A story about a woman with a degenerative disease and her sports career - written both as a sentimental drama about the pain of infirmity, of loss and the stress of going through a series of medical procedures, and also as an inspirational tale of a whirlwind tour of the handicap* system common amongst sports in Hearthome...

This one is pretty decent. It's got good alien content, it's inspirational, and it's very cognizant of the human behind the disease. Yes pile. 

And with that, he's scouted another fifteen books to go with the leftover fifteen "yesses" from the original list. He could dive into the maybes, but that sounds like a lot of work and he has plenty of potentials to use right now. 

Time to make up a proper list to present to his boss. 

Apparently he actually missed one on his Yes pile. So he has 31 books to present to his boss. Whoops. 

The "short" list is: 

1. Periverse [Children's Literature, Fantasy, Mystery]

Children fight monsters, solve mysteries. Mostly included for breadth purposes and because it'll likely sell well.

2. Periverse [Nonfiction, Informational, Textbook, Alien Biology, Animal Raising, Many-Parent Children]

Textbook on how to keep and raise motherbeasts, which are capable of acting as artificial wombs drawing from many people's genetic material.

3. Periverse [Nonfiction, Alien Economics, Controversial]

Alien economic history textbook on monetary systems and how the Periverse phased out money, to great acclaim from its citizens.

4. Basiland [Hard Magic, Complex Morality, Villain Protagonist, Deep, Fantasy]

Magical apprentice gradually slides from a restricted, narrow life into a happy, but selfish life as a villainous dark mage. 

5. Planet, TRAINS! [Vocational Literature, Alien Culture, Transportation]

Alien vocational literature about several modes of transport (trains, boats, planes, rockets). 

6. Planet [Interactive Fiction, Survival, Trade, Politics, Fantasy,  Lots Of Characters, Erotica, Harem-Builder]

Interactive fiction where you command a trading ship in a fantasy world. Realistic cultures, many characters, optional sex scenes. Characters are a bit flat, but there are a lot of them.

7. Planet, The Timeless Struggle of Ren Sarvo [Devotary Work, Time Loop, Fantasy, Anticlimax, Extended Epilogue, Dark]

Schoolboy traverses timeloops and faces his own despair as he seeks to save the world from a catastrophe. Psychologically deep, strongly illustrates the conviction of the protagonist.

8. Planet, Plastic Heart [Hard Sci-Fi, Erotica, Sex-Friends-To-Lovers, Client Romance]

Prosthetics technician in a future society installs modifications for sexuality and practicality, falls in love with a client.

9. Antfolk  [Fantasy, Series, Heroic Literature, Alien Aliens, Disability Literature, Action, Realistic Characters, Hurt/Comfort]

Person is captured, enslaved and mutilated by opposing polity; story follows her legendary rescue by a friend and the aftermath.  

10. Grapeverse [Erotica, S&M, Character Drama, Relationship-Building, Consensual Kink, Fantasy]

A strongly-written erotica novel about a sadist architect and his mascochist learning to build a healthy relationship. Features healing magic, alien architecture. Alien focus on architecture detracts somewhat from the storyline, but the writing quality is such that this is mostly just exotic. 

11. Grapeverse, Shattering Cascade [Trauma Recovery, Dystopia, Fantasy, Mind Control, Social Commentary]

World of mind-controllers has division between those who use their powers and those who do not; protagonist takes in someone who has been harmed badly by mind-control powers and gradually helps them recover at the cost of their own ambitions.

12. Hearthome [Erotica, Heartwarming, Comedy, Sex Sports]

Immortal aliens develop ridiculously complicated, dramatic and hilarious forms of sexual sport. Commentated by fictional robots. 

13. Hearthome [Feel-good, Sports, Devotary, Medical Drama]

Woman with degenerative disease fights her way through alien sports. Inspiring.

14. Iie*a [Family Drama, Dysfunctional Family, Serious, Thought-Provoking, Hopeful Ending]

Alien family tries and mostly fails to raise a child; child eventually becomes fed up with dysfunction, leaves. 

15. Iie*a [Fantasy, Series, Hard Magic, Complex Morality, Serious, Thought-Provoking, Alien Aliens]

Alien magic-users fight taboo-violating enemies; conflict becomes gradually more complex and morally ambiguous. Deep.

16. Grayliens [Fantasy, Political Drama, Alien Art, Culture Clash]

Obligate carnivores and obligate herbivores treat with each other, and narrowly avoid war thanks to a pair of diplomats. Awkward ending. `

17. Homerealm [Fantasy, Hard Magic, Political Thriller, Strong Plotting, Erotica]

Prince and Princess interweave sexually-tinged magic systems to develop new abilities, opposed by their respective advisors. Clever plotting device to introduce both magic systems and the political situation. 

18. Piecemeal [Alien Religion, Shirasanmi, Devotional Literature, Controversial]

Collection of myths about a complicated and sometimes dark Great Reflection known as the Wandering Man.

19. Piecemeal [Spy, Thriller, Drama, Romance, Action, Storyteller, Tease, Time Enough-Like]

Agents on the opposite sides of a cold war grow to care for each other, doubt their convictions. Action sequences included. Strong romance, very subtle.

20. Ev [Historical Fiction, Alien Culture, Devotional Literature, Dark, Alien Morality, Controversial]

Criminals sentenced to die for treason during a desperate historical war undergo a spiritual and emotional journey as they contemplate their imminent deaths. Sentence is ultimately commuted to life. 

21. Audere, Knowledge Is [Fantasy, Lily-Reflection, Trauma Recovery, Horror, Cute]

Young wizard and Lily-reflection mercenary seek to return a cute, sentient fallen star to the heavens. Sacrificial magic system played for horror; cute mutually-supportive relationship.

22. Audere, Magical Girl Metrologist Maki [Fantasy, Horror, Magical Girl, Dead Girls-Like, Alien Culture]

Alien work in the tradition of Dead Girls; unique twist with ordinary-object magic, features sadistic love interest.

23. Maggieverse [Sky-Earth Relations, Bildungsroman, Nursing, Enra-Seeking, Realistic Trauma]

Sky woman believes her Enra is to become an ICU nurse, but has to come to terms with her inability to become an Earth.

24. Olam [Romance, Transformative Love, Coming-Of-Age, M/F, Erotica, Childhood-Friends-to-Lovers, Alien Culture]

Deeply described love story, showing the way that people influence each other and grow into each other.

25. Olam [Epic Fantasy, An Aesop, Long-Scale, Action, Drama]

Epic fantasy that uses the scale effectively to illustrate the weight of honesty and integrity as virtues. Follows one woman's rise from the bottom of the world to become an inspirational leader and peacemaker.  

26. Olam [Alien Culture, Comedy, Sports, Comradery]

Alien sports comedy based around an amateur kravmabid team's inept antics. Strong look at alien culture.

27. Olam [Unreliable-Narrator, Villain Protagonist, Redemption Arc, An Aesop]

Narcissist gradually comes to realize how he's harming others; written from the narcissist's perspective. Strong interiority.

28. Spinrock [Medium-Blending, Graphic Novel, Metanarrative, Serial, In-Progress, Fantasy, Devotary Work, Villain Protagonist]

Metanarrative user-input fiction paints the medium using strong magicbuilding, illustrations, description. Devotary work about service and obedience; villain protagonist.

29. Spinrock [Trauma, Horror, Watchmaker's Heart-Like, Fantasy]

Girl moves into a house that wants to keep her forever; using recovered magical items and her intuition, she manages to escape but is forever scarred.  

30. Spinrock [Science Fantasy, Magitech, Devotary, Poetry]

Teenage boy is kept on disk by an AI that takes the role of his Keeper; he swears to be the AI's Kept after it settles his anxiety.

31. Global Alliance [Mythology, Shirasanmi, Villain Protagonist, Devotary, Alien Culture]

River Goddess is a jerk to her daughter, daughter fights the river goddess and wins. Historical mythology of the Global Alliance.

White Bird gets Elm's message in the middle of a meeting. "Excuse me," she says. "I've just received the scouting recommendations from Elm. We're going to have to adjourn." 

Nobody gainsays her. She gets the meeting room to herself within five minutes. 

She scrolls through the list. Plenty of potentials left, it looks like. She'll have to cut. 

Well, first things first, she doesn't publish nonfiction. So those two can be cut - they're only in the file because of the previous scout. Elm should have known enough to remove them - she'll have to bring that up with him later. 

Well. Of the twenty-nine remaining books, which sound like winners...?

Nothing's a better bet than the familiar. The Piecemeal Time Enough-like and the Auderan Dead Girls-like can get published, along with the Spinrock Watchmaker's Heart-like. After that, there are some standouts on overall quality - the Olamite and Homerealm epic fantasies can get the greenlight. 

After that, let's go for breadth. She wants to publish from new worlds - the unexplored has cachet, and people are eager to learn about the all the alien cultures on offer. The Ev historical drama is dark, and possibly a bit controversial - but it'll give people a look at a more alien kind of aliens. She'll add that one to the list, along with the Maggieverse Enra-finding book. That's seven. Three more. She could go for strict breadth and publish the Graylien political novel, the Antfolk epic fantasy series, and the Global Alliance mythology... but that's entirely ignoring the strong slate of submissions from Planet, along with the rest of the Spinrock and Olamite submissions, not to mention the works from Iie*a...

Alright, let's look at what she has already. Two sexually-tinged books (the Homerealm epic fantasy and the Piecemeal spy drama.) Four fantasy books, two of which are horror. One realistic book (the sky-earth relations one), and another dark one from Ev. Okay, she shouldn't accept any more fantasy submissions. What does that leave?

If she cuts all the remaining fantasy and mythology, she's left with nine books - TRAINS!, Plastic Heart, the two sports books from Hearthome, the Iie*a family drama, three books from Olam (the love story, the sports story, and the narcissist's view look at the world) and the science fantasy from Spinrock that gets to stick around because it is a science fantasy and therefore attracts a somewhat different crowd... 

She can cut the Olamite love story, she already has a subtle romantic story in her publish pile. A second straight-up erotica wouldn't go amiss - she'll publish Plastic Heart. That cuts the vocational literature from Planet. There are three sports stories in her pile, which one is best? The Hearthome sports comedy and the Olamite kravmabid comedy are clearly head to head. She thinks she prefers the Olamite one. That means she's publishing two Olamite books, so she can definitely cut the remaining one. 

The two books competing for the last slot are the Spinrock science fantasy one (which has a slight strike against it since it's fantasy, and a second strike against it because it's only 10k), and the Iie*a dysfunctional family one (which doesn't have a lot to recommend it.) She's actually tempted to reach back into the cut pile... Because The Timeless Struggle of Ren Sarvo is quite strong, no matter the fact that it's also fantasy and she's already publishing a Dead Girls-alike. 

- Alright, she'll publish Timeless Struggle and purchase the rights to the Science Fantasy 10k poetry for a future anthology. And the rest can go to another company.

Big production runs won't be an issue, given the wild success of the past set. Advertisement is easy - just say you'll be bringing these out on a particular date, it's not complex. ARCs would probably be leaked to the net instantly. No ARCs. Preorders would probably be considered unfair.

How to present the books... Well, she doesn't want to become the object of controversy like Silver Rose ended up. She'll contract with the original alien cover artists, at least where possible. 

She calls up her contact at the embassy, and schedules her time on the multiversal connection. 

Her first set of contract negotiations goes... alright. The Planet, Maggieverse and Spinrock books all have publishing houses associated and the negotiations are reasonably straightforwards. She's even able to get the original cover art for the Planet books. 

Magical Girl Metrologist Maki, however, is more in the realm of the public domain - digital editions are free on Auder, and it's not possible for her to get the rights to that, but physical publishing is worth dealing with. Physical editions she can do, though. A similar deal is made for the translations of the Olam books, which are also public domain. The Homerealm epic fantasy is effectively Creative Commons, though - how did Silver Rose get the rights to the previous two books? Must have been a different polity. That makes it effectively unpublishable commercially, which is a shame, but oh well. She had an extra book anyway. 

That just leaves the books from Ev and Piecemeal.

The spy romance author is more aggressive than the guy from the coming-of-age - he wants a bigger royalty and some terms about not printing it in collections without express permission. The forms for his local laws state exclusive rights are expected to last for the lifetime of the author only, though with a minimum of 5 years and a procedure for contesting public domain if authorship isn't clearly assignable to a single human. Also, they expect publisher assistance with collection of taxes, which assume that tax is collected on all printed copies and have procedure for reclaiming the payments for copies that went unsold.

A message arrives at virtually the same time as this request, apologizing on behalf of Piecemeal for subjecting Heart to their 'Irands', which the anonymous message-writer expresses hope are not a problem Heart publishers have to deal with so much.

(The probably-obvious guess that this came from the translator is correct. 'Irand' isn't defined in the message, but any dictionary of idiom from Piecemeal will note that this is a stereotype named after a particular author who was extremely opinionated and egotistical, and assembled a small cult of personality seemingly by accident.)

Troublesome but not irreconcilable. She'll try to negotiate him down a bit on the royalty, but if he doesn't budge she'll give. Tax law will be entertaining to sort through but with the assistance of the diplomats it should be possible to settle. 

He budges a little and gets noticeably annoyed if she tries more than one more round of haggling. (If they go back and forth five or six times he's going to revoke the budge, and get very obnoxious. This may incite another apologetic anonymous message from the translator.)

She'll accept after three attempts.

Good enough!

The Ev author is very happy to be published in another world!  He didn't expect another world to acknowledge his copyright - there're a lot of places in Ev that wouldn't, a few of which don't acknowledge copyright at all.  Where it is acknowledged, copyright lasts only twenty years; eight years of that is already up.  He's happy to have his book published in other worlds; he isn't sure what the exchange rate will sort out to, so how about this royalties amount that's a bit below normal for his part of Ev... (He names something that, if exchange rates were sorted out, Earth authors would consider a bit on the generous side.)

Also, if Heart is planning to acknowledge the Ev copyright here, he'd like the local publisher to contract to take on the copyright-holder's obligations to make copies available for purchase as long as the copyright lasts, and to collect the mandatory-licensing fees from any fanfiction proceeds.

The payment isn't a problem, nor even the availability clause, but Heart doesn't do liscensing fees for fanfiction and there would probably be a riot if she tried to implement it. Is unliscenced noncommercial fanfiction going to be a deal-breaker?

Not at all!  If Heart wants to acknowledge every part of copyright except that, that's perfectly fine, and he's still happy to be published in Heart!

Then that's settled and she can move on to publishing.

Some time earlier...

Snow tosses a wave and a grin over her shoulder as she heads out the door of the il'ka, her step significantly lighter than when she came in.

The il'ka is quieter now; there's still a reading circle in the front room, but there are only seven people in it. They've moved on to a new book from the one Vi saw earlier. It's fairly slim; Vi can't see the title under the reader's hand, but the bottom half says "The Caregivers" with a stylized number one. Though the reading circle is across the room and it's hard for Vi to hear what's being read, she can catch enough words to be pretty sure this new book is erotica too. 

X glances over and notices Vi. She looks around quickly, then beckons her over.

Violet stretches like a satisfied cat as she steps into the front room, then waves goodbye to Snow, surveys the room, and heads over to X.

X smiles back. "Hey. Feeling satisfied?"

"Mmmhm," she gives her girlfriend a quick kiss. "How's your night been?"

"Busy, especially for this late. Fortunately no safety issues so far. Unfortunately, my manager says they still need me for the rest of my shift. Go home, love; I'll join you when my shift's over, don't worry about me. I've heard some good snatches of a couple books already."

"Glad it's going smoothly, at least." She takes another look around the room and spots a slim plastic teardrop dangling from the spine of a book by a string. A quick scan of the room reveals more, one on each book. "Oh, good, looks like they took you up on the Droplet idea. S'good they're recognizing your ideas, my lovely night-sky."

"You're rubbing off on me, love. In more ways than the obvious." X grins. Then she notices a raised hand from a guy with pink hair in the reading group. "Okay, I've got to get going. Say hi to Foxy and Liv for me, okay?"

Vi laughs and nods. "Will do, love. See you after."

And she steps out of the il'ka with a spring in her step, starting the walk back home, book-laden messenger bag over her shoulder.