Fiends of the Eastern Front

[Jim_Campbell]

Actually, Virgin Books offered a pretty good deal.

Thanks for the info, David — when I came across a reference to Dave Stone keeping the rights to the text many years ago, it was definitely presented as something singular, or at least unusual. It's also interesting that you were able to negotiate a different (better?) deal later on... my brief dealings with Virgin on this score were at the formative stages of the venture and the deal at that time was presented as take-it-or-leave-it.

Cheers

Jim

[Buttonman]

Actually, Virgin Books offered a pretty good deal. Authors routinely retained the copyright in their text, although any licensed elements e.g. Judge Dredd, Doctor Who, remained the property of the original owners.

IIRC, I took a flat fee on my first Dredd novel for Virgin [£3000?], but argued for and got a much smaller advance [£1600] against royalties for my second and third novels. One of those earned back its advance in sales and paid out royalties, the other didn't.

davidbishop

Thanks David for giving an insight into the money involved - sounds a good wedge for doing something you enjoy anyway, but the flip side is you would need to produce 10 books a year, every year, to maintain an average salary of £25k for being an office drone, which would come with sick pay, pension etc. Better to do something you enjoy but it's definitely not an easy option. Unless your pitch script gets $3 million, in which case see you in the Bahamas!