Episode 46: When It Rains, It Pours
If it wasn’t enough that Laura, Judy and I were working madly to beat the publishing deadline and Judy was planning our wed-away, the issue of the book contract suddenly re-emerged. We had started discussions with White Cloud in February, but hadn’t received their boilerplate book contract until July. As soon as I received the contract, I countered by offering shares in Magical Matches in exchange for retaining the book’s rights–a proposal that was definitely not normal procedure where publisher-author relations are concerned.
I hoped to create a new paradigm in which we would align and partner with the publisher towards mutual success. The agreement would provide White Cloud revenue streams from both the book and the online dating website, while simultaneously permitting me to leverage the book’s content without restriction to maximize profits. But my counter-offer had been sucked into the vortex of the Bookmuda Triangle. It was now September and I hadn’t heard a peep back from White Cloud. During much of that time I had been nearly begging to get the contract finished–I wanted to have at least one item completed from the action list that seemed to be growing daily.
Finally, I received the following email from Stephen, the gentleman who is responsible for the business-side of White Cloud. He wrote:
I also want to say that I am not comfortable relinquishing the rights without a clearer picture of what our agreement will be with regard to our participation in the overall project going forward….so, maybe we should talk after I get a look at the changes…
Fair enough. We were asking them to surrender the lifeblood of their profit stream, so we needed to work this facet just a bit more to get there. This paradigm was probably the first of its type. Their trepidation was understandable.
Stephen did go on to say:
And, I want to say that your dedication to making the best product you can in a reasonable time frame is very impressive–we are more excited about the prospects for your book and website now.
I was pretty certain that they would buy in. They were beginning to get a taste of our Silicon Valley tenacity. We just needed a little more time for them to get comfortable with the idea of releasing the rights to the book.
The Death of Online Dating 