[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Art for art's sake....I don't think that is quite the issue. The issue is that in any creative endevor, most of the time people will fail. You can sneer and call the failures wanna-bees, but the fact is only a few people of any artistic endevor are commercial sucessful. And of those, a rare one will be come a mega-success. The right place, the right time, the right product....Try hitting that triple bullseye.

I don't disagree with this. I suspect that 99.95% of all would-be professional ballplayers fail, somewhere along the line, as do 99.95% of all would-be Olympic skaters, and on and on. Only 00.05% of all actors and actresses who decide to become stars do so. If we're talking about the pointy end, then most won't make it. Them's the breaks. The everyday slob with a job at the factory or making ebooks WILL make it, because his/her goals are set more realistically, or simply lower--paying the mortgage and the like.

Just because an author doesn't earn 7 digits doesn't make him or her a failed artist. Are all those other people still throwing pitches, doing triple-axels and acting at community theater for the "love of it?" Why is "art" the only thing that, apparently, has some requirement that they all keep trying and going, when we tell failed actresses to go home to (wherever) or washed-up ballplayers (or high school seniors) that they simply aren't good enough? If you had a buddy who couldn't field, you wouldn't tell him at 30 to keep trying out for a Pro Ball team, would you?

Vis-a-vis hitting the triple bullseye--try launching a company. Same thing. There's not one thing different about someone starting a new restaurant, becoming a supermodel, launching a company, building an hotel, etc., than there is becoming a brand-name author or painter or what-have-you. That's called "big success." There's a reason it's called "BIG success;" because not everyone achieves it. Most restaurants fail in their first year, as we all know, and only 1 in every 7 will still be open in 5.

And it has nothing to do with skill or quality. Sorry, not true. I've seen master artists have their works ignored, and I've seen pig slop become a runaway success.

Yes, I've certainly seen pig slop become runaway bestsellers; I could name a lot of books on the top lists that wouldn't earn me any friends here, no doubt. What does that have to do with copyright?

The point about art for art's sake in cold-bloodedly blunt. You had better enjoy doing it for it's own sake, because the odds are massively against you making a comfortable living off of it. You can't just look at the sucesses, just like you can't trade a stock chart out of the middle. Van Gogh was a failed artist in his lifetime. Nobody had even heard of Emily Dickinson in her lifetime. H P Lovecraft invented the modern horror genre, and lived and died in abject poverty. E.E.Smith PH.D. invented space opera, and bluntly said that he made more money laying bricks that he did writing. Bad quality? His works stayed in print from the late 1950's for nearly 50 years in paperback. (He died in 1965.) Frank Herbert almost never got Dune published in the 1960's. Would he have been a wanna-bee if it hadn't got published?

Yes, as I just said--exactly like anyone else in any other profession in which they desire to become a household name or a runaway bestseller. So what? And, yes: if Frank Herbert, who is one of my all-time favorite authors, had not been published, he would have been a "wanna-be." That's the harsh truth of it. Some make it, many don't. As we've seen with the self-pubbing boom, there are many, many good reasons for this, too.

As to money and copyright....Follow the money. Who gets most of it? The artist? Shucks no, the middleman gets it. Whether that middle man is a Hollywood Studio, a Music Label, or a Publishing Company, they get most of the money. And being Corporations, they insist that they deserve every possible dime that can be milked from these copyrights - forever. Sure they'll throw the few alms they are required to the artist and/or heirs, but make no mistake, they don't give a D.R.A. about the artists in question. The art's just something to flog...And the artist's cut is just a tax, a tax they don't even have to pay if they don't exploit it. You can't get a sweeter deal than that - if you are a middleman.

This sounds like a bit of a rant against the whole "evil corporation" shtick, and I'm not going to have that fight. Most of my clients are perfectly good midlist authors who took their rights back, and are making their mortgages by the sweat of their own brow, sans agent or publisher. Given that we're talking about copyrights, today, then we should consider this in light of the new publishing paradigm, not whether or not MGM owned the rights to some movie back in the day over which Star X got screwed. It happens.

Part of the reason it happens is because those companies--those movie companies, those publishers, etc., take all the monetary risks. No, they don't put in the creation time; but they put up all the money upfront to make the book, in so many ways. They pay for those 5,000 review ARCS that get sent to every reviewer in every bohunk town in the US (or wherever).

They pay the thousands to the editor, to make it readable. They pay the cover creator (in the trades, this is thousands, not hundreds, of dollars). They pay for any advertising, and they work that book for 6-12 months before it ever hits the shelves, marketing-wise. Sorry, but, that's the way of life--he who puts in the cash gets to earn the biggest share.

This is the way in any business deal, not simply IP or publishing. I've never understood why people think that the companies and individuals putting in the cash shouldn't get fed at the trough first. It's simple risk-reward. You think that publishers would do all that--given that the vast majority of books published, by trade pubs, never even EARN OUT THEIR ADVANCES to the author--if they couldn't count on a hit feeding them every once in a while? Really?

None of you, it seems, ever considers how many books a Random House and its imprints publishes that not only don't hit, but don't even pay them back for having done all the economic heavy lifting in the first place. I can tell from the discussion that there is not a single person here from inside a publishing house, because they would tell you exactly what the numbers are--and they're not pretty.

But the whole copyright deal was based on the <public>, not the creator, granting the limited monopoly to encourage more creation of copyright items (art). The question is - how long is the optimum length to encourage more creation? Not grant a perpetual source of income for Corporation, not to feed the widow(er), the grandkids, or the great-great-great grandkids of the artist. But to encourage the artist to create more?

Why shouldn't it feed the widow and the grandkids? Why should a creator create, if he can't leave his earnings and future earnings to his family?

And the ultimate point about encouraging the the creator - dead creators don't create.

No, but live ones with families certainly do. It boggles my mind that you all think that authors are so self-centered that they won't care if their copyright expires upon their death, leaving their families with nothing, just so some people can read their books for free a few years earlier.

I have an author who died recently. His widow and family are supported, entirely, by his royalties from his lifetime of writing. His widow is on various life-assistance machines. Would you like to come over and pull the plug, or would you just like some anonymous soul to do it for you?

The historical record shows that a 56 year copyright is adequate to produce the necessary incentive. And I can use the period from 1909 to 1976, as an example of all the art that was created under the 56 copyright. If certain artworks were not created under these terms, because they were too short, I cannot see the gain later on by extending the copyright in the post 1976 era. Now There may be arguements for somewhat longer, and maybe a little shorter (McCauley favored 42 years), but continually extending copyright does nothing but enrich the middlemen. It is even contraproductive, as it merely provides incentives to milk old material, rather than create new material...

Sorry, I must have missed your citation for the reasoning/support on this, can you post it again?

I'd also think that at least some of you ought to consider what would happen to book prices if an author knew that he wouldn't be earning out over 20 years, or he couldn't leave ongoing royalties to his children. They'll GO UP, not down, because authors will want more money upfront to sell their stories, not less, so that they can bank it, and thus not have it taken away upon their demise. Law of Unintended Consequences, anyone?

Hitch