So someone posted this to one of my writer’s loops. A woman is attempting to sell the rights to her books for $250,000.
I took advantage of Google. The writer published at least one of these books through Infinity Publishing (never heard of it, think it must be an epub because of what she says later…) and now says that the winning bid will get all republising and potential movie rights. She also says that she’ll send copies of the books with the winners name on the cover instead of her own (so I suppose it must be an epub, and she’s going into Photoshop and changing the name?)
On one hand, it’s really funny from a professional writer’s perspective. Obviously she’s done everything she can with these books, and I suppose this is the bottom of the barrel — she’s publshed them, she has tried to get reprint deals, movie deals, whatever — hasn’t been successful, so the only marketable thing she has are these potential for deals, so why doens’t she sell THOSE? Talk about using every part of the buffalo! More power to her. If anyone is dumb enough to buy them, she’ll make more money than she has any right to see from those books, more money then she’d probably be seeing even if she’d sold them to a major publihser and had an agent out in Hollywood shilling for her night and day. I mean, romances aren’t as marketable as thrillers, and that’s why Nora Roberts doesn’t have the name recognition of Stephen King.
On the other hand, as a vocational writer, my soul shivers. To package up her four books and say, I don’t want them, here, pay me and that’s it. Does this mean she has given up?
Or is it a third option? I keep thinking back to that nut who modeled his ex’s wedding dress on eBay and wound up a guest on Letterman or somesuch. Knowing what publicity whores writers can be, I don’t know if we can rule out the very idea that she’s attempting to drum up interest in said books through the medium of eBay.
I wonder which one it is…
~Diana
