Friday, June 8, 2007

Email from Joseph Aldred --

Dan,

I was wondering if any of your books are available in audio or PDF (or some other electronic format)? I listen to audio books at work and work would go a lot quicker of I could listen to some of your stuff also. Particularily The Long Run.

Joseph Aldred


No, there are no audio versions of these documents available. I'm open to audio, but I'm not doing it myself and no one has approached me to do it.

There are .pdf versions of everything I've ever written -- I typeset the Quietvision editions myself. And did the covers for that matter.

I'll find some way to make those available at some point, I think. I'm going to talk to Bantam later this month and see if they have any interest in AI War (apprently they posted online at some point that the rights had reverted -- news to me, if so) -- if they don't want it, great. If they do -- great. As a brand, "Daniel Keys Moran" is damaged, and even if Bantam damages it further with a lousy release of "AI War," not a big issue to me. I'm more concerned with my crime fiction at this point, and that can always go out under a pseudonym if it comes to that -- I'm past having my ego involved with seeing my name on a book, but I would like to see my stories published again.

Far as I know Quietvision is no longer selling copies of my works. I haven't heard from the guy who runs Quietvision in years -- no royalty statements, no royalties since at least 2003 -- which is fine, I'm not taking the guy to mediation over whatever amount I'm short with him, but I did send him an e-mail today making sure that he and I agree that Quietvision and I are quits.

4 comments:

Sean Fagan said...

Someone -- I forget whom, but it may have been Wil Shetterly -- made "audiobooks" using a speech synthesizer.

They weren't great, but they were mostly usable.

(On the other hand, I've heard such good things about James Marsters' readings of Butcher's Dresden books that I keep considering getting one, even though I've read all the print versions.)

JTHeyman said...

Mr. Moran:

You wrote, "I'm past having my ego involved with seeing my name on a book, but I would like to see my stories published again."

At what price?

I was wondering if you had seen this anywhere: "Authors Guild Angry Over Changes to Simon and Schuster's Author Contracts"
May 18, 2007 By Kimberly Maul

The location of this article is: http://www.thebookstandard.com/bookstandard/news/publisher/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003587524

(My apologies for being unable to make this look pretty as a link.)

On the one hand, I've heard one author, Esther Friesner, tell a group of fans to NEVER give away all of your rights in a contract. At the time, I think she was referring to movie options and such but the "reprint or revert" right seems to be an important one ... speaking as someone who, perhaps, some day, might write a book worth publishing. (I keep writing ... hope is not lost ... yet.)

On the other hand, as a reader, the idea of being able to find a copy of an old book at a reasonable price is attractive as well. (Do you know what copies of "The Perfect Thief" are going for on eBay and Amazon?)

I'd be interested in your opinion. Do you think this is good for readers? For authors? Or do you have another take on this?

~ JTHeyman

Daniel Keys Moran said...

Sean,

Yeah, I've heard OK synthesizer readings -- they're much better than they used to be, anyway. I'll fire one up and feed it a story and see what it sounds like. I'm skeptical -- OK for things other than fiction, is my guess.

jtheyman,

Immortal corporations with most of the rights of people were always an interesting idea. Corporations are going to do what's best for the corporation -- expecting moral conduct from them is missing the point quite thoroughly. (Which is where libertarians and I part ways -- business and morality are not related. The idea that if you let businesses do whatever they want, the "market" will somehow magically fix their excesses, is so palpably untrue that it makes me cautious about the parts of libertarian theory that I do like.)

Is this good for authors? I can't begin to see how. I wouldn't sign such a contract and I'm quite sure that S&S's A-list authors, aren't.

I don't know what "Perfect Thief" is going for on Amazon, but I do know Ronald Bass should get that book republished, even if only as an e-book. I had two copies of that book -- I tore one of them up (the one Bass himself didn't give me) and scanned it. It hurt to do that, but now I have a copy on my PDA, and if for some reason those books were ever lost or damaged, I'd still have a copy to read.

joseph said...

I think I might have to do that to one of my copies of TLR. Just for safe keeping.