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The US Authors Guild has hit back again against John Wiley after the publisher claimed that its statement warning Bloomberg authors against signing a new author contract was inaccurate.
The authors' group issued a new statement saying that it stood "by every word" of its earlier alert. "No sensible Bloomberg author with a contract providing royalties based on the retail list price of their book would have signed Wiley's amendment if they were fully aware of its effects."
The statement added: "Wiley should send Bloomberg authors a new letter, informing the authors that they are disregarding any previous consents to Wiley's proposed contract changes and clearly explaining how the new terms they're suggesting differ from the authors' existing contracts."
"Or, as Scott Turow put it on reviewing their response, 'Wiley should knock it off and do the right thing.'"
Wiley - which took over the Bloomberg programme earlier this year - is seeking to move the royalty rate from being based on the list price to being based on net receipts. The result of the change, the Guild said, would reduce author royalties by as much as 50%. Wiley hit back saying: "This is simply not the case. We believe former Bloomberg authors will be paid higher royalties in most instances."
In a second statement Wiley said that only a small subset of authors not already signed on 'net receipt' royalty terms would be affected by the way royalties would be now calculated, adding that it still believed the authors would "benefit with the proposed, simplified Wiley terms".
It added: "Given the inaccurate information that has been recently disseminated, we will contact the affected authors again to be sure they are not in any way confused."