In 1999 the Times Literary Supplement carried an acrimonious correspondence about the closure in the mid-1990s of OUP's encyclopaedia department in favour of an Aylesbury 'outsource' company. The collapse in the standards of so-called 'Oxford' encyclopaedias has since become a staple publishing topic, with a recent example being the shocking entry for 'intifada' found in The Oxford Paperback Encyclopedia.
Oxford's encyclopaedic problems, however, do not end in Aylesbury, or even in Palestine, but extend to America and to the dubious, unpublicised deal the publisher has done with Microsoft for the latter's CD-ROM encyclopaedia Encarta 2000. An OUP author recently received this letter from the Press's coypright administrator:
"Dear ----,I am pleased to inform you that we have recently concluded an agreement with Microsoft. They wish to use extracts from a large number of OUP titles including your ---- in the new version of their bestselling CD-ROM encyclopedia Encarta 2000. The extracts will be no more than 3,500 words long... This letter is to ask for your permission for us to handle on your behalf electronic permissions such as this.
The contract allows Microsoft to make editorial changes for style purposes only subject to OUP's right upon request to approve all changes and additions prior to their inclusion in the encyclopedia. If you wish we can request this on your behalf.
The fee for each extract used is $100. I propose that any income arising from this is divided equally between you and OUP.
There is no need for you to reply unless you require further information. I shall proceed to grant rights to Microsoft unless I hear from you to the contrary within three weeks from the date of this letter.
Yours sincerely..."
Evidently this joint venture has been so hurriedly cobbled that OUP has had to get its necessary authors' permissions retrospectively, resulting in the splendid last paragraph, surely the University's boldest and most revolutionary contribution so far to author-publisher law, and one which conjures the prospect of authors who were, say, away that month, or who are unimpressed by the £9 per-thousand-words royalty, or who are simply Gatesophobic, finding unsanctioned, mangled versions of their copy turning up on up on their kids' computers. Surely no-one but the lawyers would want poor Bill to have been sold yet another troublesome Oxford pup?
The Spring 2001 issue of The Author carried the following warning to Oxford authors about the further dodgy deals OUP was trying to do with e-book outfits Questia and NetLibrary. The OUP/NetLibrary warning formed part of a survey by the Society of Authors across the trade of (the variations in) such e-royalties, a survey reproduced in full by AKME as a postscript to the Akme/Times Literary Supplement article on print-on-demand publishing An Ultra Short Run.
Oxford University Press
OUP has also been in touch with its authors, seeking their permission to publish/licence specific electronic editions of their works, notably with Questia Media and NetLibrary.
Questia is "planning to offer an Internet-based service aimed initially at the American college market. Students will pay a subscription to the service, which allows them to search the entire [Questia] collection by word, phrase or concept". The collection is described as being more than 50,000 scholarly books and journals. OUP says "users cannot download whole texts in one, but can view and print one page at a time. Questia pays 15 percent of user subscription income into a royalty pool which will then be divided according to usage. OUP proposes to pay authors 50 percent of the resulting revenue from Questia. The non-exclusive licence period is two years.
Is 15 per cent of Questia's subscription income a fair proportion to go into the royalty pool? No doubt Questia will be incurring costs by re-keying and adding search mechanisms, but whether this contribution justifies retaining 85 per cent is a point for debate. OUP presumably thinks so.
As to the 50:50 split between OUP and the author, in the world of academic publishing dividing sub-licensed rights 50:50 is far from unusual. However, traditional rights licensing only happens when the original work is being kept actively in print, and involves the publisher in finding and negotiating exclusive one-off deals with a licensee for an individual title each time. Here, OUP is offering a bulk stable of titles, on uniform non-exclusive terms. In addition, Questia's range has already expanded well beyond just the US college market (it is available to all), and the OUP titles for which agreement is currently being sought include mainstream biographies.
Whether OUP's minimal contribution to this deal justifies retaining 50 percent of the (paltry) income from Questia we leave you to decide. While individual authors will not be able to alter the terms the OUP has agreed with Questia, some writers might prefer not to agree to this deal (or ones like it) at all.
OUP is also contacting its writers about an arrangement with NetLibrary (see below) from which OUP proposes to pay authors 10 percent of OUP's net receipts from NetLibrary. The letters about Questia and NetLibrary say that OUP is receiving a number of similar requests for each book licensing so "in order to avoid inconveniencing you each time", the author is invited to a "allow us to act on your behalf on the same terms as for this deal." We welcome the fact that OUP is actively consulting its authors about such proposals, but advise that if in doubt, writers do not at this stage give blanket agreement for the future.
NetLibrary
A large number of academic publishers, including OUP, CUP, Blackwell and Wily, have arrangements with NetLibrary - a US-based venture which digitises texts and sells the resulting ebooks for single-user use in libraries and universities. OUP and Blackwell are offering authors "a conventional royalty" based on the publisher's receipts from NetLibrary.
David Wynn, Rights Director of OUP's Academic Division, explained "we sell an electronic version of a book to a library, through a library supplier such as NetLibrary, very much as we sell a print version. It has thus been OUP policy to pay authors the same royalty on both print and electronic sales. We view Questia, in which is an online database, as secondary publishing and thus we have proposed to authors that the royalty income should be divided 50:50 as is common with subsidiary income in academic books." The Society's view is that in practice the arrangements with Questia and NetLibrary do not differ greatly as far as the reader is concerned. Furthermore, in both cases the costs are being carried by the licensee rather than OUP, so we consider the arrangement with NetLibrary to be licensing and would therefore expect the author to receive a minimum of 50 percent of the income. And one final thought: if single pages can be downloaded or printed off, perhaps the closest print-based analogy would be photocopying - and authors and publishers agreed years ago that money from the photocopying of books would be divided 50:50.