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My students’ first drafts (of their memoirs) are filled with truth and emotion. I started reading them yesterday during Workshop time since some of the kids went home and completed them for homework. Then, I read some last night and began again this evening. Though I cannot scan them and post them [...]

1. Noticing the growth in a young writer: I conferred with one of my students today who fought with me tooth-and-nail at the beginning of the school year when it came to elaborating. Today, he had six pages-worth (double-spaced) of writing for his literary essay draft! This makes me happy. [...]

My students are going to be drafting while I’m out of the room doing reading assessments this-coming Thursday. Hence, I’m a little bit panicked since I don’t like being out of the room on days when kids are selecting a seed idea or when they start drafting. (I have an amazing guest teacher… [...]

I liked the photo I attached to yesterday’s SOLSC Post so much that I tried to replicate it with another photograph of my crystal-like brads (aka: fasteners). Since it’s Poetry Friday, I decided to take another stab at writing an ode, which I haven’t tried since July. An Ode to the Crystal-Like Brads on My [...]

Richard L. Revesz is co-author, with Michael A. Livermore, of Retaking Rationality: How Cost-Benefit Analysis Can Better Protect the Environment and Our Health, which makes clear that by embracing and reforming cost-benefit analysis, and by joining reason and compassion, progressive groups can help enact strong environmental and public health regulation. Revesz is the Dean of New York University School of Law. In the article below Revesz responds to an article in the N.Y. Times Magazine.

In the N.Y. Times Magazine, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner discuss three seemingly unrelated stories about a deaf woman in Los Angeles, a first-century Jewish sandal maker, and the red-cockaded woodpecker. The commonality in these stores, the essay argues, is that they were all the unintended victims of well-meaning regulation – the Americans with Disabilities Act, an ancient Jewish law forgiving debts every seventh year, and the Endangered Species Act, respectively. (more…)

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Below Evan Schnittman shares his personal opinions on royalties and advances. This isn’t Oxford University Press’s official stance - but represents just one of the many opinions floating around our office on this very tricky subject. We hope that by sharing his views an open dialog can be initiated.

In his blog post Royalties Macmillan CEO Richard Charkin, posits that trade publishers and authors/agents would be well served if the standard for paying authors switched from a percentage of retail price to a percentage of gross earnings. He writes, “How about agreeing new equitable royalty rates based on real money not a notional recommended retail price?

Charkin also points out that, “The percentage is linked to a price which applies in only a minority of cases. It doesn’t apply to all sales overseas; it doesn’t apply to nearly all sales made in supermarkets, Internet bookshops and many bookshop chains.” In other words, paying on the percentage of a price that isn’t applicable to the majority of income isn’t logical or easy – which may lead to wildly confusing royalty statements.

As expected, within hours a series of rebuttals hit the comments field by individuals and groups rejecting Charkin’s notion as folly; stating the view that the retail price is the only thing that is transparent on publishers’ royalty statements, which are notoriously mysterious and murky at best.

While the debate will continue, it misses a far more important problem. (more…)

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