Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Actually, if you resent publishers' taking all rights, one way to annoy them
without costing yourself anything is to encourage others to pirate...

(just a nasty subversive thought)

wg
  

    
Interesting perspective.  If the artist doesn't get much from the rights
anyway...  maybe a larger audience is simply more attractive than a small
payment.
  

    
I disagree. It's one thing to give your work away yourself, knowingly.
It's another thing entirely to have it stolen out from under you.
  

    
I don't think that 'encourage to pirate' is a selective thing. They
won't check and see if it's your copyright or someone else's before
they pirate your book.
  

    
I just whoised wsmf.org and got

Registrant:
WSMF (WSMF2-DOM)
   3334 Se Hawthorne Ave Suite 304
   Portland, OR 97214
   US

   Domain Name: WSMF.ORG

   Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact, Billing
Contact:
      Higgins, Tom  (TH8601)  tomwhore@INETARENA.COM
      WSMF
      3334 Se Hawthorne Ave Suite 304
      Portland , OR 97214
      503-230-0072

   Record last updated on 22-Jan-1999.
   Record expires on 22-Jan-2001.
   Record created on 22-Jan-1999.
   Database last updated on 17-Sep-2000 04:05:05 EDT.

   Domain servers in listed order:

   NS1.INETARENA.COM            206.129.216.1
   NS2.INETARENA.COM            206.129.216.2

for the site.
  

    


he lives nearby. maybe i'll swing around the corner and pay a visit.


or maybe a grenade with a note attached, signed by the offended parties?  a
simple molotov cocktail?
  

    
Actually, I think a very polite request to stop doing this would
probably work as well. I hope it would, anyway.

It's also possible that he doesn't know this stuff is on his website.
  

    
There. Several e-mails from Tom Higgins this morning: he was mortified
that the stuff was up on a website he was responsible for (he didn't
know it was there he says, and I believe him), and was making sure it
was not only zapped out of existence but also that google et al cleaned
out their caches and mirrors.
  

    
Hurrah!
  

    

that's great!
  

    
Does my heart good, it does!

But that same heart, which is dark and cynical, wonders if he'd have
been quite as abashed and quick to cooperate if a slightly less
well-known writer made the same request.
  

    
True that. Maybe. The amazing thing about our position in time
regarding rights is that we have none, or many. The net is still really
the wild west in terms of rights and clearances, where you can get
away with abuses of fair use you NEVER would in print. (Most people on
the WELL don't post full articles from other sources but it happens on
message boards ever day.)

Basically, as one might expect, smaller "underground" sites are held
to a more lax standard re: rights than bigger corporate sites when it
comes to poaching material outright. A lot of teeny sites basically
sprinkle themsleves with fairy dust, poach from their favorite
authors/musicians/artists, and hope for the best. And usually it
works--mainly because the marginal rate of return for the artist in
terms of suing/shutting down the site is so low and some of the art and
craft that goes into the smallest sites is so beautiful. (Unlike most
of the gak-worthy processed-cheese corporate sites...)

Big print publishers and sites: well, they basically tell you they're
going to screw you up front. They make you sign a really really
stringent contract and then you're hogtied concerning your e-rights. 

In the words of Yaz, "It doesn't have to be like that."

I have been running my small site, PopandPolitics, for five years. At
certain points it has been pretty much a home page. (Now, thank
goodness, I have lots of interesting contributors and more on the way.)
But somewhere along the way I figured out I would have nothing to put
on the site if I didn't keep the rights to my own work. So I started
fighting for it.

Basic scenario:

Farai gets contract.

Contract says:
"We own your rights in perpetuity throughout the known universe."

Farai says:
#&%@$!&

Farai ponders.

Farai calls editor; editor says call legal; legal says this is the way
it's always done; Farai says "I wrote the damn story; I scratched out
this clause in the contract; I'm faxing it to you right now; pay me!"

That is the basic "story written, contract altered after story is
written" scenario. Doesn't involve shouting, just firmness.

If the negotiations take place before you write the story, you can do
some interesting stuff. Let them take e-rights...for a limited term.
One month. Three months. A year. Vary the rate they have to pay for how
long they have your article online. Think about the possible resale
value of your feature. Make THEM think about it...
  

    
OK, I have a question.  How often do the other freelances here ask for
raises?

(Having just gotten one from one of the magazines I write for.)

wg
  

    

Did you ask for the raise?
  

    
Farai, when you say this:

"If the negotiations take place before you write the story, you can do
 some interesting stuff. Let them take e-rights...for a limited term.
 One month. Three months. A year. Vary the rate they have to pay for how
 long they have your article online. Think about the possible resale
 value of your feature. Make THEM think about it..."

I think you're forgetting (in all innocence) that we aren't all Farai!
Magazines *want* you. You're a *name.* You can get away with that. The rest
of us are often told, "This contract is a done deal. Take it or leave it."
  

    
That's a good point. Some of us have more leverage than others. I'm
not sure I've got super leverage--I get things turned down, chopped up,
paid late (on threat of legal action)--but I know I have more than
some. 

Here's what I will say:
1) I started tinkering with my contracts when I probably had less
leverage than I do now, and I still got them altered.
2) There is a certain "tipping point" philosophy to this, where if
enough of us stand on one side of the teeter-totter, the balance will
shift. So perhaps I do have a bit more leverage. If writers with more
leverage use that to gain back their e-rights, or consciously sell them
instead of giving them away, then that could (caveat) shift the
balance for all.

Same thing with asking for more money. Here I will step out on a big
shaky branch and say one reason why the freelance writing profession
pays poorly is because it has become a pink collar ghetto, dominated by
women who don't ask for what they're worth and women and men who don't
pay what female writers are worth. We have to overcome our shyness
about money and start bargaining up, incrementally.
  

    
Also Martha's point about magazines being a huge part of popular
entertainment in the past, now less so resonates. Television/film has
become the default popular entertainment, and the biggest star and
moneymaker. No surprise that our biggest authors are ones whose books
are made into movies.
  

    
Have a taxi driver ask you what you do.  Tell him you write.  Have him ask,
"Any movies?"

Repeat 200 times.
  

    
Oh, I totally agree with you about needing to head for the tipping point. I
wish there was a way to persuade all eager new writers not to settle for
pennies just to get their names in print.

(And yeah, when I tell strangers that I'm a writer, they all assume I'm
working on a novel.)

So here's my question: how do we writers get the public to care about what's
happening in our business -- to care that our pay, in real dollars, is
steadily declining and that lots of us are taking on corporate side gigs to
make ends meet? How do we get the public to care that publishers aren't
willing to pay for quality work?

Is anyone reading who's a member of the non-writerly public interested in
telling us what would make you care?
  

    
Yeah, if they aren't asking about movies, they assume it's a novel.

They don't know you make maybe $6000 for a first novel when they ask that.
  

    
castle:  yes, I asked for the raise.  It's been my policy since day 1 to ask
for raises every 12-18 months.  I don't make it an I-won't-write-for-you-if-
OI-don't-get-it thing, but I do ask, and I do persist in asking.  Over here,
where publications really do have somewhat standard rates, the success rate
is variable, but I like to think I've benefited other freelances by keeping
a steady upward pressure on even the ones that really do have a standard
rate.  But it's only this year for the first time that someone is paying me
an amount I actually find embarrassing.

wg
  

    
Having just negotiated a freelance magazine contract for my wife (a
first time writer), I'm finding this discussion really interesting. 
Perhaps it was just that they wanted this particular article by this
particular person at this particular time, but every time I pushed them
on a contractual provision -- lo and behold, they would fax over yet
another "form" contract, with an improvement over the last one.  For
example, I told them that while I had never negotiated this kind of
contract before, I thought the terminology "all rights throughout the
universe" was a tad extreme and unacceptible.  The next day, they faxed
over a different form contract with slightly less extreme language. 
Several rounds later, we had what we wanted -- they got the first
serial rights and nothing more.  And there's a rider specifying what
they have to pay for "extras" (if the arise).

I take it by the comments here that this was highly unusual.  Though
it was all so easy (I've spent days in negotiations with lawyers over
stupid sentences in hundred-page agreements), that I just assumed that
they'll try to get what they can, and give in when needed to get the
article.

Perhaps if writers were able to organize better, and negotiate
standard provisions, things might improve.  But to do so, there would
have to be a pretty significant number of writers on-board, because the
power of such an effort would be in the power to boycott any magazines
that refused to change things.  This goes just as much for how much
they pay as it does for other contractual provisions.  So long as
magazine x has dozens of writers who meet its standards willing to sell
on the magazine's terms, there's no reason on earth for the magazine
to change the way it does business.  But if a significant number of
writers were to say to the magazines, here's a new form contract, and
this is the one we want you to use from now on and we won't sell
articles to anyone who doesn't use it -- well, that's how these things
change (that, and litigation, which is far messier, costlier, time
consuming, and fraught with risk).
  

    
It is also very, very difficult to create a trade union of independent
contractors. The NWU does what it can, but contractors can't bargain
collectively.
  

    
Neil -- well, in the UK you have the Society of Authors which has
mostly done that. When I was a magazine journalist all one would ever
sell were "first world rights" and no-one ever expected anything else.
  

    
When was that?  My guess would be that rights sale had more to do with
collective bargainin g by the NUJ, which *does* have a freelance branch and
published rates, than anything else.  Things have changed dramatically over
the last decade, with publishers demanding, stealing, or occasionally
temporarily paying for all rights.

wg