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Originally Posted by teh603
It also helps keep old out of print books in circulation, when most publishers have decided to cease printing for whatever reason. Some of my and my mother's favorite sci-fi authors are only available in used book stores.
In the case of college students, the used book business flourished because the textbook industry has a captive audience and is gouging with abandon. How else can you explain a company releasing a new edition every year or so with no meaningful difference in content? Or why so many texts are in full color with meaningless sidebars when they could just as well be comb-bound black-and-white typewritten texts with a minimum of illustrations? Or some recent scandals involving kickback schemes where textbook companies pay professors to require their students to use a specific edition of a specific textbook?
It doesn't imply slave labor or indentured servitude. Neither does abuse of the law. All I was stating and implying is that publishers can and do abuse "work for hire" contracts to the detriment of authors. You're taking my statement and then going off the deep end with it.
There you go with that "Rights Holder" business again. Is there some overwhelming reason you can't call yourself an "author" or "writer" ?
As for "work for hire," I think we've already established that it depends on what your contract says. Even if you wrote it ten years in advance, its still a work for hire if you sign that contract. And in the days before the internet and indie ebook publishers, you had to sign that contract if you wanted out of the slushpile and into the fold of published authors.
If all the deals you're being offered are more or less the same, you'd better be ready to wait an awful long time. And then there's also publish or perish in some environments.
How does this connect with finding a better deal? It looks to me like you decided to play hardball with one publisher.
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Ah, the real writer is peeking forth. The pot is boiling. The words piling up.
One thing I forgot about was "the unsolicited work" comment. Of course you can get an agent and that slides you around that clause, but even then you have to get a start, so that it becomes easier. To get that start, you might have to sacrifice some work. You might have to "chum" the waters to attract some of the big feeders.
Depending on your level of work, and your quantity of output, that can be easy or hard. If you are going to work for 20 years on the definitive something, then you don't want to sacrifice that, though the pressure to publish may build up to be something horrendous. If though you can make a living and put out a couple of books and/or stories a year that you think are publishable, you can dangle them out there, have them snapped up by a publisher looking to make a quick buck off a beginner, and then you have added to your resume, your portfolio.
Likewise invest time in the "times." Get yourself a website. Maybe even two, one public, and one for clients and potential buyers. Facebook can be the public one. Linkedin can be public and private, and there are a number of places that can help you build up your own website for free.
I am an engineer and a computer guy, so I bought a old edition of Serif publisher for $20 at the time (a special) just to try my hand, and built my own web site over on 1and1. They have some beginning rates and free tools over there, though I have moved up to a more commercial grade so that I can lock the directories and provide my "own cloud." I got started on web siting and building web pages at Yahoo years ago, all for free. They provided beginning tools for free. I think Google and Microsoft do also. Put up samples of your work. Samples of you, your thoughts that will let people know that you are both serious, have humor and are interesting. The samples don't have to be from a book you are doing, if they are presented to the public, but they can be pieces that are written especially as a presentation, as a view port to your talent, your interests.
Don't spend all your time writing which can be easy to do, for that is what you want to do. In the beginning spend as much time merchandising or learning to merchandise as you do writing.
As for "Rights Holder," I think that term has a bad connotation in your mind, and I understand that. Start to think of yourself as a author and also as a rights holder. They can go together!