Quote:
Originally Posted by ProfCrash
That does not mean that it is not seen by many folks as controlling behavior that has put them off of buying her products in the future. She has a right to be a control freak and I have a right to not buy her work in the future. She is not going to miss my money, it is but a drop in the ocean, but I would hope that someone is collecting how people are responding to her power play and letting her know that it has not been well received by a decent number of folks.
|
The type of control she has over the digital rights to the books is pretty huge. Sure, Scholastic and Bloomsbury are getting a cut of the profit, but ultimately it was Rowling who decreed how and where the books were going to be distributed. This is the type of control that I
wish other people in the entertainment industry had over their work. At the end of the day, the only person who should decide what happens is the person the creative work came from, whether that be a songwriter or a writer, and not some executive cooped up in an office.
(I realize I'm trying to correlate Rowling's control with the lack of control music artists face when dealing with record labels, which is probably out of place in this kind of topic, but stick with me.)
When Trent Reznor left Interscope and formed his own independent label, he was able to produce and distribute his music as he saw fit and
without all the red tape that came with a major record label. This also benefited the fans; where else can you announce a new album and then release it a week later?
I think what Rowling did was smart, and I hope that this is another step in reducing how much power publishers have over digital distribution. Was it a little extreme to have Pottermore be the go-to source to purchase the Harry Potter books? Sure; after all, Reznor's post-Interscope works are available on iTunes and Amazon. But Reznor also hasn't set up something the likes of Pottermore where it's ostensibly supposed to be
the Harry Potter site.
tl;dr Better to leave the digital rights to the person who wrote the books in the first place, for better or for worse, because at the end of the day it's their work.