Quote:
Originally Posted by haertig
There is no requirement that someone show they are legit, that is the base assumption. The requirement falls onto the person who is saying they are not legit to prove so. Simpy being a small company with a small presence does not (should not) call your integrity into question.
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Over time, dealing with small single author publishers is something buyers will have to get used to, especially for older author catalogs. Especially on the ebook side where there is significantly more money to be made bypassing the traditional publisher. Now, these folks aren't self-publishing, but rather, almost certainly, their agent is running the operation. The term is "agent-assisted publishing". (Lois Bujold has been doing that with her recent novellas.)
What makes it a certainty is that copyright law has a rarely discussed clause that can be used to reclaim copyrights, trumping vintage contracts after 25-35 years.
https://www.copyright.gov/docs/203.html
There are complex hoops to jump through but it is being increasingly being executed now that a lot of content has passed the required wait time and Indie publishing of books and music is a viable path, especially agent-assisted publishing.
Zelazny is a big enough name that recovering the copyrights and either negotiating new print deals or setting up mini-imprints pays off, especially for ebooks and audio books.
And it's not just musicians and authors recovering copyrights. It is increasingly happening on the video side:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/th...rights-1244737
Quote:
Terminator isn't an anomaly, it's a preview of what's to come. In the late 1970s, Congress amended the law to allow authors to grab back rights from studios after waiting a few decades. Until now, the termination provision has largely been exploited by musicians, not screenwriters. But records show a flurry of termination notices in the past year — under law, they can come 35 years after publication — which threatens to unsettle who owns the ability to make sequels and reboots of iconic films from the mid- to late-'80s.
More works that could change hands: Gary K. Wolf is looking to terminate Disney's rights to the book that became Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The heirs of Beetlejuice screenwriter Michael McDowell aim to do the same for the script to the 1988 Warner Bros. film. The family of novelist Roderick Thorp is terminating Fox's grip on Nothing Lasts Forever, aka Die Hard. Other works subject to termination include Predator and Nightmare on Elm Street, with authors like Stephen King and David Mamet also on the warpath.
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In the case of TERMINATOR and PREDATOR they have been so poorly managed by the studios that recovering copyright doesn't even have to be driven by money.
