Hi everyone,
This is Hana (the account owner). We have a standard business model and a standard contract common to the e-publishing industry.
1. Offering revenue share is standard in the e-publishing industry. We invite you to review the contracts of our competition. We shoulder the costs of running our business (for example, translations, illustrations etc), not the authors. Our authors are not asked to contribute anything to the cost.
2. We have the legal right to publish an authors work without taking the rights to the IP because the contract states that we have no ownership to the Work under this Agreement, and that we are allowed to provide only the service of e-publishing. Again, this is standard in both the e-publishing and self-publishing industry.
3. Regarding victoriastrauss' concern that Flying Books could invoke the termination clause to "get rid" of an author: Clause 6.3 states "In the case where the Licensor terminates the contract before the Book has generated USD2000 (two thousand USD) in revenue for Flying Books Inc., as agreed in Section 3.2, Licensor shall reimburse Flying Books Inc. the remaining amounts owed to it for its initial expenses.
Therefore, if Flying Books terminates the contract, the Licensor owes nothing.
4. To clarify the term 'fully paid': clause 2.1 The Licensor hereby grants to Flying Books Inc. a non-exclusive, fully paid, sublicensable, and transferable license:
-to adapt, translate, modify and convert the Book into such format or formats as it deems necessary or desirable to create the E-Book. Any changes made to the manuscript or illustrations will be sent to the Licensor for approval.
-to sell, offer, use, copy, distribute, produce, issue copies to the public, publicly perform, transmit, communicate and make available to the public or otherwise use the Book, whether directly or indirectly; only in digital form.
-to use the Licensor’s name and trademark and any relevant artist name in connection with the E-Book and the promotion thereof;
-to use the Book or any reasonable extracts from and/or adaptations thereof in or for the purposes of any advertising, marketing or publicity for the E-Book, only if needed.
5. Regarding arbitration, we also offer our authors who are based in the US to use the American Arbitration Association for final disposition in accordance with its rules.
6. The contract defines 'net revenue' here: For the purpose of this Agreement, Revenues shall mean all payments received from the purchase of the E-Book from end consumers less all amounts owed to any application store (Android or Apple).
Wishing everyone the best of luck with their writing endeavors,
Hana