News

America Star Book… follow up

America Star Book

Dopo non aver avuto più notizie per anni, nonostante avessi chiesto informazioni con alcune mail, una persona di America Star Book mi ha mandato una mail, eccone un estratto:

“I am informing you that your contract has expired. We are discontinuing the publication of your book TOM as of this day. All rights under the copyright are herewith returned to you.

You own the unformatted text only, and you can do as you choose with that alone. Any materials that you had supplied for the book (photographs, illustrations, cover images) you are welcome to use again in future publications. Anything created by the publisher would remain with America Star Books. America Star Books continues to own the ISBN number, the cover design, and the layout design of the text. Any use of any of these items would be a serious and very clear case of infringement. Therefore, you can use the same design only if we transfer the rights to you, or to your new publishing company.

If you would like to use the cover or layout design, we would transfer the rights to your cover design and/or text layout, and provide you with a high resolution pdf file of the cover, and a clean, publishable version of the PDF text file. The cover design would cost $500, and/or the text layout would cost $250.

If you would like to renew your contract please contact support at [email protected].”

Ho quindi chiesto come mai dopo anni mi avessero mandato questa mail e, per metterli alla prova, ho chiesto l’ISBN e un’immagine della copertina a bassa risoluzione.

Le risposte alle mie domande sono state:

Which is ISBN number? 
The work was not put into print- so you have no ISBN number
How many copies of my book you sold?
The book was not finalized and put into print- so no copies were sold
 If you have sold some copies when do you transfer moneys to me for my copyright?

We have sold no copies of the work- at this time you are welcome to take your original work and publish elsewhere

Can you show to me a low resolution cover picture?

The book was never finished- so we have no cover picture
 I’m a little confused, I didn’t received from you info for years and now you would receive moneys for a cover I never saw (just if I’d like to use it of course)?

As we never finished the work for complete publication we would not have any cover image for you to purchase.

Where can I see your publication on your site?
The contract for this has been ended- so it will not be on our site
Peccato. Temo però che questo servizio non sia serissimo e che sarebbe stato bello poter monitorare prima e con precisione l’andamento dei lavori sul mio racconto. Ma soprattutto: perché farmi firmare un contratto per tradurre il racconto se poi non lo hanno mai fatto? Possibile che non se lo siano nemmeno letto prima? Probabilmente è proprio così. Di certo non li prenderò mai più in considerazione.