Please see below. Note Oct 30 deadline.
Dear Marika,
FYI. Please do pre-order a copy of the upcoming Inkshares edition of Ama. If you do so before the October 30 deadline, it shouldn’t cost you a penny (taking Inkhares credits into account.) Please spread the word.
Regards
Manu
Leading U.S. publisher dumps prize-winning African novel of the Atlantic Slave Trade without explanation: a call for solidarity.
On August 26, 2015, Open Road Integrated Media, the publisher of my novel Ama, a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, wrote to me as follows: “We have decided to revert the rights to you.”
They followed this with a request for me to sign a document which read in part as follows: “The parties hereby confirm that the Agreement will terminate in all respects effective as of September 30, 2015 (the “Termination Effective Date”).
Termination. I had a vision of a condemned man being led to the gallows. A harassed bureaucrat pursues him with a sheet of paper. “Please, sir, you must sign this,” he begs. It is a form of consent to the victim’s own execution.
I didn’t sign. Open Road put the termination into effect without my consent.
In what follows I tell the back story, describe my response and ask you, as a gesture of solidarity and support, to perform a simple task, probably cost-free, which will help to bring Ama back into print in the U.S.A.
Publishing history
Ama was first published in the U.S. by E-Reads in 2001. In 2002 it won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Best First Book. In April 2014 Open Road took over E-Reads’ list, including Ama. My formal written contract with E-Reads had long since expired but our relationship had continued as if it were still in effect. Open Road agreed to continue on the same basis, honoring the E-Reads year 2000 contract. At their website, they described the Ama as colorful, entrancing, gripping, deeply engrossing, spellbinding and unforgettable.
Open Road Integrated Media boasts on its website that it publishes “more than 2000 authors, 10,000 books.” In the second quarter of 2015 it sold 156 copies of Ama.
Use in Academia
Over the years, Ama has been taught at several U. S. universities including Harvard (Prof. Emmanuel Akyeampong), East Carolina University (Prof. Kenneth Wilburn), Carleton College (Prof. Martin Klein, University of Toronto) and Boston University (Prof. Heidi Gengenbach, University of Massachusetts). Students visiting Ghana from Grand Valley State University under the leadership of Prof. Sherry Johnson have twice used Ama as the focus of their studies as have others from East Carolina University. This fall Prof. Rebecca Shumway is teaching Ama at the College of Charleston in a HIST 361-02 course entitled West Africa in the Era of the Slave Trade. Her syllabus is available on-line.
Enter Worldreader
“Worldreader is on a mission to bring digital books to every child and her family, so that they can improve their lives.” In 2013 I entered a story in ShortStoryDayAfrica’s annual competition. One of the conditions of entry was that the published stories would be donated to Worldreader. Earlier this year I read that Worldreader has launched its cellphone app. I downloaded the app to my phone and searched on my surname. My story, The Dibbuk, was there. So too, to my astonishment, was Ama, free to read in its entirety. A web search revealed the following.
Danielle Zacarias of Worldreader, August 18, 2014: “…today, am very excited to announce our partnership with Open Road. Over 260 new books have been added to our programs, to be read by children and their families in 22 developing countries. Some of our favorites include…Ama – the spell binding story of Nandzi, captured and traded as a slave in the days of the transatlantic slave trade.”
Worldreader, Aug 31, 2015: “Thanks to a new partnership with Opera Software we've connected 5 million readers in Africa to a library of 25,000 free digital book titles via their mobile phones. And we're just getting started! Our goal is to reach 10 million readers by the end of 2015. Join this reading revolution today.”
I consulted my publisher in Ghana. She was not happy, particularly since she was currently investing funds in a new print run.
I pulled out my E-Reads contract and read:
No license of any subsidiary rights that may exist or come into existence with respect to any right granted hereunder shall be made by E-Reads without the prior approval of Content Provider.
Open Road had not sought my approval.
I briefed the legal department at the NYC-based Authors Guild. This was their advice:
Yes, then Open Road breached the agreement. You should contact them and demand they have your material removed.
I didn’t do that. All I did was to send them a polite message, asking them to brief me on the relevant contractual situation.
Would you please let me have a copy of Open Road’s agreement with World Reader? Have you licensed rights to any other parties?
They didn’t reply. Instead they informed me that they would cease to publish Ama as from the end of September.
Worldreader later wrote to me as follows:
Your book is published by Open Road Media, with which we have an agreement. They had agreed to let us distribute your book (among others, to which they have global digital rights) to our e-reading projects in Sub Saharan Africa and on our mobile application (which, though available Worldwide, has geo limitations which makes certain books - like yours - only available within Sub Saharan Africa.) … This was done as part of a donation of digital books from Open Road to people who would otherwise not have access to these books.
If there has been an error here of some kind or if you would like to have your book withdrawn from our program we will certainly remove it from our library immediately. We can also further limit the geo availability of the book to exclude certain countries within Sub Saharan Africa as well if this would be useful.
Worldreader acted honorably. They implicitly acknowledged my suggestion that they should have exercised more care in vetting Open Road’s rights by removing the book from their app without delay.
I share Worldreader’s commitment to the use of cell phones for the development of children’s literacy. However, Ama is not a children’s book. Open Road had no right to donate it to Worldreader without requesting my permission.
An article in the Spring/Summer 2015 Authors Guild Bulletin, considers a similar program, sponsored by President Barack Obama, which is being launched for children of low-income families in the U.S. I quote (highlighting added):
The Authors Guild supports literacy programs—especially programs like this, aimed at encouraging kids to become lifelong readers…
Many publishing agreements do not allow for royalty-free donations for charitable purposes, although some do. In any event, all of the publishers we have spoken with are either asking authors’ permission or allowing authors to opt out.
Authors who wish their books to be kept out of the program are encouraged to contact their publishers. Based on preliminary conversations with publishers, we have every reason to believe they will be cooperative in carrying out their authors’ wishes.
It seems that Open Road is an exception, in my case at least. They responded to my temerity in questioning their breach of my rights by inflicting on me, the novel and potential future readers, the cruel and unwarranted punishment of rendering the book “out of print.”
Some time ago, when I complained to E-Reads about Open Road’s failure to make a P.O.D edition of the novel available and to report and pay royalties on time, they told me that Open Road’s publisher is a “leading advocate of African authors [who has] published or rescued many a book in the field.”
Searching the Open Road website on “Africa” I found 61 authors, including Edgar Wallace, Edgar Rice Burroughs and H Rider Haggard; also, it is true, E R Braithwaite, Alice Walker and Ishmael Reed; and white South African author Troy Blacklaws. But not one black African writer.
I pondered the reason for Open Road’s crass action and decided to offer them one last opportunity for sober reflection. I mobilized scholars, writers and friends to send them short email messages, urging them to review their action. I quote just one of these messages, with the permission of the writer, Martin Klein, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Toronto.
I am sorry to hear that your publishing house plans to suspend publication of Manu Herbstein's Ama. This is not only a fine and very readable novel, but it is also the best single introduction to how the slave trade operated within in Africa. It takes a young girl through different stages, starting with her enslavement in northern Ghana and ending in Brazil, and for each, depicts the way the society in question was part of the slave trade and how Ama was treated. I used it with great success in a number of courses dealing with slavery in Africa and have recommended it to other scholars just as the fine Ghanaian historian, Emmanuel Akyeampong first recommended it to me. It gives student[s] a vivid picture of the different actors in the trade, both slave and free. I urge you to maintain this fine novel in print.
To me, he added:
I am baffled that Ama has not had greater success. It is unfortunately not in the hands of a publisher will[ing] and able to promote it.
On September 21, Open Road responded:
Open Road has made the decision not to continue publication of AMA and that decision is now final. As such, we respectfully request that you cease and desist from continuing your email campaign to keep the book in print through Open Road. As you know, there are other avenues for you to publish your book, including self-publishing avenues. We suggest you focus your efforts on these options.
End of chapter. Enter Inkshares.
Inkshares is an innovative book publisher that has readers, not agents or editors, decide what they publish. They publish any work that successfully hits a pre-order threshold on their platform. Any author can submit a proposal for a book. Once the project goes live, readers are invited to support the project by pre-ordering copies of the book. Readers are charged only when pre-orders for their chosen book reach the specified target. Once that pre-order target is attained, Inkshares starts publishing. If the pre-order goal isn't met, no transaction takes place.
Inkshares issues Credits, which can be used like money on the Inkshares platform to back or purchase any book. When you sign on at Inkshares you receive a credit of $5. For your first review of a project (say, Ama) you receive another $5 credit. For the first new reader you introduce for a project, you receive a $10 credit, provided that your introduction leads to a purchase. If any project you back receives 2000 orders you get yet another $10 credit, with a repeat at 5000 orders.
On October 23, Inkshares announced that new rules will come into effect at noon PST on October30. Until that deadline, it will you cost you just $10 to place a pre-order for Ama. The pre-order target is 1000 copies. You will be charged only if and when that target is reached. Shipping is free, worldwide.
For orders placed after the October 30 deadline, the pre-order target will be reduced to 750 copies. The pre-order price will rise to $20 per paperback and $30 per trade hardcover. An e-book will be included at no extra cost. There will still be no charge for domestic shipping but for all other destinations there will be a charge of $15 per order.
So, please rush to place your order before the deadline. This is a real bargain, just $10 per book, even less when you take Inkshares Credits into account. If you live outside North America, even more so. This is the link:
https://www.inkshares.com/projects/ama-a-story-of-the-atlantic-slave-trade-9786
Once there, please click on PRE-ORDER under READER or, for three copies, under SUPER-READER.
While there, please watch the Vimeo movie, read the first chapter of Ama and extracts from reviews and browse the other Inkshare books.
Many thanks
Manu Herbstein
Accra, Ghana