Chump Change

[james_davis_nicoll]

John Scalzi explains why aspiring authors should not sell stories to Dragon Magazine.

Comments

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

Is it because they're not publishing anymore? :)

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Apparently it has risen from the dead and it wants to acquire all rights to stories for three to six cents a word.

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

I agree with the third comment to the piece, actually - it's the ready supply of "gamers-with-pencils" that makes it possible. Can't find a good writer? Find a gamer with a pencil, and make his (or her) day.

Of course, this is why the fiction in Dragon has sucked giant donkey balls through garden hoses for many years.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Hey, the same could be said for that horrible first revival of Amazing Stories through WotC back in the late Nineties. Between the WotC Cat Piss Men who insisted that Amazing Stories had to be a licensed venue for fanfiction and the old failed English majors from TSR who thought that this would be a way toward becoming real editors (I know this because at least four of the darlings were bridesmaids at my sister's wedding), the real surprise has always been "And why do you keep trying to bring it back if the same retards are going to be in charge of the final product?"

[thebitterguy]

I think WotC is publishing it web only now.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Yes. Yanking "Dungeon" and "Dragon" back from Paizo was part of Hasbro's big "retrieve all IP" manoeuvre late last year/early this year (I think that was the timing). Much speculation whirled around on why this was and what would be made of it.

WotC is intending to use the "Dragon" brand name to publish stuff online through subscription. Currently that subscription is free (I believe); most probably coincidental with the release of the next iteration of their D&D roleplaying game, that subscription will cost money.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Boy, it's nice to know that all of the Marquette University brats who were snorting up the royalty money owed TSR's novel writers have finally come on their own at WotC/Hasbro. And what's really scary is that they'll still be flooded with submissions from wannabes and Cat Piss Men who want to believe that they won't get ripped off later in exchange for getting published today.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I fail to see how signing a contract in good faith constitutes "ripping off". The terms are there for you to read. If you choose to sign, that's your beeswax. "Ripping off" intimates that someone is taking advantage of someone here, and I just don't buy that. If people weren't willing to give away all their rights to their hard work, then Hasbro would have to depend on salaried in-house creative talent to provide their content. Just because some folks are willing to give away rights to their creative work for a modest fee, shouldn't be skin off the nose of others, should it?

And if you say "of course it should", then I can happily introduce you to the scions of the open-source software movement...

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

It might be because those likely to read the terms might not comprehend the full meaning of what they are agreeing to should they elect to sign. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing - if their only desire is to be published in Dragon magazine because they are big fans of D&D and they have no thoughts of moving on to bigger and better things, then it really doesn't matter. But, if they have aspirations beyond that, then yes, it could be considered ripping an inexperienced, not-yet-savvy writer off.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

If you're of an age to sign a contract where that signature is legally binding, then you're of an age to understand you should not sign a legally binding contract unless you (a) understand its provisions, or (b) are willing to live with the consequences of your not understanding them. Just because it's a hobby-game publisher, and just because one is a hobbyist, doesn't make signing a contract any less potentially serious than if one were, say, signing one's mortgage papers.

Contracts, [legal] 'competence', and consciousness

[tsm-in-toronto.livejournal.com]

Yes, but ...

... for example, how many of us click on the "I accept" button, for EULA terms and conditions of software we're downloading from the net, without reading the things at all. Forget understanding them (chock full of technical terms of art within the sub-disciplines of contract & intellectual property, as they typically are), I mean, without reading them. I'd say, 50%-90% of downloaders, especially yootz, who can be quite innocent of the idea of The Law, no matter what their mark was in their High School "how a bill becomes a law" civics course.

... how many of us read the back of a theatre or sporting event ticket, when we buy it?

And so on.

The truth is, despite living in litigious societies (I was told, but have never been able to confirm it, that USians, with about 5% of the world's population, have about 50% of the world's lawyers), considerable numbers of us float about within the legal soup that surrounds us, like so many plankters adrift in a tropical sea, unaware of the currents & tides, but subject to them nonetheless.

I'd warrant (subject to the laws of the Province of Ontario, void where prohibited by law), that your typical 19- or 23-year old GM who, inspired by the last five months of his or her campaign, has written a marvelous tale of Zak the Barbarian and the Flying Monkeys of Doom, who rushes it off to fester in the slush-piles of That Famous Publishing House, Inc., and who gets a non-rejection-slip reply, simply isn't equipped, culturally, to understand the idea of the need, to hire someone to interpret what rights, exactly, are being offered-to-buy.

And, let's get real: the 9,375-word tale of Zak and those Doomish Flying Monkeys, at (say) 4 cents a word, will bring in $375.00 -- a fortune to someone who's never sold a story before, but not the sort of revenue stream out of which you fund a consultation with an intellectual property lawyer at $500/hr., to read the contract. As if.

So, the only thing that's keeping this [the topic of discussion, broadly] from being a rip-off of considerable proportion, across the entire industry, is the fact that most first sales are not usually (yes, there are exceptions) going to be a repeat author's finest, most re-printed works.

So: yeah, adults (>18) are responsible for reading the terms, etc. Yeah, sure. And I guess you've read the entire criminal code and income tax Act from the jurisdiction within which you live, right? But: iggeranx of The Law is "no excuse", eh? So, don't cry for me Argentinasaurus (http://www.gavinrymill.com/dinosaurs/giants/argentinasaurus.gif) if you get arrested for some obscure tax thing, right? (Don't think I'm being all super-pompous-like, here -- I ain't read 'em, either).

I suppose I'm supposed to conclude here with some brilliant concluding point, but I don't really have one -- as a practical matter, people simply don't read contracts ('til they've been burned), that's all.

Just sayin'.

(And anyway, I have to leave now with these RCMP officers ... some obscure tax thing, apparently.)

Re: Contracts, [legal] 'competence', and consciousness

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

people simply don't read contracts ('til they've been burned)

But to argue that the people offering the deal are "ripping off" your budding young author is disingenuous. They're not. They're offering very poor terms for work for hire. If the budding young author is old enough to sign a contract and get paid for the work, then it's the budding young author's choice to accept the terms for work, reject them, or attempt to negotiate better ones.

Sympathize with their plight? Sure. Educate them? Sure.

But please don't pretend that the publisher is some big awful boogie monster bent on world domination. They're playing by the rules. (Although, according to the discussion James and I had last night about this, their track record on playing by the rules is not exactly minty-fresh so their business practices do deserve a certain amount of skepticism.)

Is the publisher offering incredibly poor terms, relatively, in their contracts? Yes. Are they behaving unethically by doing so? I have a hard time believing that.

Re: Contracts, [legal] 'competence', and consciousness

[tsm-in-toronto.livejournal.com]

In all honesty, I can't say I really disagree with what you are saying, here.

I think the problem is, the exact, precise centre of gravity of the topic of conversation here, has been bouncing around a bit with each added comment.

I think the point I was trying to make was simply, "all kinds of people, especially people who are young, or who are [very] new to a given sort of transaction that is governed by Rules of Law -- large numbers of such people like that are often truly terribly, even painful-to-watch-ly (pretend that's a word) naive."

Your reply is [if I am understanding you properly!], that Hasbro and its corporate avatars and suchlike are positioning themselves to charge what the market will bear (in terms of their counter-offer terms, for the 3-6 cents a word they offer), and who can fault them for that?

And I guess you're right. It's economics. It's how markets decide what a thing is worth. And so on. So, how could it be a "rip off"? Sure.

I see your point. so when you write:

Is the publisher offering incredibly poor terms, relatively, in their contracts? Yes.
Are they behaving unethically by doing so? I have a hard time believing that.

... a meaningful and helpful counterpoint probably revolves around figuring out how we could agree on a shared meaning (if that is possible) for "behaving unethically".

For example, it is possible (I do not know if this is so, I'm being hypothetical), that the deliberate, discuss-it-around-a-corporate boardroom-and-vote-in-favour-aye-carried corporate strategy here is one of deliberately targetting the "naive" authors I mention above, because some corporate-internal study of the industry shows that 0.0027% of the things arriving at a slush pile from naive, guileless new authors end up making $50M or more in film rights within 25 years, or something. Hence a deliberate corporate effort: "target the naive". If so: -- unethical [IMHO].

But then, I suppose lions and hyenas culling the weak and defenceless from the zebra herd by that same sort of reasoning, would also be "unethical" (insofar as that is not a category mistake, on the grounds that "ethics" aren't expected of animals).

But, if the pricing/rights policy under discussion here is accidental (the result of the mindless cutting and pasting of past contractual boiler-plate, for example, as some comments here and on the other site seem to imply), or was just an arbitrary "try and grab as much IP as you can for as low a price as you can" strategy, with no thought at all having been given to the legal sophistication of the counter-party prospective contributing authors: -- then, I suppose, not-unethical [again, IMHO].

As I imply above, -- at this point, the conversation ceases to be about contractual terms, and turns to being more about how one defines "ethical".

[You will notice we are drifting perilously close to the event horizon of the Marxist "Labour Theory of Value" debate. Were we to fall fully within its fatal gravitational tides, time would dilate for us, but eventually we would both be shredded into our constituent atoms, to be spat out the arse-end of a worm-hole, somewhere, many parsecs and aeons from here ... -- a fate best avoided, I would humbly suggest...]

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Standards are falling. Back when I did some work-for-hire for Games Workshop Books back in 1989-90, I was grateful for the pittance they were paying me for fiction.

(£1000 for a 7000 word novelette is just a little bit more than the WotC clowns are offering -- about £204 pro-rata at the current exchange rate. But still. And then GW turned around and started paying royalties on top ...)

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the world of Web2.0 content provision. 8)

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

Even more opportunities for gamers to Tell You About Their Character.

[tsm-in-toronto.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but ... doing so builds character, doesn't it? (snicker)

[maruad.livejournal.com]

At the begining of my fannish days (which started in 1983 ended a little over a decade ago) I remember hearing what a rip-off (still a popular term then) it was to sell short stories to the magazine trade. Especially if you were throwing something over the transom. The publishers assumption was you were turning over all rights, including movie and reprint, for what ever they published. All aspiring writers were being warned by seasoned professionals of the risks they were taking with their work. For some reason Spider Robinson and Stardance come to mind but maybe I am wrong.*

I remember Robert Aspirin speaking at the first Keycon in Winnipeg, discussing the economics of writing genre fiction for a living (evidently he had wanted to write action adventure type books but ended up in sf/f). I also remember hearing at more than one convention, in Mpls/StPaul area (probably early 4th Street Fantasy cons), about how the price structure and publishing rights worked. Short SF/F paid poorly (although maybe not as bad as Dragon) and you were assumed to be relinquishing your rights when you sent something to be published in any of the pulps.

Having said that I suspect big name writers were not giving up their rights and had negotiated special rates before sending/relinquishing anything to the pulps. I remember seeing a serialization of one of the Dune novels in one pulp and I doubt that Frank Herbert gave up anything more the the rights to print it the one time.

* Spider comment was a late add... I have to run to an appointment or I would look it up.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

The publishers assumption was you were turning over all rights, including movie and reprint, for what ever they published.

This is not my memory of common practice a generation ago, at least not outside the gaming magazines.

[(Anonymous)]

"The publishers assumption was you were turning over all rights, including movie and reprint, for what ever they published."

'This is not my memory of common practice a generation ago, at least not outside the gaming magazines.'

Asimov mentions this in his autobiography. Street and Smith bought all rights, but in practice reverted all rights to the author. Thus when Asimov sold movie rights to Welles in the late 1940s, he had to ask S&S for permission, but S&S did not refuse or take a cut.

Why they bought all rights in the first place I do not know. A hedge against the possibility that one of their writers would turn out to be Stephen King, I suppose.

William Hyde

[maruad.livejournal.com]

Another factor here may be that I spent almost all my conventions sleep deprived and drunk/hungover until I learned to stop attending programming there by eliminating much of the sleep deprived portion of that equation. By then I was travelling to MPLS/STPL several times a year... damn I may have been a member of mnnstf.

Anyway it may be I was confusing advice about 1st time novelists with 1st time short storyists (is that a word... doubt it) although I thought it was an issue for authors who wanted to publish anthologies of their own work. I guess the trick is to ask an author who published multiply short stories and then tried to put together an anthology.

I DO remember hearing something dodgy about standard book contracts from the 1980's and movie rights but I again, cannot remember the details.

There really was a lot of tremendous advice at the early 4th street fantasy cons but I guess I am not the person to repeat it accurately. Probably one of the Scribblies could as they were heavily involved in them.

Alternatives

[montedavis.livejournal.com]

"Don’t be afraid! We won’t make an author of you, while there’s an honest trade to be learnt, or brick-making to turn to."

Mr. Brownlow in Oliver Twist