Work For Hire contracts are garbage and more ubiquitous than many people are aware.
That RPG tie-in novel you like? Almost certainly work for hire from a staffer or contactor - the writer gets no royalties if you buy more copies.
You may go ahead and bootleg those ebook copies of the Dragonlance Chronicles with a clear conscience, unless Hasbro's profit margins keep you up at night.
Come to mention it, RPG source books in general? Work for hire.
Tech books? Often work for hire.
Almost every magazine in the UK, Europe, and increasingly the US (ohhai, Advance Publications)? Work for hire, my friends.
Recent freelance contacts for the New York Times? I have fucking proof from multiple contributors that several of those have been work for hire, and I really need to get back to pushing a union campaign about this.
If you're not familiar with exactly what work for hire entails, the deal is that a freelance writer is commissioned, submits the work, and gets a (usually rather small) amount of money.
The publisher then owns it. Not a license to print it. The whole thing, exclusively, all moral and legal rights. The writer can't republish it, because its not theirs and gets no further money for reprints.
Some contracts indicate that they should, but in my experience it's incredibly rare that you'll ever see any money for this, even if reprints happen.
It's a piecework equivalent of the contact staff writers get (usually minus the clause about the company also owning stuff you write in your free time unless you get dispensation), only without the inconvenient obligation for the company to pay health or pension benefits to the worker, because they're an independent contractor.
In much of the world, and especially the US, this kind of contract was once far less common, but as it stands, more and more of the publishing industry is moving in that direction.
It's been a long time since jobbing writers earned decent word rates, which I think is pretty common knowledge, but work for hire contracts means that they also get no licensing and reproduction fees, no library lending fees, no legal right to reproduce work you've written for a publication that's folded, revamped its website, or been sold for asset stripping.
It's pretty common in most fields for your boss or client to own what they pay you to make for them.
But in a profession that has traditionally been provided with few benefits ostensibly because its practitioners get a long tail of intellectual property, the move towards this model is set to have a devastating impact on retiring and late-career workers.
By way of full disclosure, I'm writing some work for hire stuff for a tech book right now, but it's a contact I'm really happy with (the text goes into the Creative Commons once I've been paid for it, so it's basically CC for hire; the code is open sourced).
But most of the rest of my writing work, with only a handful of exceptions since 2010, is just under standard work for hire, and it kind of sucks.
This has been your regular reminder that copyright exists for the benefit of large companies, and not the people who actually make the stuff you enjoy.
Here's my only #wordWeavers for January I reckon because the next time I do this I want to be talking about a different WIP!
What are your writing plans for the coming year?
By next week-ish Watermyth will be published in both ebook and paperback. I'm aiming for ebook by this weekend first.
After that I will be working on the sequel to #Watermyth, (#Rosemirror) which will likely be published in 2025.
Also this year, I aim to publish a collection of poems and/or
Publish my first Bunian Empire collection.
I'll also finish up a couple or so short stories to lob at online magazines. If they don't want them, these will go into a 2025 short story collection.
If this sounds like a tall order I aim to pace myself and do as much as possible but either a short story or poetry collection definitely. I want everything in one place as online magazines come and go but print lasts longer.
@bookstodon Just a note that my first newsletter that some of you have signed up for will be coming out by the second week of January. However, owing to the fact that tinyletter is going to be shutting down, I'm porting everyone over to the announcement list I've set up on my hosted account. You'll be (if you're one of the subscribers) be getting an email with a link you need to click for consent.
Sometimes, when I don’t feel like writing, I do a menial task or two, the more boring the better, preferably without benefit of music or background audio.
By the time I’m finished, I often feel like writing.
There are only two feelings about a manuscript: "this is the greatest thing I've ever written" and "these words don't make any sense; why didn't anyone tell me this is awful?" I can feel both of these about the same page of text at the same time.
"You have to try, as hard as you can, to be mediocre constantly. Allowing yourself mediocrity everyday is about freedom. It is about allowing yourself the pleasure of getting through something without feeling that you must work harder than anyone else or that you must prove yourself to be more exceptional than anyone else. It’s about allowing yourself the pleasure of just doing something for the sake of doing it."
Help, please? I'm ready to resume writing my Zen parable-cum-cowboy novel, "The Significance of Buddy Dharma," but I need to transcribe several hundred dictaphone-style audio notes. Can anyone recommend an app or service that would be effective at this (and ideally is either broad or trainable enough to handle a fair number of Japanese, Chinese, Sanskrit, ranching, and rodeo terms)? #writing#writers#writingcommunity#writersofmastodon#writinglife#Transcription
Today's archive essay "Blood in the Water? Where does it come from?"
Where does the modern writer, living in peace and prosperity, get the inspiration and information needed to accurately convey the blood, sweat and tears of hand-to-hand combat to the reader?
What I love about the combination between my day job as a flight attendant and my #writing passion is that they form a perfect balance. The one is very physical, where I move all the time while going to places with my body. The other lets me be a homebody, mostly dwelling on my couch or in my office chair, and lets my mind realize its wanderlust in other worlds.
The mists of avalon because it explores long ago issues between paganism and christianity, yet are you looking at the vergin Mary, or are you looking at a certain places goddess. Her hand is everywhere and those who want to see it will.
Indeed. And thank you. But kudos also to people who just get their work read.
I have learned sooo much in the intervening years. Where as I won't mind publishing conventionally, what matters now is that what I write gets read by enough people that I'm satisfied my message is getting out. I will probably always do some fanfiction, regardless of what I am writing, for that reason. I'm not going to worry about such things as advertising budgets that a publisher might have, or competition, not that I won't do my best! Just getting my message across is pretty flapping nice.
I’m so close to completing the first draft of my novel. Like, it could potentially happen this week. What do I even do to celebrate? I’ve been working on this thing for two and a half years. #WritingCommunity#WritingLife#AmWritingSFF#AmWriting
My toxic English major trait is documenting every rhetorical device and narrative technique I read whilst critiquing authors in the margins of their own work.
From Oscar Sweetman: In a new video on my BookTube channel, I review two books from two different authors - "The World I Found" by Latika Vasil and "Emergency Weather" by @timjonesbooks: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lwfy1H6Pma4
“Finished that short novel on Wednesday this week at 30,000 words. Why I didn’t send out a letter last week. With my desire to finish the book and a few home life deadlines, I didn’t have the time to reach out to you all.”
Gone through 36 pages of the WIP, doing some editing today. Once I got the right document as apparently One Drive went wonky at some point and I've ended up with two versions. Very strange WIP. I usually have a good idea whether I like the writing or not (whether anyone else likes it is another issue, I may be totally at odds with what other people consider "good", but I usually know if I think it's good) but I don't with this WIP.
It's funny but I'm sure the reason I'm uncertain whenever I try to write "real world" (as opposed to SF or fantasy) stories, worrying that it's boring, traces back to comments I had 23 bloody years ago, where an agent told me my historical project was uninteresting and I should stick to fantasy, because the characters stood out there. 23 years, and that stupid thing is still at the back of my mind.