Passing on the New Wowio Deal, here’s why
Well I looked over the new Wowio contract with Platinum’s new items listed in the contract amendments and I’m going to have to pass on it, here’s why.
There will be new multiple ways for you to monetize your content, let’s take a look at the actual text and I’ll give you my own personal beefs with it.
1. AMENDMENTS TO AGREEMENT. The terms and provisions of the Agreement are hereby amended as follows:
1.1 EXPANSION OF GRANT OF RIGHTS. In addition to the grant of rights by Publisher under the Agreement, Publisher hereby grants and conveys to WOWIO the following rights in and to the Content:
The right to display page images derived from Content for free in a web browser with interactive display advertising (“PREVIEW”).
* BOOM. Right off the top you’re essentially giving them the right to use the content inside your ebooks as pretty much “webcomics” that they’ll monetize by selling advertising and boost their pageviews. They go on to say they’ll give you 20% of any advertising made, more on that in a bit…
Publisher shall have the option through the Publisher account interface to make “Ebooks” eligible for sale and to set a sale price (“ECOMMERCE OPTION”). If Publisher elects to activate the Ecommerce Option, Publisher hereby grants Company the right to sell Ebooks without embedded advertising. The default setting for this option is “inactive”. For purposes of the Agreement “Ebooks” shall mean self-contained electronic files, one format of which shall be Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format.
* The thing that made Wowio work in the first place was free downloads. If I’m going to sell PDFs to my fans I can do that myself direct over my own website. Sure there will be creators and publishers who don’t know how to do this, and this will seem like an easy service to use, but you’ll be giving up HALF of your sales to them. 50/50 just seems ridiculous to me, and in my own personal opinion there is no market for selling these ebooks, other people have tried and failed miserably.
Publisher shall have the option through the Publisher account interface to make Ebooks eligible for free distribution with embedded advertising when sponsors are available (“SPONSORSHIP OPTION”). If Publisher elects to activate the Sponsorship Option, Publisher hereby grants Company the right to distribute Ebooks for free with embedded advertising. The default setting for this option is “active”.
*”When” Sponsors are available? What happens when sponsors aren’t available? That seems really vague. Who’s going to be in charge of getting sponsors now? Platinum?!? UGH.
1.3 ROYALTIES. Schedule A to the Agreement is hereby deleted in its entirety, and the following shall constitute the Royalties payable to Publisher under the Agreement:
For revenues derived from Preview, Publisher shall receive 20% percent of the quarterly gross advertisement revenue generated by interactive display advertising on pages that contain page images from Publisher’s Content.
* This was what set off alarm bells in my head initially. So, they’ll be using your content to generate pageviews that you have no way of accessing, nor do you know how much advertisers are paying, so you have to just trust whatever they say you made off of pageviews without any system of checks and balances mentioned. In light of Platinum Studios telling me that Hero By Night only generated 800 bucks in ad revenue for a webcomic that has been online since October 2006 and consistantly had the HIGHEST pageviews on all of Drunk Duck… I don’t have faith that they can either A. figure out real well paying advertisers, or B. tell the truth about how much they actually made off of web advertising revenue. You might find yourself in the same position of asking… wait, we had all these pageviews and we only made 50 bucks this quarter? — and they’ll say something like, Well, that was the going CPM… better luck next time. I also don’t think it’s an accident that they’re only willing to cut YOU in on 20% of their web revenue… but hey, why wouldn’t they cut you in on 50% of that? I mean, they want 50% of YOUR ebook. That just doesn’t seem well thought out at all, and it smells bad to me.
For revenues derived from Ecommerce Option, Publisher shall receive 50% percent of the quarterly gross revenue generated by sales of Ebooks of the Publisher’s Content.
For revenues derived from Sponsorship Option, Publisher shall receive (i) 50 cents ($0.50 USD) per download for eTexts of less than 100 pages; and (ii) One dollar ($1.00 USD) per download for eTexts of 100 pages and above.
All Royalties shall be paid to Publisher on a quarterly basis, within 45 days following the end of each calendar quarter.
* Couple things here... again, the thought of splitting 50/50 profits on an ebook sale with anyone is ridiculous to me. And the part about when you’re SUPPOSED to be paid, turns my stomach a little in the light of the situation I was in with Platinum. I’m guessing everything will go smoothly during the “transition” period when the old Wowio people are still managing things.. but when the keys are handed over to Platinum, I’ve got a BADDDddddddd feeling about people being paid on time. That’s not an assumption, that’s a proven fact, regardless of the articles written about creators owed, printer representives telling me they were owed and COMIC BOOK NEWS sites telling me they were owed money… and the Drunk Duck kids over there, there was a bunch of “mobile wallpaper” people never paid. I have a really good friend who had his wallpapers up through their service before, and when he asked, he was told that “none sold” but he knew better because his own family had boughten them from the site!!!! — Anyways, THAT’S who will be running this shindig now. That’s who owns them. You have been warned.
To end things off… even if I wanted to stay on under Wowio with my other ebooks I had there… I got a follow up email asking to FAX the form in signed ASAP so they could get it back to me. I think someone in management is out of touch, because not that many comic creators have fax machines these days. It almost sounded to me like if there was a contest and you needed to send in videos, they’d ask for VHS. That’s neither here nor there. I mean… you’d think Wowio would say, get us a signed PDF file… right? Maybe they don’t know how to sign it and send it back? Who knows….
Anyways, that’s why I’m bailing. Had it not been for Platinum being involved and buying them out, maybe I’d be able to trust the system a little bit more. I’d have more faith in Wowio too if they hadn’t actually, well, basically if you look at it, they PAID Platinum to buy them out with shares. That doesn’t sound like a company that was doing very well for itself, and they must not have had many more offers if they settled with Platinum, a company in the midst of a bunch of public money trouble. That’s not inside information, that’s public information that anyone can look up at the SEC.gov site.
Good luck to everyone.
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Stay far away from anything Platinum owned. You’re smart to do so.
They are running SHADY business over there.
It’s like a cult.
“when” they have sponsors is a definite red flag. Do they only list them as available for download when there is a sponsor? How will the sponsorships be divvied up? Will Platinum assign sponsors to their books first?
Well, I won’t have to worry about them paying me late. I wouldn’t take that deal either.
yeah i don’t understand what Platinum is trying to do. Do they wake up in the morning and say “Gee, we’ve got more stuff going on than we can manage, what else can we slap together and half a$$ today?”
It seems to me that it comes down to it, webcomics appear to be a cottage type of industry. You know: you make it, you market it, you sell it. The moment you get “others” into it, I suspect “others” will just take money and give nothing back. Some of the comics I read, the artist has a family of readers that support the artist for better or worse.
I’m glad to hear you’ve moved on DJ, and I look forward to every new project you publish yourself. You’re bigger than Platinum will ever be, and woe to anyone that signs on with those leeches. You fans will support and defend you, so don’t worry about your back.
Best of luck!
Point for point I think you’re DEAD ON here in your assessment Drew. I’m sure there will be a number of publishers and creators that will NOT be signing the amendment for exactly the reasons you state. Asking folks to hurry and fax in their signed contracts sounds like presure to NOT sit, read, and consider what you’re signing. That alone should be a red flag, but I had the same thought as you when I read it, “Who the hell uses faxes anymore, and why?”- well they need physical proof that you’ve agreed to their terms “as quickly as possible”- sounds like a late night infomercial that wants you to spend money without thinking.
Thanks, take care, and keep up the great work!
i know there’s no NDA on the wowio amendment…but are you sure that it’s okay to post most of it up like that? and not for nothing, but it’s about 3 pages long…probably only half of it is pertinent info…so what decision are they trying to rush you into by faxing it? it’s not some 20 page document that should really be combed over. i mean, i feel bad for what platinum did to you - but isn’t this starting to go too far? i mean, i don’t see Shuster & Siegel’s family posting up a blog about their IP rights case over Superman…
No, you see Shuster and Siegels family in court winning back rights and stuff, of course. I imagine had they HAD blogs at the time to voice their outrages, they might have before going into official legal, proceedings… and had the blogosphere and internet existed back then, maybe companies wouldn’t have gotten away with things like that so easily.
I don’t think this is going too far at all. I have a lot of creators who I’ve turned onto Wowio and I raved about it, I even turned Platinum onto Wowio as well, so instead of answering a 100 emails independently, creators can come to my blog if they want to know what I think. Good day!
Thanks very much for posting this. It’s not a good contract in general but the flaws are clearer because of your experiences with Platinum.
Aye! I’m not signing and I made sure they know exactly why. It’s direct competition with the sites I have where I get 100% of the revenue! Why the heck do I want their pennies for the privilege of being on their network?
The funny thing is… the thing that initially annoyed me (even though I was waiting for other people to chime in before sending in the contract) was the stipulation of using a fax machine. I fussed about it for twenty minutes to my husband. Who the heck uses a fax machine anymore? WHY would anyone use them? Why do they want me to go out of my way to go to a fax machine, send them a fax, then WAIT for it to return… huge waste of my time.
I kept thinking,… “You’ve got to get Wandering Ones on Wowio somehow…”.
For once, my procrastination served me well.
I’m not even involved in any of this stuff–I was pointed to this on a forum. But… holy crap. That’s so trashy, I can’t even think about it.
Why isn’t there anyone regulating all of this? Why can this even happen? Maybe I just haven’t been out in the real world too much, but this just hurts to even think about it. I already have so little trust in the world, and this just smashes it up even more.
It makes me think of DeviantArt. If you sell prints through them, they can use your art for whatever they want. You barely get any money out of it, also, and, on top of paying a subscription to use the service, you also have to give them a huge chunk of your print earnings. I think you’d make more money by yourself, without their advertising for you.
Also kind of reminds me of a Tokyo pop contest, where they didn’t even tell you how much money you’d be making for your comic, if you won, and even said your name might not even be put on the book they print out of it, if they can’t fit it. So not only could you be paid VERY little, but they’d be making money off of your book, and no one would even ever know you made it.
…. o.o;
I’ll be quiet now.
[...] D.J. Coffman runs through the new Wowio contract, and explains why he won’t be signing on. Granted, [...]
[...] and threatening him legally when he told people what was going on). Now, even he refuses the new Platinum-rewritten Wowio contact. As he points out, there are way too many unanswered questions and clauses that basically say [...]
Big companies are making the mistake of thinking that they can swoop right in and grab a piece of that delicious free webcomics money pie, which completely misses the entire point of the community at large. Why would you sell an e-book when you can make a site of your own and offer the content for free, encouraging sales of a printed collection and/or related merchendise?
For revenues derived from Preview, Publisher shall receive 20% percent of the quarterly gross advertisement revenue generated by interactive display advertising on pages that contain page images from Publisher’s Content.
Doesn’t this mean the Publisher, aka Platinum, get 20%? You interpretation says you, the comics creator gets 20%. I guess I am unsure about the definitions of the parties.
Also, on that very first one, if you don’t grant rights to display the content in a web browser for free, they can’t show your work to anyone. They have to have a clause like this where you grant permission to them to show the content on the web, like “updating today: COMIC N BY SO AND SO,” and they show some of the content.
Anyway, check out the “ideal contract” from the Science Fiction Writers of America. I like their piece about “right of information,” meaning that you have a right to know about sales quantity and revenue (gross and net) related to your material, etc. I think that is really key in any contract. For example, cash advance against royalties is predicated on the idea that they will print enough copies to get into the earnings range where they’d have to start paying you, but they don’t always. If it takes them 4000 copies to break even (meaning recoup the advance tehy paid plus their own costs and profit margin), sometime publishers will print the 4000 and stop there. So, no royalties for you. Of course, I’m talking about print, now, and not web, so the milage may vary….
Sorry for all the typos.
[...] DJ Coffman doesn’t like the new Wowio contracts (thanks to The Irresponsible Captain Tylor’s More Responsible Brother for the heads-up). Open call to anybody who’s been asked to sign off on the new provisions, which seem to me to be full of weasel words (but having not seen the original Wowio contracts, I couldn’t say if this is a new development or not). [...]
Coldplay, you’re mistaken. In the contract “publisher = YOU”
And here I almost felt like I should have signed up with Wowio in light of all the money they were making folks… this changes plenty.
One option that is always open to you: modify the contract, cross out the terms you don’t like and add the other terms you think are necessary. Then send it back. We routinely do this with ’standard’ contracts these days, having been ripped off in the past. A contract is meant to indicate mutual agreement: if you don’t agree with that one then just change it till you do. They can only say no.
I called and spoke with them (I wanted my voice heard and taken seriously by doing the call.) and the preview is mandatory. They don’t seem to understand why we don’t like it.
I also got clarification on the sponsorships. Now, you might be offered to choose a book to be downloaded for free sponsored by a company. The sponsor won’t choose the books, you choose the book and the ad is added. If there is not a sponsor available for your download, you can set a price on it and get half the price.
I’m not that offended about the 50/50 cut if I raise the price and someone buy sit for the same amount as a print book. That was that person’s choice and I’m not out anything more than I’d pay a printer.
I am offended by the 80/20 split.
Strategies:
Put a really high price on it to discourage purchases and encourage people to download when sponsorship is available.
Plaster your website URL on every single page and discourage people from reading it through Wowio. (That actually shouldn’t be that big of an issue, since it wouldn’t be the most current work anyway.)
I’m considering sticking my foot in the door as a ‘just in case move’ (in hopes that they would revise some of the contract if enough people complain), but having them remove all of my current books.
I am still not trusting them to be around and pay in six months.
[...] you know it? Former Platinum advocate and all-round chatty fella, DJ Coffman, has decided to pick apart the new agreement for Wowio distributors for everyone to [...]
“”When” Sponsors are available? What happens when sponsors aren’t available? That seems really vague. Who’s going to be in charge of getting sponsors now? Platinum?!? UGH.”
To be fair, Wowio wasn’t exactly pulling the sponsors in, either. Half of the 60 or so Wowio 1.0 books I have are sponsorless, and there were only four sponsors for the rest (Verizon’s a nice sponsor, but Lifelock? Vonage? And some website that I can’t recall…).
Of course, I doubt PlatinumWowio will initially do any better. And shutting the business down for a month can’t help whatever momentum the business had.
[...] than DJ Coffman, I know of several publishers, including myself, that are displeased with the new deal and are [...]
I’d suggest moving your work over to http://www.myebook.com it’s much simpler and looks like it will eventually pay quite well too.
Chebbo
I was just about to look into the Wowio option when it went down, and then I ran into all of this. I already have an account at Lulu where I sell the print copies and downloads. The downloads sell for 99 cents and I get about fifty cents myself.
I figure if it won’t be free to download, I might as well guarantee my fifty cents myself. People might be willing to pay, seeing as there are no ads. I could charge more and I’d get every cent of that increase - but at this point I just want to get people reading.
Would you recommend people not bother downloading books and comics through Wowio then? Because if they’re going to screw the people who supply material for download, why should we support them at all?