Re: droit de suite

On Mon, 10 Apr 2000, Pat Sloane <patsloane[_at_]aol.com> wrote:
>
> Why on earth would I want to sell the copyright to the publisher?
> And where did you ever get the idea that this is a usual arrangement?

I'm not sure what "sell the copyright" is supposed to mean, but it is indeed quite usual for a book's copyright to be registered in the publisher's name.

I've published a couple of dozen books, and I can't recall any of them that had my name on the copyright page. But you know what? It doesn't make a bit of difference. The name on the copyright only matters for rights not explicitly handled by contract, and at least in computer publishing, the contract disposes of all rights. This most certainly does not mean that I sold the manuscript for a flat fee. Typically I get a per copy royalty at a rate that depends on the number sold and the net price per copy, I retain the right to resell excerpts as magazine and newspaper articles, and the publisher can resell other derivative rights and we split the revenue based on a formula.

I don't feel ill-used by this arrangement, and in some cases it's worked surprisingly well in ways I wouldn't have expected, e.g., a few of my books were made into desk calendars from which I got in aggregate five-figure royalties. They've also done lots of translations and odds and ends like audiobooks and promotional booklets bound into magazines, again with revenue shared between them and me.

The contracts all have reversion clauses as well, when a book goes out of print they'll assign the copyright back to me on request. I've done that a few times for books where it appeared that the material was worth recycling.

So publishers may or may not be evil, but what appears on the copyright page is irrelevant to that argument.

-- 
John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869
johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl/, 
Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail