For weekly "Inspiration" by email send 
Writers Rights Trampled
The spread of magazine "brands" over many different media will create new challenges for those of us trying to place material with magazines. Publicists must think beyond simple press releases and product samples and photographers might be asked to provide video in addition to still-photos. And do writers want to continue giving away all rights for a one-time fee (usually miserly) while your words are plastered all over the world, raking in money for the publisher?asks Meg Weaver in the 10/26/05 Your Wooden Horse News Alert.
You are not just an author, a publisher, or a publicist, you are an information provider. You must provide your knowledge in any form your buyer wants: books, reports, audios, videos, seminars, speeches and/or private consulting.says Dan Poynter in The Self-Publishing Manual
I ripped off the image from the November issue of Wired magazine's print version of an article on The Super Network: Why Yahoo! will be the center of the million-channel universe. So ... is technology trampling creative rights even as it expands opportunities? Remember my warnings about providing content for free or little pay? Already some blog posts I wrote for a fee are turning up on other websites, some of them unrelated to the blog group that hired me. Those posts are directing lucrative Google Ad Sense advertising to put pennies in pockets of others. And the test article I posted with a content provider showed up on two different websites minus the ads. When I pitched a royal fit, one company made amends, the other simply pulled all of the articles it had taken rather than add the links back in. I suspect they had scraped web page displays rather than spend time copying from the source code. [branding]
Labels: information, technology, writers
Listen to this article
posted by Georganna Hancock M.S. | 9:47 AM
6 Comments:
As it is, I face a tough time here in Singapore getting what I should for my copywriting services. People here just don't believe in paying what I know are justified market rates. And I also know that some of the stuff I write for say a brochure, ends up on a website, gets adapted for a leaflet etc. It goes everywhere it was not paid to go. And you know? I can't do anything about it. It's infuriating!!
Thanks for stopping by to join the rant! Maybe writers should start doing what website designers try: reserve the right to use the design again, only, in the case of a writer, sell only the right to use the wordy creation one time, or only in one medium (the plural of which is "media").
From the publisher's viewpoint: lock in the media properties and demand that the article is run once in a single medium, or sell one-time rights. Any republication is then chargeable, and if breached, actionable. If you have something of value, publishers like me can’t do anything but comply.
Easy for you to say, Jack, but it would take ALL writers acting together to enforce such requirements -- going back to my previous posting about writers' groups. The problem is the new, naive, desperate, or uncaring hacks who provide prose cheaply.
Recently offered on a well-known writer's mailing list as a writing opportunity:
Authors agree to assign and transfer to Simon & Schuster all rights, title and interest to the story, and to grant Simon & Schuster the right to edit their stories in whole or in part. Each author should retain a copy of their story. And authors should know their sole compensation is publication in the book.
Am I missing something here? How can this possibly make me a better writer or help me in my career?
Georganna, it is easy for me to say—because I know that as a publisher I would respect whatever we negotiated.
Post a Comment
<< Home