What are your plans around copyright survivorship? (I.e., if developer.* goes under in 5 years, what will happen to the book(s) in your catalog at that point?)
Daniel: This is a great question, and an important one for authors to consider when hooking up with a small pubisher. We try to cover this base in two primary ways: First, from a legal standpoint, our book contract stipulates that if developer.* Books is not keeping the book in print and available for sale, then the author can take the publication rights back and find another publisher.
And second, as I mentioned, we try to do business in such a way that we can keep this going. For example, we would not be doing our authors, collectively, a good service if we were to take on a high-risk title that requires me to take out a second mortgage on my house and quit my full time job to make it happen. Part of the strategy behind our choice to use digital printing technology is to ensure that we can keep a title in print indefinitely. With offset printing and traditional distribution, you have to spend real money to print and store large numbers of books. Even if at some point we decide to not produce any new titles, we want to be sure no authors whose books we have published are left out to dry.
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