Book People Archive

Re: Would a kind soul response directly to h



HGatimu@[redacted] wrote:

> Intellectual product is created exclusively by individual people alone or in
> collaboration.  Copyright is intended to reward and encourage this process.
>  But the economics of publishing have changed substantially since the idea of
> copyright was developed.  Individuals do not now receive as much return on
> their product as they did when copyright was only 14 years.  Authors now
> almost certainly need both an agent and a lawyer to get a good return on
> their efforts.  Publishers are actually in an adversary relation with authors
> much of the time.  When publishers can re-issue old stock at no royalty to
> anyone (THAT IS WHAT IS MEANT BY AN EXTENDED COPYRIGHT) the upshot is that
> living authors starve trying to get into the market place while boxed sets of
> 60 year old stuff takes up the front shelved of bookstores.
> It is not actually true that the public shuns new work.  It is that
> publishers are no longer willing to invest the development funds in building
> new reputations and their accountants have convinced them that they have to
> charge the same price for every item (Namely, too much!)  Living authors need
> encouragement.  Corporations are doing just fine without all that much help
> from Congress.

It is interesting to observe the discussion of copyright moving into the
area of the economics of book publishing and selling. It is exactly what
I focused on in the issue about Robert Frost's poetry and the publisher
which was trying to stop his works from going on - line and enjoining
some reason like "respect for his estate, etc".
The real issue is the "easy money" for publishers that can produce the
classics and never, ever having to pay the relatives or estate of an
author one single dime --- you better believe they don't try very hard
to find them either.
I think that we might want to engage in discussion that will explore
more fully the system as it presently exists that does prevent new
authors from being published because the legal departments or counsels
of these major publishing companies are pushing extended copyrights. We
certainly could pick up a whole army of sympathizers and support from
other links.
Besides isn't this what its all about. In this era of global networking
the emerging of an environment that is conducive to the creation,
exposing and communications of ideas, thoughts, opinions, observations
-- you add more --- like it never existed before! Allowing publishers to
avoid their responsibility of giving more new authors opportunities
because they can fall back on royalty free publications to finance their
condos in the bahamas is also a reason for stopping the extended
copyright. We are doing them a favor -- we are helping the publishers to
build character.

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