How to use this Page

Newquay Zoo I've just received a newsletter from Newquay Zoo and they have a host of pirate and Madagascar fun planned for the summer. I've been wanting to go for a while and this looks like the perfect excuse. If time machines really existed I'd zoom down to the South West coast for Madagascan Nights taking place on Wednesdays in August. Newquay Zoo are staying open late for special animal encounters and talks with barbecue and games. They will talk about two of my favourite island animals the fossa and Vasa parrots. Visitors will also find out about the Black and White Ruffed lemurs and Ring-tailed Lemurs, meet Kevin the Madagascan Hissing Cockroach and a Madagascan Radiated Tortoise as well as frogs and reptiles. Last entry 7:30pm and the zoo closes at 8:30pm. Open late on the 6th, 13th, 20th and 27th August. I could even join the Piratical Trail which takes place between July 5th to October 31st and explore the zoo in the footsteps of rascally pirates in search of treasure and booty. And there's also 'Talk like a Pirate' Weekend taking place on September 20th to 21st. I'd best take a look at the holiday board at work... Find out more at www.newquayzoo.org.uk oh and take a look at their cool Youtube videos.

I write a lot of work for hire books. Last year, I wrote about 15 of them, including 10 poetry collections and 4-5 nonfiction books, in addition to testing passages and other shorter projects.

I'm used to not having any control over how the book looks. I write the words, other people create the book using those words, and that's that. And I'm okay with that.

What I'm not okay with is the fact that sometimes, when writing for packagers, I don't even get to see the book!

The first thing I noticed is that, even when writing directly for publishers, if I'm writing leveled readers, I usually only get 2 copies of the book instead of the standard 10-20 copies I get for most other projects.

But then, as I've worked with several packagers over the past few years, I'm having trouble even getting 2 copies on some projects. I have two books in particular that I've been trying to track down. One of them, I've been told by the publisher (after the packager said she was having no luck getting any copies for me) that I'm welcome to order my own copies from customer service. After I check my contract to make sure it doesn't include any author copies, I guess I'll do that. I had searched the company's website and because my book was part of larger reading comprehension kit, I couldn't even find individual books listed.

The other one, I've emailed the packager repeatedly, and the project manager has just said she's getting no response from the publisher. It's a large publisher with many imprints, and, again, I can't find my book specifically. Again, I need to check my contract before I decide what to do next.

For packagers and for leveled readers (and I'm often doing leveled readers for packagers) I had gotten at least a couple of copies, even when it wasn't in the contract. But now that I'm seeing a pattern develop this past year, I'm going to make sure I carefully check the contract for author copies. And if it's not there, I'm going to try to negotiate it into the contract. 

Not only does seeing the final book give me satisfaction (hopefully!), it also helps me evaluate the quality of products being put out by a certain publisher or packager. That helps me to decide whether I should write for that company again. I don't want to write a bunch of books that get produced so cheaply or poorly that I'm embarrassed to have my name on them!

So, the hunt continues for my two most recent orphan books, one about earthquakes and volcanoes, and another about homelessness. And I really don't have time to mess with it!

Have you guys encountered the same thing? Has anyone been able to put this into the contract?

Check out the Nonfiction Monday roundup later today at Anastasia Suen's blog!