Your Copyright May Be Worth More Than You Think

[Marie Silk]

Hey everyone, just passing along this article about the changes in the trad publishing business (they are conglomerates buying intellectual property vs. just paper publishing rights), why authors should keep their rights, and how much it could payoff over time.

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

[Quantum]

Informative article.

Yes, think franchise--like what Disney/Lucas Films did.

And it's not just trad pubs. You have to be careful of hybrid pubs too and free publishing websites. For example, some people publish their flash fiction on reddit and yet, they ae giving away all of their rights (https://www.redditinc.com/policies/us...). Granted, it's probably mostly rough drafts.

OTOH, Wattpad explicitly states that all rights are yours. (https://policies.wattpad.com/terms/)

Still, it's tough, as an author you want to expose your work to the right readership yet retain as much of your rights as possible.

[Graeme]

Great points above.

[J.J.]

I remember a few years back reading that the music industry, in the wake of declining CD sales, began demanding a cut of concert revenue when they signed new artists...talk about greedy.

[Dave]

Copyright extends for 75 years beyond the death of the creator (author). So the value in copyright protection may be realized by the second generation after you die (sorry, I don't mean to be morbid).

If you are working with a publisher to get your book out there, there's no logical reason to assign any rights beyond the published work to the publisher (as addressed above, think about film, toys and other collateral material, plays, TV, etc.)--a publisher is in the book business, that's it.