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Originally Posted by Hitch
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.
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.
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Hitch, I have nothing against anybody going for the "brass ring". I have no problem with them becoming raging successes, nor do I have a problem with them failing abjectly. What I do object to is changing the rules of the game retroactively.
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Originally Posted by Hitch
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.
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Maybe they need better actuaries...Hitch, you are totally overlooking the law of large numbers. Would you personally bet your life saving on a deal that you had honest odds on 60/40 in your favor? Of course not, you couldn't afford the risk. How about 1000 bets with the same odds, each of 1/1000th of your total wealth. You'd jump on it, high order probability of 10% payoff, with low risk. (You can draw your own Bell Curve...)
What do you think those big intermediaries are doing? They're playing the part of being the House at a Casino. Some big losses, some big wins, with the odds in favor (on average) to the House. If they're not making money, then they need to reprice the inflows and the outflows better in order to match the odds.
These "Casinos" were formed under the rules that anything that was left over after a period of time (56 years from 1909 to 1976) was to be given back to the people who set the rules that allows those "Casinos" in the first place. Everybody and his dog knew the rules, both the House
and the gamblers (creators). But towards the end of those 56 years, the House ("Casino") realized that OMG, there will be money that we have to give away. We can't have this, and quick, politician, here's your bribe, let us keep the money. We'll ever cut the winning gamblers in on the deal. (and who cares about the losers.) Sorry, I don't accept that logic. It's just corruption...
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Originally Posted by Hitch
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?
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?
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What happens to the widow and family of a free-lance computer programmer (who is allowed no copyrights) under the same circumstances? Or an inventor? Is his/her labor less worthy? Or is having a copyright a special class over and above everybody else in the world? Copyright is the <only> form of labor that is treated as capital. It was a special class created by the public for a limited duration, for a specific reason. The reason was for the <long term> benefit of the public, <not> for the long term benefit of the creator. Don't take my word for it, study the history of copyright...
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Originally Posted by Hitch
Sorry, I must have missed your citation for the reasoning/support on this, can you post it again?
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http://yarchive.net/macaulay/copyright.html
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Originally Posted by Hitch
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
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You're seeing the Law of Unintended Consquences in the Orphaned Art situation now. But, excuse me, they were just wanna-bes, they don't matter...
And as I pointed out 56 years seemed to work just fine....Easy to measure, and long enough for the original purpose.
Here's a unintended consequence that may hit most people here. I have pictures from WWII of my father and other people in his outfit. Candid snapshots. Legally I can't copy them. Somebody else took the pictures (unknown to me at this distance) that person(s) hold the copyright, not me. And the same thing holds true for any of the old family photos.
You may correctly note that nobody will sue, but that's not the point. The point is that the unintended consequence of stretching copyright, is to legally prevent me from preserving my own history....