Ignorant question

[james_davis_nicoll]

Sometimes in old anthologies, the stories are copyright the magazines the stories first appeared in. Did magazines used to buy full rights?

Comments

[maruad]

IIRC that it was standard for magazines to get full rights. I remember people talking about this back in the 1980s. Now, whether those people I was talking to knew what they were talking about or not, I can't say.

[estrevan]

Looks like it, yes - I’m seeing a certain amount of 50s and 60s magazine SF dropping out of copyright because the magazine folded long before the author died. Downside is, it tends either to be very minor work from famous names or magazine edits of stories that are better known in another version.

[(Anonymous)]

I believe Asimov mentions in his memoirs that all rights were bought, but that movie rights were returned to the author for the asking. He received $250 from Orson Welles for the movie rights to a story, money that Astounding could have claimed but did not.

When I started reading SF, my mother told me that she had read some of these stories in the 40s in the "Star Weekly", implying that reprint rights were sold to the Star. I have never in any SF memoir come across mention of payments to Asimov or others from these sales. And when describing his early years, Asimov pays close attention to monies received.

But the SW also published a lot of original SF-ish stuff, by writers I've never heard of. This rather swamps the few searches I've done and I've been unable to confirm the reprint story. Perhaps she read them elsewhere.

William Hyde