Ellora’s Cave: About Those Cavemen Anthology Boxed Sets

[deirdre]

A couple of weeks ago, I got a heads up that Ellora’s Cave would be announcing new boxed sets of their Cavemen anthologies. There’s been something gnawing at me about that, but it didn’t occur to me until today what that was. I’ll first go through a few things that I don’t think are going to happen.

Sure enough, they went up for pre-order a few days ago.

Cash Grab by Ellora’s Cave

One question/comment I’ve heard is: this is a cash grab.

Well, technically all books published are something of a cash grab, if they’re not free books. I don’t consider that particularly remarkable.

For a set of twelve volumes that were previously $3.99 each in digital, that’s a rather massive discount. It suggests that the old pricing was far out of line with current market conditions. It’s also kind of insulting to the authors to discount that deeply. And there are other problems, which I’ll go into in a bit.

Granted, with quite a few authors continuing to report late royalty payments (example), one wonders if the anthology authors will be paid promptly and accurately.

Attempt to Hit a Bestseller List

If you look, there are virtually zero anthologies that have hit the NY Times Bestseller lists recently[1] and none that I can recall were romance boxed sets. So that doesn’t strike me as probable. Besides, some of these stories have been published for more than a decade.

When I looked at all the Ellora’s Cave authors who’d left who were New York Times or USA Today bestselling authors, quite a few of them did make the USA Today list in a bundle of some sort. Still, those were far newer works than most of the Ellora’s Cave Cavemen books.

The Big Gotcha

It’s been gnawing at me for a couple of days that there was a bigger issue. I re-read the contracts I’ve seen, wondering if it covered repackaging like that, or if a story was bound to a specific volume. That seemed okay. I didn’t re-read the rest of the contract again until today.

That’s when I realized the problem.

Here’s one of the contracts from 2006 from Ann Jacobs (p. 13 in this ECvDA exhibit):

Note that it covers royalty rates for books with 1-6 works, but not books with 7-72 works. Other contracts included in that document have a similar structure.

Near as I can tell, Ellora’s Cave would need to pay 6.25% of cover price for each of the 72 authors in each work, or a total of 450% of the cover price for authors with similar (pre-mid-2011) contracts.

One wonders if EC’s new contract with Amazon translates to 35% or 70% for 99-cent books. Either way, they seem pretty screwed by their own terms.

The good news for them is that those Cavemen boxed sets are only pre-orders at this point, so they’re free to unlist them.

Update: Screenshot from a 2008 Cavemen Contract

Again, this is built around a 6-works anthology, not around a 72-works anthology. There is no defined royalty rate for a 72-works book.

As Ann Jacobs mentions below, there is also no reversion clause. Zip.

List of Authors in the Cavemen Series

Alexa & Patrick Silver Alicia Sparks Allyson James Angela Knight Angelia Sparrow & Naomi Brooks Anna J. Evans Annie Windsor Anya Bast Ari Thatcher Arianna Hart Ashleigh Raine Aubrey Ross B.J. McCall Brigit Zahara Callista Arman Cara Carnes Cathryn Fox Charlene Teglia Charlotte Boyett-Compo Cheryl Dragon Cheyenne McCray Cindy Spencer Pape Cricket Starr Cynthia Rayne Dawn Halliday Debra Glass Delilah Devlin Denise A. Agnew Denise Rossetti Desiree Holt Diana Hunter Doreen DeSalvo Elayne S. Venton

Elisa Adams Elizabeth Lapthorne Fiona Jayde J.C. Wilder Jaci Burton Jaid Black Jan Springer Janne Lewis Jenna Reynolds Jory Strong Kate Douglas Kate Hill Kate Willoughby Katherine Cross Katie Blu Kimberly Dean Kris Starr Kristin Daniels KyAnn Waters L.A. Day Lacey Alexander Lacey Thorn Lani Aames Lena Matthews Liddy Midnight Lillian Feisty Lora Leigh Lyla Sinclair Lynn LaFleur M.A. Ellis Madison Hayes Mandy M. Roth Margaret L. Carter

Marianne LaCroix Marly Chance Mary Wine Mary Winter Megan Kerans Melani Blazer Melany Logen Mlyn Hurn Myla Jackson N.J. Walters Natasha Moore Nicole Austin Nikki Soarde Paige Cuccaro Patrice Michelle R. Casteel Ravyn Wilde Rebecca Airies Regina Carlysle Renee Luke Rowan West Sahara Kelly Samantha Kane Shelley Munro Sherri L. King Sherrill Quinn Sherry James Shiloh Walker Solange Ayre Sylvia Day Talya Bosco Tawny Taylor Tielle St. Clare

Oh, And…

If anyone cares to share a Caveman anthology-specific contract, at least the portion with the royalties and reversions, I’d love a screen shot.

Edit Notes

[1] I intended to qualify this with a timespan, and was having difficulty searching the NY Times lists the other day and wound up giving up, accidentally omitting the timespan. It definitely used to be easier to make the NY Times list with an anthology than it is now. Edited to add recently.

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