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Originally Posted by HarryT
That has nothing whatsoever to do with copyright; it's the publishing contract that the author has signed with the publisher. If they've locked themselves into an exclusive contract with no escape clause, they have nobody to blame but themselves.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
It's all a matter of leverage and desperation; industry newcomers are offered contracts that barely let them control the spelling of their name, whereas established authors can conceivably retain control of ebook rights, derivative rights, and even specify hard end dates for the contract.
A lot depends on whether the author has an ip lawyer on their side or a rubber-stamp agent and whether they are willing to walk away from a bad contract.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
That is perfectly true, but my point still stands, that it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with copyright law.
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Why should the law allow such a situation?
I think that it has been discussed in other threads that in the case of most books the author only gets the advance because the royalties don't sum up to a value above it. So in practice in the case of most books we have the situation that was before copyright law (i.e. authors get paid once) with the possibility for publishers to have monopoly.