Navigating Indieworld Discussing All Things Indie discussion

Saw this on Indies Unlimited this morning:

https://kriswrites.com/2018/10/24/bus...

Theodore, Thank you for sharing this article on this important issue. Hugs

Great read, thank you for sharing!

Sam, Marie...good reasons NOT to seek an agent. Keep the IP for yourself.

Thanks, Ted! Reaffirms all my decision making. Appreciate the share.

Carmel wrote: "Thanks, Ted! Reaffirms all my decision making. Appreciate the share."

Roger, that.

Is Ms. Rusch an indie author now? Last I heard, she was a traditionally published author. She'd be knowledgeable in that end of the business and she's right to advise caution, but some of what she's said sounds a bit muddled to me, and overlooks a few things.

There's a difference between a work's copyright and the rights the copyright holder licenses to others, such as a publisher. I would run away from any contract that transferred the copyright, but it's impossible to have a publishing contract that doesn't license out some rights. (Without such a license , the publisher isn't legally allowed to publish anything.) Publishers aren't stealing pieces of copyright from authors. The copyright is either yours in its entirety or it's not, and it's only not yours if you specifically gave it away or sold it.

Moreover, registration of a copyright does not give you the copyright. You legally own the copyright as soon as a work is created. Registration is only necessary in order to sue somebody for infringement, and you are allowed to register after the alleged infringement occurs. Registration does probably give you some evidence as to the time of the work's creation and thus when you owned it, but that's about it.

Publishing companies have always paid royalties of (roughly speaking) between 8% and 15% on book sales. That's not new. However, that's not a rip-off as such, because the publisher is the one who pays to produce books, so they bear all the costs of production, including editing, layout, printing, warehousing, distribution, etc. They aren't merely raking in 85% to 92% of the revenue, they are shelling it back out to get the book out into the world. Profit is whatever is left over. There is a big difference between revenues and profits. A lot of indies find cheap ways to do these things and keep as much of the revenue as possible, but if you paid market rates for all these services, you wouldn't be making more than 15% profit on most print books unless you managed to sell a whole lot of them. (Ebooks are less expensive, but they still cost some money to produce.)

Publishing companies have always tried to get licenses to as many subsidiary rights as possible. They should always pay royalties on such usages, and the rates should be specified in the contract. If they can sell them (which is a big if in most cases), then yes, they will probably make a lot. Film rights, for example, can net a publisher a great deal of money, but usually the royalty rates on such sales are higher, too, so usually authors make out pretty well on them. In fact, though, the chances of selling film rights are pretty poor. So mostly, nobody makes anything on them.

Obviously caution is a good thing if going the traditional route, as is having a lawyer. And I don't doubt that corporations are always looking for ways to boost their revenues and profits, so yes, buyer beware. But you don't give away pieces of copyright, you license specific rights. And the royalty you get from a trad publisher isn't directly comparable to what Amazon gives you after they take their listing fee (they don't actually pay you a royalty; they take a cut of your revenue for doing nothing more than listing your book on their website).

I'm not ranting. I'm just speaking as someone who has worked both sides of the street: writer and owner of a tiny little publishing company, complete with contracts, royalties, and subsidiary rights. I don't disagree with Ms. Rusch in principle, but I think the waters are so muddy that it pays to be as accurate as possible.

Dale wrote: "Is Ms. Rusch an indie author now? Last I heard, she was a traditionally published author. She'd be knowledgeable in that end of the business and she's right to advise caution, but some of what she'..."

Good info, Dale.

The lawyer that Michael is working with is specific about intellectual property. While he has a publisher, they will only get book sales. If the studios pick up his book the author holds all the rights on the intellectual property- meaning the characters and storyline. If for instance, all the income from Harry Potter rides at Disney go to Rowling rather than her publisher. They are only making money on her book sales, (not a bad thing) but merchandise and all the rest of it go directly to Rowling.
I trademarked my character, Captain No Beard. Soon after I published, someone swiped my character. I found a site dedicated to it and I sued for the rights. I proved that I created him before they registered him and they awarded me the trademark. It was an expensive thing to do, by I wanted to protect my intellectual property just in case it went viral. It didn't but I didn't want to find someone telling me to unpublish the characters I invented.