen says. “Our editors are as innovative in their approach to authoring agreements as they are in their approach to new products. Our guiding principle is to make certain our revenue and royalty systems are as transparent and equitable to authors as possible.”