Best Preactices for Orphan Works

The Society of American Archivists have published a best practices for orphan works. The best practices/standards are available as a pdf file for download at http://www.archivists.org/standards/

What's it all about, really?

Money. That's what it's about these days. Not only in the publsihing game, but in healthcare, manufacturing, retail,government, academia, etc. It's all about the bottom line.

The bottom line for a fiction writer is to earn a decent living by selling or licensing (renting) original creative works. Fiction writers have traditionally sold or licensed their works to publishers who then managed all further sales, including distribution to retail markets, subsidiary sales, translations for foreign sales, etc. Publishers assumed that they also had license to market electronic sales as part of the publishing contract, with no additonal or only minimal additional compensation to the writer. Thanks to professional writers organizations like Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), Authors Guild, ASJA, etc., writers began negotiating electronic rights as part of every contract. Most writers only earn pennies from electronic sales at this time, but that may change in the future as more readers are willing to purchase e-books.

Google's Google Book Library Project opened up a new can of works for writers. Many out of print but still in copyright works were digitized by Google, and writers are still uncertain how much money they will or won't make when Google sells electronic copies.

The entire publishing industry is going through massive changes, thanks to new technology and the effects of the economy. What will happen in the future? How will writers earn their living when traditional publishers have closed up shop?

I hope you will stay with me as we continue to explore these ideas in the days, weeks, months, and years to come.

Robot Dance Moves

To show my ignorance, I had no clue what a robot dance was until I checked it out on You Tube. Here is an example:

I'm Back

This blog was blocked. It happened yesterday, and I couldn't post to this blog until Google, the parent company of Blogger, verified that I was a real human being and not a robot spammer.

I am happy to report that I am now able to post again to this blog.

I am still waiting, however, for an explanation of why I was blocked.

Honestly, now, do my posts seem that mechanical? Am I that robotic and automatized?

Fame and fortune

Some people think all writers are rich and famous, and nothing could be further from the truth. Some, a very few, do manage to become rich and famous after selling to motion pictures which also hypes sales of the book. What are your chances of becoming rich and famous as a writer?

According to MSN Money (http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/RetirementandWills/RetireEarly/WhyPoorPeopleWinTheLottery.aspx) "the odds of winning the Mega Millions are 1 in 135,145,920. Buying two tickets bumps your odds only to 2 in 135,145,920."

Your chances of winning the lottery are better than your chances of becoming rich and famous as a fiction writer.

Writing, like playing the lottery, is a numbers game. The first piece you write has a 1 in a hundred billion chances of making you rich and famous. Each succeeding book you write increases your chances. Ray Bradbury used to tell beginning writers to write their first million words and then throw them away. They don't have a chance of selling (or writing anything really good) until they have written more than a million words.

Your chances of being hit by lightning are thousands of times better than the chance of becoming rich and famous as a fiction writer, and hundres of times better than winning the lottery.

It is possible to earn a reasonable living writing non-fiction, and some writers can mix sales of fiction and non-fiction to achieve an annual six figure gross. But it is extremely rare to be able to earn a living solely writing fiction.

The best way to get rich writing fiction is to already be rich and famous and then sell your fictionalized memoirs (think of Dick Chaney, Donald Trump, most movie and NFL stars). Even lottery winners have a better chance that you or I of selling a book and becoming rich and famous because they are already rich and famous.

Here an interesting perspective from Jenny Diski's blog:

http://jennydiski.typepad.com/biology_of_the_worst_kind/2006/10/how_to_become_r.html

So, wannabe writers, forget the rich and famous part. Write fiction because you love to tell stories and you have good stories to tell. But don't quit your day job until you've sold at least one book to the movies or tv.

Bottom of the Food Chain

Is it any wonder that writers feel like they are at the bottom of the food chain? All they have of any value in this world is their work, and writers have--of necessity--become very protective of their work. Everyone else in the world, it sometimes seems, wants to take another slice of the pie and leave barely a crumb left for the poor starving writer.

Take, for example, electronic rights. Shouldn't writers receive fair compensation for their work when it is made available for download? Shouldn't writers be paid everytime someone downloads their work or everytime their work is included in a database? Since electronic rights were not mentioned in many older contracts, shouldn't those rights belong to the writer and not the publisher until such time as they are negotiated and the writer paid for a license? What do you think?

Nickel and dimed to death

One of the reasons that fiction writers are so miserly about every penny they earn or could potentially earn is the cost of doing business as a professional writer. Writers must have a computer and high speed internet access (you may have seen some of those poor starving writers who don't own a computer who come to libraries to use the public access comuters and internet) in order to prepare their manuscripts. They must keep in touch with editors and the market requirements of various publishers by regularly reading Publishers Weekly (PW), Literary Market Place (LMP), Writers Market, Writers Digest, The Writer, and other trade publications (do you know how much a subscription to PW costs these days?). They must also pay their own rent for an office, office insurance, health insurance premiums, etc. Their agent normally takes 15% of the gross and forwards the rest to the writer. The writer then pays quarterly self-employed social security and medicare (both his own and the employer's portions).

The real problem is the way commercial publishers pay royalties on fiction.

Normally, the book publsiher will offer an advance against royalties which is paid within 90 days of signing the contract. Then the publsiher sends royalty statements and checks every six months (semiannually) after the sales exceed the advance. With corporate accounting delays and waiting for returns of unsold copies from booksellers, semiannual payments often are delyed for a year or more.

Likewise, when a publsiher sells subsidiary rights (paperback rights, foreign translation rights, movie or tv rights) the publisher collects the money and waits to make sure the advance has been recovered and any credits for returns have been accounted for. The publsiher earns interest on that money while the writer has to wait and wonder when the check will be in the mail. When the check finally does come, it goes first to the agent who cashes the check and takes out the agency commission. Then, finally, the agent sends a check for the balance to the writer.

Who Owns Reviews?

Reviews of works of fiction (book reviews) are an interesting anomaly in the world of copyright. Most professional fiction writers review the works of others, and many professional fiction writers supplement their fiction income by selling review columns to magazines. In the world of science fiction and fantasy, for example, there has been a long tradition--dating back to the pulps--of running review columns in fiction magazines. This has been traditionally true also for mystery fiction, and even for romance fiction. Today there are separate review zines like Mystery Scene, Romantic Times, Locus, Science Fiction Chronicle, and others that pay small honoraria for reviews. But the columists who have a by-line in these commercial magazines usually sign a contract to write columns of so many words for each issue for a set fee per word or a set fee per column. Many fiction writers negotiate rights: offering first time rights and an option to reprint for a set fee. They retain the right to market their reviews elsewhere, and often fiction writers will market a collection of their reviews to commercial book publishers. Damon Knight and his wife Kate Wilhelm were as well known for their reviews as they were for their novels and short stories. Knight also wrote introductions and prefaces for books of reviews, as well as prefaces and introductions to fiction collections and anthologies.

Since fiction works are only peer-reviewed by an editor or editorial board (usually consisting of professional editors and not professional writers), true peer-reviewing takes place in the columns of the genre magazines and in the marketplace where readers often buy books or magazines based on reviews and blurbs by other writers.

The Poor Starving Writers' Cookbook

How should writers be paid for their work? Should they be paid for each piece or should they be paid a salary? Should all writers be subsidized by the government? By Google? By libraries? By readers? By publishers?

What does copyright really mean? Does it protect only corporate entities who publish or distribute works? Wasn't copyright protection meant to stimulate creativity at the origin of creativity--the writing level?

Here is a PowerPoint presentation that begins to explore these questions:


https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/xythoswfs/webui

Is Google being unfair to authors again?

Pity the poor starving writer. Not only have publishers been taking advantage of writers, but now Google steps in and promises to add insult to injury.








http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/392

http://www.publicknowledge.org/issues/dmca

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqBZd0cP5Yc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE

Orphaned Works from Author's Perspective

Imagine, if you will, that I have written a novel that sold modestly well in the 1980. It is only one of several novels that I have written and that were published by the same publisher. The titles are currently out of print

Orphaned Works

Does it make sense to give Google exclusive rights to orphaned works? Orphaned works are works that are no longer in print and the publisher has lost track of the author.


http://www.cnbc.com/id/31525041

Adding value to digital products

http://www.pubmatch.org/news/1/bea-panel-going-digital.html

Make it easier and cheaper, and they will pay for it

One of the alleged reasons for literacy piracy is the PROHIBITIVE COST of digital items and the difficulty of downloading. Do we really need a seaparte "reader"? Can't we simply download to our phones or computers and read e-books there?

http://blog.vromans.com/the-threat-of-ebook-piracy/

And isn't there a way to compensate writers for every single download? Certainly digital tracking is easy these days, and it must be possible to pay writers royalties on every single use of their works.

Risk Aversion and the Collapse of Art in Modern Corporate Publishing

Why aren't publishers and readers more flexible? Here are some answers as to why the digital revolution has been so slow so far.


http://chamberfour.com/2009/02/23/risk-aversion-and-the-collapse-and-resurrection-through-piracy-of-art-in-a-corporate-world/

What is fiction?

A Companion to Digital Literary Studies, ed. Susan Schreibman and Ray Siemens. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companionDLS/


http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/view?docId=blackwell/9781405148641/9781405148641.xml&chunk.id=ss1-3-1&toc.id=0&brand=9781405148641_brand

Protection of Intellectual Property Rights

Intellectual property rights (IPR) protection. How do we balance the rights of creators and the rights of society in general to use and enjoy creations?


http://hotdocs.usitc.gov/docs/pubs/research_working_papers/wp_id_05.pdf


Paying authors salaries instead of royalties is one possibility. But who pays? And who gets paid?

More on literary piracy

http://bookseller-association.blogspot.com/search/label/digital%20book%20piracy

digital literary piracy

http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=705&doc_id=176675

If writers have enough money, is it okay to steal their work?

Cory Doctorow is an author I admire, but he has made his mark and earned his fame and fortune. He doesn't need to worry where his next meal is coming from. Is it okay to steal his work?



http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2or009-05-13/the-literary-life/

More on the effects of piracy on writers

http://www.thespec.com/article/567235

What does a writer have to do to get paid for writing?

How should writers be paid for their work?

Will literary piracy will take away writers' motivation to write? A british authors' society claims it may.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3648813.ece

This brings up the question of how should writers be paid for their work? Writers just want to write and be paid for it so they don't have to work multiple jobs (is that so much to ask?), but digital piracy steals bread from authors' mouths (and the mouths of their children). Should fiction writers be subsidized with grants? Will writing grant proposals take up all of the creative time and energy writers need to create fiction?

Rights Reversion when Title is OOP

One of the traditional clauses in better fiction publishing contracts was the rights revision clause. All rights, including the rights assigned under this contract, revert to the author if the title is allowed to go out of print (unavailable by conventional means from the publisher and in bookstores) for more than 6 months. The author is required to send a certified letter to the publisher's legal department asking the publsiher to reprint the work or allow the rights to revert to the author. Sometimes the publisher would send the author copies of recent invoices to bookstores to prove the book was still in print (and then the author could make note of that for the next expected royalty statement and make certain he was paid for the sales). Today, however, pubishers claim the book is still in print when electronic copies are offered through the publisher's web site or print on demand copies are available. One publisher can easily tie up a title and keep sales to a bare minimum for decades, should the publisher decide to do so. Authors must monitor their contracts to ensure they are not vulnerable to being buried in electronic graveyards where their works barely sell but the rights are still controlled by that publsiher. All contracts should also have a reasonable expiration date (8 years after first publication, for example) when the rights can be renegotiated or offered to another publisher.







http://www.sfwa.org/contracts/intropubcontracts5521.pdf

Traditional Publishing Practices in the good old days before electronic rights considerations

In traditional publishing practices, the author submitted works to acquisitions editors at commercial or academic presses. If the work were accepted by the publisher, the publishing house would send a boilerplate contract to the author offering to publish the work. Commercial fiction publishing practices specified the transfer of all rights from the author to the publisher for a specified length of time, and the contract usually specified the amount of payment advanced against royalties, the percentage of cover price that would be paid in royalties for various editions, and the percentage of subsidiary rights (usually split 50/50 between publisher and author). If the novel sold to movies or television, the payment would be split 50/50. If the novel were sold to an audiobook publisher or paperback publisher, the split would be 50/50. But there was no mention of any royalties for electronic versions in those pre-digital days. How various publishers exploited electronic rights and paid no royalties at all for electronic publication is a horror story too terrible to relate here. Suffice it to say that authors got the short end of the stick.

    Professional writers' organizations like Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), Western Writers of America (WWA), Mystery Writers of America (MWA), Romance Writers of America (RWA), Horror Writers Association (HWA), American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), and the Authors Guild cried fowl and collectively sued some publishers. They also, individually and collectively, developed model contracts for electronic rights and urged members to line through and change boilerplate contracts to include specific wordings that protected authors' rights and assured adequate compensation. They also established the Authors Registry, a kind of Copyright Clearing House, to make it easy for anyone to legally photocopy copyrighted works for a small fee (see http://www.authorsregistry.org/).

    These writers organizations have been negotiating with Google about the digitization project settlement (http://www.authorsguild.org/advocacy/articles/settlement-resources.html).

 

 

References and Links

http://www.authorsguild.org/advocacy/articles/settlement-resources.html

http://www.asja.org/about.php

http://www.authorsregistry.org/

http://www.rwanational.org/

http://www.westernwriters.org/about_wwa.htm

http://www.horror.org/aboutus.htm

 

SFWA Statement on Electronic Rights

Professional writers' organizations offer guidance and model contracts to author members. The Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), along with The Authors Guild, has been in the forefront of monitoring unauthorized use of members' works on the web.

http://www.sfwa.org/contracts/elec.htm

Is the Traditional Publishing Model Dying?

Here are two links to articles about the rumors of the death of the traditional publishing model:

http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/12/book-publishing-authors-oped-cx_lo_1212osborne.html


http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/04/books-publishing-social-media-opinions-columnists-kindle-twitter.html?partner=relatedstoriesbox


Traditional publishing is changing. But is it dead or dying? To paraphrase Mark Twain: rumors of its death may be greatly exagerated!

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

The Fiction Industry

Publishers bank on creating a lucrative industry around each author they publish. Stephen King, for example, is an industry in himself that supports a bevy of agents, lawyers, secretaries, editors, copy editors, sub-rights specialists, screen writers, film producers, film diectors, and television series creators with his stories, novels, comic books, movies, made-for-tv movies, and tv series. They all depend on Stephen King's works selling and continuing to sell. All of Steve's novels and short stories, including his first novel (Carrie), remain in print after 30 years, and the accumulated monthly income from all of those works adds up to a pretty penny. Everyone who is part of the Stephen King Industry takes a cut of the pie, and Steve only gets to keep a fraction of the total revenue. Hopefully, there's a little of the frosting left by the time everyone else--including the IRS--slices it up into pieces. I've known authors who have generated hundreds of thousands of dollars of annual revenue, but they don't have enough left to pay the rent and health insurance after the agents, lawyers, feds, and state revenuers take their skim.

Duke University Library Collections on mobile phones

Duke University now offers iPhone apps to access Duke University Library digital image collections. Here is the link. Read all about it!


http://tinyurl.com/n9nue7

Two LJ Articles worth reading

Wiley-Blackwell license practices

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6662895.html



ARL opposes confidentiality agreements with vendors
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6664369.html?nid=2673&source=link&rid=1690330361

Why poor, starving writers need royalties for digital works

Most fiction writers are still poor, starving artists who can't afford to quit their day jobs to pursue their craft full-time. That is their greatest desire in life: They simply want to have the time to write the Great American Novel that everyone will read and love and cherish and buy (or, atleast, every library will buy). But most writers don't have that time to write because they can't afford to quit their day jobs. It's a classic Catch-22 scenario!



Writers like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and other best-selling authors have escaped from the 9 to 5 trap (both were school teachers before their writing sold to the movies), but they still have to write constantly (and well, each novel expected to be better than the last) in order to pay their bills (including their agents, publicists, etc., as well as rent and insurance and ISP fees). Not only must they write, they must also sell their writing.