STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Friday, 9 March 2012

[Tansy_Gold]

34. In a word, or two,

no recourse.

It's a very long story which no one wants to read, but the short version being the publisher of one of my print books is preparing to go into bankruptcy, which means I have virtually no chance to get my rights (aka ownership) of the book back. Yes, the book is copyrighted in my name, so technically I own it, but the original contract remains in force to grant them the equivalent of a permanent lease on it which becomes an "asset" in any BK filing. As a fellow author who also happens to be a lawyer (which I am not) stated some time ago in a similar discussion, suing to get rights reverted is one thing because that's in state court, which would be NY and for most authors -- including yours truly -- that's still prohibitively expensive and in most cases not ultimately worth it. Once the publisher has gone into bankruptcy, which this one may or may not be forced to do, everything moves into federal court.

I don't know how many of my fellow SMWers have personal experience with copyright -- or worse, with copyright infringement -- but the whole Righthaven/DU thing has been an interesting examination of this, and I for one am just jumping up and down to see Righthaven demolished. You're probably wondering why, since they appeared to have been champions against the illegal copying of copyrighted work. But they never were that at all. They were greedy fucks who were trying to stifle fair use. They were a tool, albeit a cheap plastic worthless kind of tool, of PUBLISHERS, and folks, PUBLISHERS are part of that horrible media corporate anaconda that's killing democracy.

I've been pretty much absent from SMW lately, though I get in here and read every single day several times a day. There are several publishing- and media-related issues I've been following as they pertain to my own personal situation, and one of those issues is the case now moving slowly through the system regarding price-fixing BY THE BIG MEGA CONGLOMERATE PUBLISHERS AND APPLE COMPUTERS. This case has the potential to break digital publishing wide open. The media corporations have held onto "traditional" technologies, much in the way the automakers have protected the internal combustion engine, to the detriment of the environment and to the cause of true revolution. That may be coming to an end.

We'll see.

Info at
http://dearauthor.com/features/industry-news/thursday-news-a-bit-about-da-agency-pricing-appears-doomed-tamara-allen-leaves-dsp Scroll down to get info regarding "agency pricing" and price fixing, then down to comment #10 for info and links (which go to more links) on the impending collapse of Dorchester Publishing, aka Leisure Books.


I overslept and now am two hours behind schedule on the day job. I'll check in later.