April 27 is World IP Day, the day to celebrate the rights of those who create Intellectual Property: writers, artists, musicians and other content creators outside the realm of technology. Unfortunately, there’s a movement to make creative content free. Not free as in freely available to everyone, but free as in those who created it will not get paid. Gene Quinn of the IP Watchdog refers to those who promote this movement as the copy-left.
Today to recognize World IP Day, there’s an excellent interview posted on The IP Watchdog between Gene Quinn and Mary Rasenberger, Executive Director for The Authors Guild. They discuss a vitally important issue: why we must fight to preserve copyright in spite of the inroads made by the copy-left to do away with it as outmoded in the digital age. They also discuss how much things have changed in this age for both writers and publishers.
At WiDo Publishing™ we are struggling to maintain our role as a small, independent traditional press, one that does not charge for “author services” as so many are doing now. Our desire is that money will continue to flow toward and not away from the author, whether in editing, typesetting, cover design or marketing.
We also give larger ebook royalties than many traditional publishers do. Ours are at 40% across the board. Except for the early writers who came on board with us when we were brand new and untested. They took a chance with WiDo, and because of this, they’ll continue to receive 50% ebook royalties. We are still unable to offer advances to new authors, although this is one thing we sincerely hope to move to in the future as we grow.
Ebook royalties and advances are both topics of discussion in this interview, as they represent the unfortunate shrinking of author incomes. Changing copyright laws to allow creative content to be copied and shared without compensation to the creators would cause extensive damage to author incomes. It would do away with how writing and publishing have contributed to the intellectual and literary knowledge in society.
Please click on this link to read the full interview at The IP Watchdog.
Copyright really sucks in the visual media. A much beloved animated show that I loved has recently and pointlessly been made, just because the creator doesn’t own the copyright. Why improve on something that was already pretty good to begin with?
I’m very glad to be a print writer because I can control my copyrights while I’m alive, and then my heirs, most likely my very young nephews, will enjoy additional benefits from my work for another seventy year period. That way, I can prevent corporate-derived indignities and atrocities from happening to any and all of my characters if I so choose.
Remade! I meant remade! Sorry. But you probably knew what I meant.
David, Thank you for your comment. That’s an excellent point that without copyright protection additional remakes and rewrites of books can be done ad nauseum. Let’s hope that print copyright laws stay the same for many years to come, protecting the creative work of authors.