It’s Not About The Money…

Say “Estate” And Money Comes Up…

I did a post a few nights ago about how sad it was so many estates of writers were not being taken care of in any real way. And I got a comment about how the commenter just realized I was not talking about the money, but about the sadness of first off losing the person and secondly losing the amazing work the writers produced.

Exactly.

Harlan’s estate and work and home is being taken care of wonderfully by Joe,

Mike Resnick’s work is being handled wonderfully by Laura.

And there are a few others, but not many.

And of all the pulp writers, Edgar Rice Burroughs, L. Ron Hubbard, Earle Stanley Gardner, and Lester Dent have had their estates pretty well tended.  I am sure I am missing a few, but again, not many.

Now granted, this is not a fun topic when the writer is alive. Kris and I have a massive amount of work we would like to try to live past us. And we have some stuff set up and will be doing more. (Don’t ask me, I am not an attorney or an accountant.)

But digging into all this Anthropic theft and settlement was a real eye-opener about how bad so many estates are handled. There were a couple anthologies where out of 21 writers, only Kris and I and Mike Resnick estate  claimed anything that was actually copyright based.

Granted some of the writers in the book were still alive, I think, but I knew of at least eight who were gone and their estates made no claim. Wow, just wow. And sad.