1. Miss Red

    Miss Red Member

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    Legal questions! supporting my website with collaborative ebooks

    Discussion in 'Electronic Publishing' started by Miss Red, Sep 4, 2015.

    Hello again. :D It's the friendly forum lurker again, with a new boat load of legal questions, as usual.

    So, I started a writing website not too long ago, and in this website I have a unique feature called "Artist Panel." For free, artists can send me an email, tell me how to set up their artist panel, and I set it up for them. They can add all the important links that they want, and they will be signed up as a user. They will have access to a blogging section and stuff.

    I support the website myself, and it was never meant to be a place where anyone (including myself) would earn money. No ads, no premium membership, just a donations section for the site. There are other stuff about the site but they are irrelevant at the moment.

    SO.

    That's about as far as I wanted to go, but then I had an idea.

    What if I could support my site financially with an exclusive ebook series? (Or three?)

    What if I could invite artists in the artist panel to contribute to some of the series?

    But would I be a real 'publishing' company if I did this?

    How would I credit the authors I invite, and do they need to be/or how would I compensate for them?

    Would I need a business licence? Would I be an 'employer' and do they need to sign anything special?

    Should I make a contract or something?

    How would I divide funds legally? How would I pay my authors?

    Is there anything else I need to know?
    (Lets say that what I've written so far is the only stuff I know.)

    So far, the way it will work is that I will either personally invite an author that's in my panel (there are none at the moment) and have them collaborate on one of the projects. Alternatively, I could also have a submission process, where authors in the panel can try to get into the contribution team. They have one chance per month in order to apply, and I reject them upon my criteria. (Writing erotic content being one of the automatic disqualifyers.)

    Here's an excerpt from my set up.

    - How Earnings are Distributed -
    EbookRetailer earns it's default cut, 23 %
    Fire Feather Press takes another 25 % of the sales to support itself
    The rest are distributed securely and fairly to the remaining contributors at the first of each month. (60 % ish)

    The retailer pays quarterly. The end matter of each ebook will have a featured author page, with links to their own personal works and such.

    Also note, I'm quite ready to be disappointed with my idea... ! :D I have plenty of back up plans that are less complicated, and I don't need this feature for my website. I just liked the idea, and I wanted to hear the opinions of the smarter people.
     

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