Traditional Publishing vs Indie Publishing… COPYRIGHT??
Writer’s Just Don’t Understand Copyright…
This week I read a bunch of discussions about the different paths in publishing…
Every one of those discussions forget the MOST IMPORTANT element,,. Copyright.
And with copyright comes control of the work’s future.
You sell a novel to one of the last four traditional publishers these days and they buy all rights for the life of the copyright. Period.
Stupid responses I got from myth-filled writers who are going to try to sell a book to traditional publishing no matter what anyone says.
“There is a reversion clause. I will get my rights back.” In electronic publishing world, that is as worthless as the bankruptcy clause they have been sticking in for fifty years. You have sold your book for the life of the copyright, which for those of you who do not know, is 70 years past your death.
“I get money if they sell other rights like to the movie.” Yeah, of a $200,000 streaming deal, you might get a few thousand against your advance, but you will have no control and your name will be after the movie is finished scrolling past. If you control the copyright as an indie, you will get the full amount of money (more than likely more) and if you know how to ask, you will get your name and the name of your book the show is based on in the first few cards and you will make even more as an executive producer (just a credit, you do nothing.) Plus with your name up front and your books title, your book sales will explode.
“They will do all the work for me.” Wow, you have been living under a rock if you believe that crap. I have worked in both worlds, and trust me, I do a lot less work on a book publishing it indie than I ever did with traditional novels I sold. Factors less.
“My agent will take care of me.” Yes, they will, but not in the way you want them to. And you are not their only client and they will trade you off with a publisher like an old baseball card. And did you run a background check and financial check on your agent before you turned over all your money and the paperwork with that money to them?? Of course you didn’t. You trust them, right? Wow, did they see you and your myth-filled dreams coming.
And the one I heard today that took me a while to stop laughing… “I can make a lot more money in traditional publishing.” This again shows no level of understanding of what most indies know, that unlike traditional publishing, our books don’t spoil and we control our own copyright and can make money off it for a very long time into the future. In traditional, all you get is the advance. As I figured last week in some posts, a three book, half-million dollar deal will make you about $100,000 per year over four years. Chances are here in 2026 your first deal will be for two books and $10,000 which will earn you barely what indie writers call coffee money.
But the huge difference is that if you sell your book (and sell is the right term), you lose all your copyright on that work, can’t do anything with it, and it will take 35 years here in the States for you got get it back. Indie publishing that same book could be making you money over and over and over for the rest of your life and 70 years past your life. It might be small money, but wow does it add up over time.
I would never sell a book to traditional publishing for any reason. Period. And I feel sad when I see some young writer locked into the myths from 40 years ago and losing their copyright and the control of their own work.
Worst case: You are sitting in a theater and watching a movie made from your book. The book title and your name are nowhere to be seen, and you earned $5,000 against your royalty when the publisher sold that right to a movie company. And you can’t even claim the movie, since you don’t own the rights to the book you wrote. The publisher does.
And that is why you need to learn copyright.
6 Comments
Vincent Zandri
All true, plus there’s something else that happens once you start building a successful indie list. If you still engage in a trad deal, say with a small to medium sized genre publisher, you will be expected to do all the heavy marketing lifting, just like you pointed out. This not only means your time but actual money. If you receive a 3 to 5k advance you can eat the bulk of that up just with a couple of Book Bubs. And why should I put my money into the book when the pub is taking the lions share? Why should I promo the book when I can actively spend my time and money promoting the books for which I retain copyright? It just doesn’t make sense.
J.D. Coker
Make more money in traditional publishing? Say what? If you have a Shopify you keep 97% of your money! You don’t have to be a bestseller to make good money on that profit percentage.
Why would anyone ever want to go traditional. And a direct store should be your focus not Amazon either! Of course put your books up everywhere and think of extra income streams that Dean and Kris are going to be teaching soon.
But having a good email newsletter that points everyone to your personal store is the way of the future. Retailers can do all kinds of things to your work, best to take complete control.
Imagine how much Steven King and J.K. Rowling would make if they had their rights back and their own Shopify with their own staff? And they wouldn’t need to hire many people to do it. It could all be done by contractors too instead of having that headache. This would be pocket change for them compared to what traditional publishers make from their IP.
What I’m learning right now is, that you are an artist when you sit at your writing computer and you put that creature away when you go to your business computer. No good business person ever thinks like the examples your giving of writers and their horrendous business practices. So glad I found you and Kris years ago.
C.E. Petit
A quibble that may matter to some readers here… and it is general commentary, not legal advice for any specific situation:
licensing all rights (or any particular right) to a publisher for the life of the copyright &neq; transferring the copyright to the publisher
notwithstanding language that still appears in some publishing contracts that’s been out of date for four decades (the “transfer copyright to publisher then return after 90 days” thing, that still appears in some publishing contracts and has been unnecessary — possibly even unlawful — since 01 Jan 1978). Under the 1976 Act in the US (and its counterparts in Canada, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and throughout Europe), “rights” are distinct from the copyright itself, and the copyright doesn’t transfer just because a right does.
That matters because although the contract says “life of the copyright,” it’s actually only for 37-42 years unless the author fails to police his/her/their rights, ignoring contracts signed before 01 Jan 1978 for the moment (different periods, now almost gone). See 17 U.S.C. § 203. Well, subject to some conditions (and some really annoying paperwork), the primary one of which is the work-made-for-hire exclusion. So, authors: Yes, you should have a business entity for managing your creative work — but if you’re a young whippersnapper under 50 or so and you’re committed at least in part to commercial publishing (in some fields it’s not practical to “go indie,” or at least not fully/not yet), you should not write for the entity creating works made for hire, but instead formally transfer your freelance works to the entity after completion, and the entity should never have a specific future publishing plan for not-yet-written work that can be misconstrued as a “commission.” I hope the foregoing is weaselly enough to make you think “I need to consider this and get competent legal advice for my particular situation if it’s close enough to anything I’m doing to raise a question.” (The number of Bartz v. Anthropic claimants and potential claimants who didn’t is… nontrivial.)
There’s an old aphorism repeated constantly in the first year of law school claiming that the law is a seamless web — that all areas of the law interlock (to catch flies, but they tend to neglect that part). Even without considering some of the people involved, that’s a vast overstatement: The law is very seamy indeed, and it’s less a web than a ratty old pieced quilt that’ll just make you miserable when it gets hot. The interface between “creation” and “third-party benefits from creations” is one of the very gnarliest seams, as hinted at by Dean’s last two paragraphs.
dwsmith
Thanks, C.E., and folks, read this comment a few times to really understand it. And always remember that in the end, you might be right, and parts of the contracts can be looked at one way or another, but the settlement is often in court and as Kris and I discovered just over the last few years, anything in court can be time-consuming, brain-eating, and stunningly costly. I mean numbers you can’t imagine spending on something flat baseless and silly. And that is only one aspect of what C.E. was referring to as “gnarly.”
Ron
A person I follow on the internet said that her literary fiction is rejected by publishers.
She’s been asked, “Why don’t you self publish?”
No reply.
Some people are mentally stuck in the 20th century.
dwsmith
Maybe someone should tell her she needs to learn how to write and tell a story… Oh, wait… sorry, that was my internal voice leaking out…
Maybe someone should tell her she needs to learn how to think business… Oh, wait, more internal voice leaking out….