DRM is an acronym that readers may not associate with good experiences – you’ll encounter it a lot in articles about the woman who had her digital library remotely wiped from her Kindle by Amazon  or ones about the poetic deletion of George Orwell’s 1984 from hundreds of e-reader devices. DRM is a topic that gets people in flames – and as a future author, you may find yourself engulfed in the controversy. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management.  DRM is a general term to describe any technology that is meant to limit piracy and lessen copyright infractions. For music, that might mean CDs that can’t play on computers. For business, that might be software that prevents you from forwarding emails. For books, that might mean digital editions that can only be used by one device. DRM is one of those hot-button issues that has only become an issue in the past 10 or so years – and perhaps only the last two years in association with books. Publishing doesn’t have a long history with piracy – there wasn’t a crackdown on photocopying books during the Kazaa and Napster years that wracked the music industry. Copyright issues on the user-end just didn’t exist until Kindles, tablet computers, and cellphones became portable libraries. But with the rise of the e-reader, suddenly it is feasible to share (or steal, depending on who you ask) books online in the same way as movies or music.   DRM in publishing can cover a variety…

College students these days are incredibly well versed in the post-grad talk. I can’t count on my hands how many times I’ve received the “good luck with that” look after I tell people I’m an English literature major with a studio art minor. And, I must admit, for good reason. It’s hardly a secret that it’s a tough time to find employment. There are expectations of students entering the job market that simply weren’t there in the past. Along with a degree, internship experience has essentially become a necessary precursor to full-time employment. In an ideal situation, an internship not only improves one’s position entering the workforce, but also teaches valuable skills in the field and gives a student the opportunity to work with knowledgeable and supportive superiors. But as has been proven by their recent presence in the media, internships don’t always provide what they should. Former interns are suing companies for, essentially, working them as full-time employees without a paycheck; these include lawsuits against Fox Searchlight and Gawker. Other students are qualified but can’t afford to take on full-time unpaid internships to begin with, especially if they can’t rely on the “Bank of Mom” necessary to cover the additional expenses of living in a city. In my two internship experiences, both with Fresh Dirt Ithaca magazine last summer and Swenson Book Development this summer, I have found supportive environments where I have felt intellectually stimulated and valued as a member of a team, not just a gopher. I…

The business of publishing continues to evolve and new finance models have emerged in recent years. There is a lot of new middle ground between self-publishing – Amazon, Smashwords, Lulu – and the traditional route of finding an agent who sells your work to one of the big commercial trade presses – Penguin Random House, Hatchette Book Group, Harper Collins, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster. Small and independent presses can’t offer authors large advances or extravagant marketing campaigns, but they do offer many advantages over self-publishing including distribution. Most self-published authors recognize the difficulty of getting their books into retail stores and libraries because they lack access to the distribution systems used by publishers. Finding a good fit with a small publisher who champions your manuscript can be an ideal scenario for authors. Academic presses shouldn’t be overlooked. It might surprise you to discover which university presses today publish commercial nonfiction, memoir, even fiction. Some presses, if they endorse your manuscript editorially, may negotiate with an author for a subsidy to proceed with publication. When an author invests in the initial production costs, it is possible to negotiate a higher copyright royalty rate in lieu of an advance. Subsidy publication is an avenue to explore if the author has the financial resources or can find a benefactor to provide a subsidy for the production expenses of publication. Subsidy publication is a “dirty little secret” in the publishing business. Many traditional publishers don’t want it well known that such business arrangements can…