Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

When Publishing Contracts Go Bad

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the sign-on-the-dotted-line dept.

drmofe writes: "It's not just recording artists who are getting screwed over royalty payments and publishing rights. MediaChannel has an op-ed piece asserting that standard publisher-author contracts are now so restrictive that they might in fact be "restraint of trade" under the US anti-trust laws."

5 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why put up with it? by l33t+j03 · · Score: 0, Funny
    Put your Music and your Books on a website, free for download by all.

    Maybe when the rent comes due the landlord will see your website, realize that you are fighting the good fight against the man, and just let you live in his building free of charge.

    --

    Cunning linguists

  2. Welcome to America... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    the land of the screwed.

  3. at what point did this happen? by teamhasnoi · · Score: 2, Funny
    But one ray of hope does exist. As Microsoft found out recently, the antitrust laws of the United States are sometimes enforced.

    Unfortunately, this has been proven otherwise.

  4. Re:Michael Moore managed to get around the problem by ArsSineArtificio · · Score: 3, Funny

    Basically, his publishing company was either a) gonna reprint the book (at Michael's expense) with more PC language

    Wow. An argument that Michael Moore isn't PC enough? I *have* seen everything.

    --
    All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
  5. Re:An Alternative: Choose a Small Press by Croaker · · Score: 3, Funny
    Technical Writer here.

    Ah, another one, eh? Maybe we can boost the literacy rate of slashdot. Heh.

    You tend to lose most or all of your rights to your work with a typical contract for a technical book.

    Same deal here. Basically, the stuff I have written is a work for hire, the same as the stuff I have written for my company. The contract is sort of strange, for reasons I can't get into.

    And really, I'm not too worried about this. For the vast majority of technical books, the lifetime of the work is far, far shorter than what copyright allows. Unless you happen to write a classic (such as Knuth's works) your book will be out there a year, perhaps two. If you are lucky, you'll be asked to do a revised edition or two. But ultimately, the "long term" rights for these sorts of books are moot.

    Also, from talking to people, technical book publishers seem to treat their writers with a bit more repsect than general publishers. This probably comes from the fact that these publishers do have to have a high turnover in their publishing cycle, and thus value the relationship with he author a bit more. You'd figure it would be the same for the general publishers, though.

    Of course, there's still that risk of them making "Using Foo: the Motion Picture", and we'll be screwed out of royalties!