Internet Insanity of the Week

I've had a difficult time trying to figure out what to blog on this morning. It's not that I couldn't think about any topic I wanted to discuss. No, it's that there are so many. The internet this week has exploded with news and information about the publishing industry, any of which would be perfect for discussion here at MGC. So my problem has been in trying to narrow the field down some.

The first topic was easy to decide upon. Nathan Bransford, whose blog I've read and enjoyed for quite some time, announced Friday that he was stepping away from his position as an agent to take a job with CNET. While I wish Mr. Bransford success, I shall miss his blogs about the industry, especially his weekly round-up. You can find his announcement here.

Then came the topic that showed just how powerful the internet can be. On Thursday, Monica Gaudio recounted on Live Journal how something she'd written in 2005 had been published by Cooks Source Magazine without permission and without remuneration. (I've linked to her LJ and not just the article because the subsequent posts are as interesting as the original as she recounts now the story took on a life of its own.) Like most of us, she contacted the magazine -- several times -- before hearing back. It is the editor's response to Monica that caused all the furor and ignited the internet in righteous indignation.

Yes Monica, I have been doing this for 3 decades, having been an editor at The Voice, Housitonic Home and Connecticut Woman Magazine. I do know about copyright laws. It was "my bad" indeed, and, as the magazine is put together in long sessions, tired eyes and minds somethings forget to do these things. But honestly Monica, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy we just didn't "lift" your whole article and put someone else's name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me... ALWAYS for free!

But it gets better, boys and girls. After the magazine's facebook page was inundated with outraged posts from people who had learned of what happened from a myriad of sources indluding John Scalzi (who wins the prize for the best headline -- The Stupidest Thing an Editor With Three Decades of Experience Has Said About the Web Today) to Time Newsfeed to BoingBoing to Neil Gaiman retweeting about it, the editor of Cooks, Judith Griggs, supposedly posted this comment on the magazine's fb page:

I did apologise to Monica via email, but apparently it wasnt enough for her. To all of you, thank you for your interest in Cooks Source and Again, to Monica, I am sorry — my bad! You did find a way to get your 'pound of flesh...' we used to have 110 'friends,' we now have 1,870... wow!...Best to all, Judith.

And the roar only got louder. Not only were emails and fb posts being made to Cooks, their advertisers were being targeted as well. Some, after learning of the accusations against Cooks, pulled their advertising. Will it teach Griggs and Cooks Source a lesson about copyright? Who knows. Especially since it appears this isn't the first time they have "lifted" articles.

So, for the quick lesson, “The Internet IS NOT the public domain. There are both uncopyrighted and copyrighted materials available. Assume a work is copyrighted.” That quote is from an excellent resource on copyright law. Bookmark it. I have.

You can see more of my thoughts on this issue here.

A couple of links of interest. First, for those with agents, you might want to read this article from Scrivener's Error about the lawsuit brought by Peter Lampack Associates against author Martha Grimes for breach of contract because she didn't pay Lampack for commissions earned on a book Lampack did NOT sell. The court ruled against Lampack, fortunately imo, but it still remains to be seen if the decision will be appealed. However, do take a look at the story and supporting documentation.

Then, for those of you looking for workshops, Dean Wesley Smith has a list of workshops he's associated with here. For those short story writers out there, I'd particularly recommend the workshop with Denise Little.

So, how to wrap up what started to be a short post and ended up taking on a life of its own? What are your thoughts about the debacle that is the Cooks Source fiasco? How do we, as writers, protect ourselves from lawsuits such as the one filed by Lampack? Or should we even worry about it? Finally, do you know of any workshops coming up that you'd recommend?

My adventures with Cassandra and the ex-Soft Skull

I was up in Hobart last week, although with the Cassandra GPS leading me from traffic light to traffic light, and then up and over Grasstree Hill, it felt more like Hobart was up me (and it was not a pleasant experience) at a seminar on digital publishing. I was there to give input as an author who had actually done it, and took it as an opportunity to point out Baen to an Australian audience.

This was a lot more interesting than I'd expected, to be honest. The Guest Speaker (besides me as a sort of minor aside) was a fellow called Richard Nash, formerly boss of Soft Skull Press. If you'd asked me if I'd have more time than basic politeness for a largely literary press editor... I'd have told you avoid buying stuff on that particular street corner in future. I'm a pragmatic ex-scientist, who likes empirical evidence, logic and common sense, appealing to readers and selling books because people love them... ideas which sometimes seem to be outré in the larger world of publishing, and let's be frank, particularly in the literary fringe. The Luvvies know that us dirty Great Unwashed don't really know what is good for us, and they network to make sure that we'll get a choice from Ms Hobson. Why, the Great Unwashed might read books by people like David Drake or Weber or even Kratman, which besides being that sf-trash, might influence them or support their worthless ideas, which are not right and they ought not be allowed to have.

Of course, being a lowlife simian myself, with lowbrow tastes, I assumed this to be the case. I thought I'd hear a lot pro-establishment stuff about how publishing was fostering the arts, and how necessary high prices for DRM loaded, leased media were. (As the official rebel I came and I am still the same: The establishment these days may largely be run shall we say 70's liberal arts college grads who labelled themselves as anti-establishment... However: When you are in charge of the system: you are are the establishment, no matter what your back-history was. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish their conduct from that which they once loathed. ‘Be good little proles and stick with our status quo, because we know what is good for you'... which has never been something I was much good at accepting.)

Okay so I was wrong. Sorry.

Both Kate Eltham's (from the Queensland Writer's association) presentation and Richard's made a lot of sense. And Kate was possibly less flattering about DRM than I would be (although more professional and dispassionate about it. Hey, I'm just an author, outspoken, opinionated and really silly). And Kate is even more enthusiastic about the need for REAL data than I am. I LIKE that!

I am still not sure just how Richard hopes to make money out of his company, Cursor, but I found a lot of common ground, and some refreshing ideas. I was amused to see his ideas of about advances and the negative effect these have on both sides of the equation (which I wrote about only last week). His idea of copyright only being for a 3 year period was... stunningly refreshing. (3 years as an initial grant and thereafter renewed annually -- makes sense to me -- my publisher is doing a good job, I'll renew. The book has taken off -- let's look at new terms. The publisher demanded every right under the sun and sold none of them, wasting opportunity and reducing my income? Goodbye. The book didn't make much, and is barely selling -- they want out? Fair enough.)

Perhaps because he was talking to writer-audience he was pitching this at making business sense for writers -- and in an electronic publishing world where traditional publishers are not, shall we say, offering much added value for what they want back, and appear lining themselves up to be the weakest link for most established names... perhaps he is the future -- publishing where publishers make themselves attractive to writers for reasons other than just access to retail space and an advance.

I think he was quite similarly taken aback that Baen had years head start on many of the ideas, and that yes, his ‘new' ideas were Jim's ideas. But he seemed to be taking notice.

Some of the concepts - like there is not enough piracy :-) - are startling enough to make me sit up and take notice. And I have been saying some of the same things for years too -- we're NOT getting most of the potential market out there. True - he was talking in price points, I'm talking about ‘what various reader niches want to read' and matching them to writers - but that too he does start to address by the idea of social recommendation networks (Something Ori has brought up here).

So: how long should copyright be sold for?
How long should it be?
How can publishing move to be an essential part of recognised names business (besides, well, making cutting them out illegal or collaborating with retail - which seem to be the possibilities being explored, eh)
How do we get those social recommendation networks up?

The (writers) Eureka Stockade.

I belong to a novelist’s group and the other day the Google thing rumbled into the usual piracy war. And people holding out about copyright and theft... I’m not going to go into the whole piracy war again. You all know where I stand on it: that it is largely a self-inflicted injury, best solved not by DRM but by reasonable prices and reasonable convenience and availability. Your milage may vary.

What I am going to talk about is copyright and its purpose. Because that’s a debate I believe we have start again.

The purpose of copyright, plain and simple, is to allow the creators of duplicable intellectual property to make a living. To nuture and foster the arts in a better fashion than a patron or storyteller’s bowl did.

The purpose of copyright is NOT (and expressly NOT) to look after look after retail. Or to shelter distributors, publishers, movie production houses or music producers.
Amazon, Google, EMI, Microsoft and every publishing house out there SHOULD HAVE NO INTEREST AT ALL IN COPYRIGHT if it is serving its purpose. If they’re all trotting off with multi-million dollar suits about copyright and who owns it... something is very wrong. If that is all (or even principally) that it is doing: It’s a pointless, worthless law and needs to scrapped, struck from the statute books and buried like ‘patrons’ as having failed in its purpose. They need something that protects creators. The rest are effectively replacable and add little value to society.

And it has failed.

It’s purpose, remember, was to allow the creators of intellectual property -- the most valuable people in any society - without whom George Bezos has no business, and the directors of EMI are out selling vegetables -- TO MAKE A LIVING. To nuture and to foster the creators.
It’s failed and failed dismally. Copyright isn’t just there for JRR Tolkein’s heirs, or Disney or even JK Rowlings. It’s there to nurture the BOTTOM of the system too. None of the above are struggling to make a living. 95% of published authors, who are earning from copyright, are. Therefore, either they should not be in the ‘creation’ business, or there is a problem with how the law has fulfilled its purpose. In my opinion, it has failed almost completely. That’s why Rowena was talking about other ways of writers making a living. Talking about state support. Talking about taking second jobs.

That’s just wrong, gentlemen, ladies, and other animals. We have an international law intented for the purpose of selecting the best talent and letting it grow and flourish. That means that the governments of the world perceived the value of CREATORS. The law has failed, been subverted and perverted. It’s not doing it’s job and now, and with the electronic medium as a potential breakout area, all of the parties who have battened onto the income that was intended for the creators of intellectual property... are trying to keep the status quo, or in Google’s case, muscle in. Leaping up and down... and as the only shred of legitimacy they have for that claim is (hollow laughter) the public interest (See the Australian parallel importation debate, where the principal price drivers are claiming they want to give the public cheaper books) and the supposed interest of the creators. Which they are ‘protecting’, see (and maybe some of the publishers are. Baen can at least claim to be doing a better job than others - but it is still not enough to live on in many cases. And the rest of the chain really can't even say that much.) Telling us that even the crumb we have been left, will be taken away. And many of us are so frightened and desperate that we’re falling in with it.

We need to back off from this. Look at the ‘living’ we earn. Look at the way that copyright derived income is divided up (in most cases more than 90% goes to parties who are not the creators). Look, dispassionately, at the costs in the electronic arena. Look dispassionately at costs overall: Authors’ incomes are calculated as a ‘gross’ under the weird assumption that this is all ‘profit’ - that there are no staff who need to earn enough to pay their COL bills, no equipment, no office, no phones, no medical. Yet profit in every other step in publishing is considered as Nett -- profit after those things are taken off. You will frequently hear the loud protestation from the rest of the chain that they make scant profits...say 3 or 5%. But, if you make the assumption that as they’re all living off the proceeds of the law to allow the creator to earn a living... then surely the creator’s ‘profit’ should only be calculated from point at which they are making a living wage for the most valuable part of the chain. Most authors - 90% - would smile if their profit from the book they took a year to write was calculated from a nett position and that was only 3% -- even if they were being paid minimum hourly wage, and time and half for overtime (I’d be earning more than 50K a year - at minimum wage ;-). I wish I did - and I’d be very happy with 3% profit on that, let alone plus the costs of office, equipment, medical etc.)

There has to be a better way of doing this: either we divest ourselves of that chain, and hire the necessary part on a work for hire basis -- which has a lot going for it in the electronic field, or we consider letting the corporates have copyright to play ducks and drakes with (which is what to all intents and purposes for all but a small percentage they do now) and cop out of it, and just work for hire, charging the sort of rates per hour that other skilled professionals who work for hire do.

Or has anyone else got any other suggestions or modifications? Because as it stands, copyright is not succeeding in its purpose. Most of us are not making a living. And it’s not nurturing and fostering the creative arts.

Or do you think writing should be an amatuer, part-time profession?