Writing and Publishing

A colleague of mine sent me a troubling question: “Dave, I recently submitted an article to a magazine I’ve worked with for a few years, and they accepted it without comment. A month passes and they’ve paid me 1/3 of the agreed upon fee, claiming that their staff had to completely rewrite it prior to publication and that cost came out of my recompense. That seems really unfair: is there anything I can do about it?”

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A question came in from a fellow writer with a tale of woe: “I managed to goof up my contract with the publisher so good (being given a chance as an aspiring author and all) that I really don’t see a way out of my situation right now.

“In a nutshell, I didn’t negotiate my contract and ended with with non-compete clauses of all sorts which now prevent me to author a new
revision of my book…”

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Having had oodles of experience with contract negotiation and publishing, I’m reviewing the contract that a very large publisher sent a colleague for a book she wants to write, and it amazes me how it has all the same anti-author clauses of just about every other publisher’s agreement I’ve seen (with a few notable exceptions). This is why people who aren’t familiar with the business really need to consider an agent, lawyer, or someone else who can represent their interests when reading through a legal document of this nature.

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I’m pleased to share this glowing review of my new book Creating Cool Web Sites with HTML, XHTML and CSS from Internet expert Will Bontrager. Will and Mari Bontrager are the publishers of the highly regarded Possibilities E-zine newsletter that offers weekly insight and articles on CGI programming and design.

…Cool Web Sites ..

When Dave Taylor’s book arrived, I opened it right away.

It took very little time for me to be thoroughly impressed.

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My thanks to the Portland area Lotus/Domino User’s Group for being the first to publish a review of my new book Creating Cool Web Sites with HTML, XHTML and CSS, which you can read here. In the review, it says: “This book does an excellent job in covering a lot of ground without needing 1000+ pages to do so. Taylor takes you through the basics of HTML and XHTML, as well as how to use CSS to add formatting and presentation to your page. There’s even some coverage of JavaScript as well.”

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I don’t ordinarily share testimonials here, but this was a very pleasant one to receive:

I am a computer science major at Queens College of the City University
of New York and I have recently purchased you book “Creating Cool HTML 4 Web
Pages.” I must say that I am truly impressed. You see, I have my own
company, J I Diamond International, which deals in fine quality diamonds and jewelry and I have recently posted some of my merchandise on Ebay. I can’t tell you enough how much I appreciate what your book has to offer, especially
due to the fact that I am no fool when it comes to computers. Designing a
webpage has always been a dream and all of my friends have told me to use
Front Page or other Page builders. Yet starting from scratch is always difficult.

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