It appears that 10,000 (one in six) of the books in the database have been opted in by the publishers. The ReLIRE website FAQ outlines what a publisher will get out of the arrangement:

‘You will have the possibility of having an exclusive publishing licence for 10 years, implicitly renewable, to exploit the book in digital form, without having to sign a contract with the author or the author’s successors in title for the digital rights.

Sofia [the collecting society] will contact the authors or the successors in title to pay them, in accordance with the terms set out in the publishing contracts’...

Two points that the FAQ discreetly avoids spelling out are:

1. The legislation specifically charges the collecting society with developing contractual relationships that will ensure the greatest possible availability of the works...This puts prospective publishers in a very strong negotiating position and more or less guarantees that the contracts agreed will be bargain-basement deals with very low royalty rates, regardless of the market value of the work.

2. Certain administration costs that in a normal publishing arrangement would be borne by the publisher will instead be borne by the collecting society, which will take them out of royalties (so all or part of them will be taken from the authors’ share of any income). These include the cost of contacting authors and estates.

Dear SFWA Members,

As many of you already know, the ReLire program currently underway in France has scanned many books it considers to be "orphan works" in order to make them available through a public database. This database has already been found to contain many titles that are clearly not orphan works or in the public domain, including a number by prominent SF and fantasy authors. A more detailed explanation of the program is available here.

As this is a program of the Bibliotheque Nationale Francaise (French National Library), the Board is currently discussing options for applying pressure to the French government to prevent further works by SFWA members from being scanned and made available through this program, and we invite any members who have connections with the United States Trade Representative or any relevant branch of the U.S. Government to contact us. For the moment, however, we are informing all members of the issue and making them aware of the process involved in finding out whether a work is included and how to request that it be removed from the database.

All parts of the ReLire website and database are available only in  French. The Society of Authors has produced translations of four key pages:

- The ReLire home page
- The Your Rights page
- The Search page
- The FAQ

Here is a direct link to the advanced search page. The search fields are Titre( Title), Auteur (Author), Editeur (Editor) and Date d'edition (Publication date). If you are aware of any works of yours that have ever been published in French, you are strongly advised to search under all of the first three fields, as the entries in the database have been found to have many typos. Please notify SFWA of any of your works that are found in the database, as that will be valuable information in our efforts to protest the program.

If you do find any novels, stories or any other works belonging to you in the database you may request to have them removed. Please note that at this time it appears as though you will need either a French identification card (only available to residents of France) or a valid passport to make the application. We are awaiting clarification on the question of whether any other forms of identification will be accepted.

Thanks to Aliette de Bodard, Lawrence Schimel, Michael Capobianco and Jim Fiscus for their help in researching and co-ordinating SFWA's response.

Whether or not you find that any of the books on the list are by you, or contain works by you, make a complaint to your government about the ReLIRE project, and talk to any author societies to which you belong.

The Berne Convention says: ‘Authors of literary and artistic works protected by this Convention shall have the exclusive right of authorizing the reproduction of these works, in any manner or form.’ (9.1) This can only be overriden ‘in certain special cases’ and ‘provided that such reproduction does not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author’. (9.2) The Convention says of all the rights that are guaranteed under it: ‘The enjoyment and the exercise of these rights shall not be subject to any formality‘. (5.2)

By compelling foreign authors, in order to prevent their works’ being co-opted into collective management, to search for them on a database and request their removal, the French government has imposed an illegal formality on their exclusive exercise of the right of reproduction.

The ReLIRE scheme is in no sense a ‘special case’ within the meaning of Article 9.2. By intervening in such an outrageous manner in the fast-developing market for digital rights it interferes with the normal exploitation of the works and most unreasonably prejudices the legitimate interests of the authors.

4. Author Solutions' revenues are estimated at $100 million per year. Of the $100 million Author Solutions earns as revenue, approximately one third of that amount, or $33 million annually, comes from book sales. The rest of its revenue is derived from the services it offers, such as editorial services, formatting and design services, production services, and marketing services ("Services").

5. Despite its impressive profits from book sales, Author Solutions fails at the most basic task of a publisher: paying its authors their earned royalties and providing its authors with accurate sales statements.

6. Author Solutions also fails to take diligent care of its authors' works, making numerous and egregious publisher errors -- errors made by the publisher, not the author. These errors include errors on book covers, in addition to various typographical and formatting errors. In fact, Author Solutions profits from its own mistakes. Aggressive sales techniques ensure that these errors are corrected only for a fee of several hundred dollars. Even though, as a matter of policy, Author Solutions promises to correct publisher errors for free, it rarely does.

7. Most of Author Solutions' earnings are derived from its publishing and marketing Services. These Services, which can cost authors tens of thousands of dollars, likewise fail to deliver what they promise: more book sales and more opportunities for authors.

8. Therefore, even while Defendant Author Solutions prominently markets itself on its website as "[t]he leading indie publishing company in the world," authors often discover, once it is too late, that Author Solutions is not an "indie publisher" at all. It is a printing service that fails to maintain even the most rudimentary standards of book publishing, profiting not for its authors but from them.

Autharium was created with the purpose of discovering great writers and publishing their work. The idea struck the co-founders Matt Bradbeer, Simon Maylott and Aaron Bell when they discovered and became frustrated with how difficult or expensive it was to publish a book, break through the old publishing routes and reach readers...

There is no charge to be published and distributed through Autharium, there are no hidden costs and the royalties are always split in the authors [sic] favour. Our mission is to discover and publish the next great books and the authors behind them.

1.1 By submitting your Work to Autharium and accepting these Terms & Conditions, you grant to Autharium the exclusive right and licence to produce, publish, promote, market and sell your Work in any Digital Form...in all languages throughout the world for the entire legal term of copyright (and any and all extensions, renewals and revivals of the term of copyright).

1.2 You agree that Autharium shall also be entitled to license retailers, distributors, agents, licensees, sub-contractors and other third parties to exercise the rights you have granted to Autharium under this Agreement.

1.3 The rights granted in paragraphs 1.1 and 1.2 above shall also apply to any adaptation or any abridgement of your Work or any substantial part of your Work.

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2. Defendant markets itself as a “traditional advance and royalty paying book publisher” that is home to over 50,000 authors.

3. As PublishAmerica openly states on its website, it specializes in books and authors “who face and overcome hardships and obstacles in life.”

4. Defendants shamelessly prey on ambitious first time authors and those who have faced significant personal hardships, luring them into exploitatively long contracts, often as long as ten years -- that can only be broken for a high fee.

5. On its website, PublishAmerica uses the tagline: “We treat our authors the old-
fashioned way–we pay them.” Nothing could be further from the truth. PublishAmerica makes money from its authors, not for them. As alleged below, authors published by PublishAmerica have no chance of selling their books to a general audience.

6. PublishAmerica makes its authors’ books unsellable in a number of ways. The most obvious is pricing. Plaintiff Waterman’s paperback children’s book is priced at $24.95. By contrast, Curious George, a beloved children’s book, is available online at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for $6.99. In fact, Plaintiff Waterman’s book is priced significantly higher than all of New York Times’ ten best-selling children’s books. See Exhibit 1 attached hereto.

7. PublishAmerica sabotages its authors’ ability to sell and market their books by printing them with errors. These errors are inserted by PublishAmerica itself. Plaintiff Grant’s book has glaring typographical errors. On the side binding of the book, the word “collection” is misspelled as “collectrion.” If that were not enough, on every other page, the title of the book is misspelled, replacing “romantically” with “roimantically.” These errors humiliated Grant once the book became widely searchable on the Internet. Notwithstanding these glaring errors, PublishAmerica prices Plaintiff Grant’s book at $30. This price is notably higher than the top ten selling fiction paperback books. See Exhibit 2 attached hereto.

8. The simple fact is that the only consumers who will purchase these overpriced, poorly published books are the authors themselves.

9. PublishAmerica then bombards its authors with services ostensibly designed to promote, improve, and sell books that PublishAmerica knows cannot be sold. But as alleged below, these services are often themselves a scam or simply fictitious. For example, PublishAmerica offers to correct its own publishing errors – for a fee.

SFWA has determined that works published by Random House’s electronic imprint Hydra can not be used as credentials for SFWA membership, and that Hydra is not an approved market. Hydra fails to pay authors an advance against royalties, as SFWA requires, and has contract terms that are onerous and unconscionable.

This is a horrendously bad deal and if you are ever offered something like it, you should run away as fast as your legs or other conveyances will carry you.

Dear John, Victoria, Jaym and SFWA Members,

We read with interest your posts today about the new Random House digital imprints and our business model. While we respect your position, you’ll not be surprised to learn that we strongly disagree with it, and wish you had contacted us before you published your posts. We would appreciate you giving us an opportunity to share why we believe Hydra is an excellent publishing opportunity for the science fiction community by posting ours below to them.

Hydra offers a different-- but potentially lucrative--publishing model for authors: a profit share. In the more traditional advance- plus-royalty model, the publisher takes all the financial risk up front, and recoups the advance before the author earns any cash royalties. With a profit-share model, there is no advance. Instead, the author and publisher share equally in the profits from each and every sale. In effect, we partner with the author for each book.

As with every business partnership, there are specific costs associated with bringing a book successfully to market, and we state them very straightforwardly and transparently in our author agreements. These costs could be much higher--and certainly be more stressful and labor-intensive to undertake--for an author with a self-publishing model. Profits are generated once those costs are subtracted from the sales revenue. Hydra and the author split those profits equally from the very first sale.

When we acquire a title in the Hydra program, it is an all-encompassing collaboration. Our authors provide the storytelling, and we at Hydra support their creativity with best-in-class services throughout the publishing process: from dedicated editorial, cover design, copy editing and production, to publicity, digital marketing and social media tools, trade sales, academic and library sales, piracy protection, negotiating and selling of subsidiary rights, as well as access to Random House coop and merchandising programs. Together, we deliver the best science fiction, fantasy and horror books to the widest possible readership, thus giving authors maximum earning potential.

As a last point to the SFWA leadership, my colleagues and I would welcome the opportunity to meet with you at your earliest convenience to discuss the advantages of the Hydra business model, describe the program overall, and respond to any of your expressed concerns. Please let me know a good time for us to set up this meeting.

Many thanks and all the best,
Allison Dobson

Allison R. Dobson
V.P., Digital Publishing Director
Random House Publishing Group