Well. I was going to pose a business question to Writerforge, but new information makes it a bit of a moot point. I may pose a related question in The Gold Room, but for now... A question about copyrights: From what I've read, the key to being successful as a writer is strictly limiting the publication rights to your work. The best example of this is Hunter S. Thompson. Back in the early 1980s a magazine paid him to go out to Honolulu and cover the Hawaii Marathon. They got the right to publish the story in their magazine. But apparently he retained other rights, because the story of the Honolulu Marathon makes up the first couple chapters of "The Curse of Lono", a book by Hunter on Hawaii. Then a couple years before his suicide, he was writing an online article for ESPN. In it he covered the Hawaii Marathon. The article? Taken almost word for word out of the book. Well a local paper is interested in publishing articles by me on business leadership and strategy. This would be good marketing exposure for me and I could use it to build a resume as a writer. But the catch is that they get complete and exclusive rights to the article--they can do whatever they want with it and I can't even use that particular article myself. Granted, the editor said I could write on the subject in other capacities, but I couldn't use that exact arrangement of words. Sounds fishy. Like when the publishing company that owned CCR's catalog tried to sue John Fogerty for plagiarizing their material when he recorded the album "Centerfield" in the 80s. So is this kind of arrangement commonplace in publishing? Can you expect to give up all rights to your work? Or are these guys pulling a fast one? It is kind of a moot point anyway, because not only are they claiming that I'll give them all the rights to the article, they won't even pay me for it. So what is the upside of it for me? Yeah, I get my name out there to my target market, but is that it? Do I really want my target market to know that I'll do quality work for them for free? I mean shit, awhile back I did a presentation for a conference and not only did I get to keep the copyright on all the material for it, I got contacts from the seminar attendees as business leads and they gave me, like, a $50 gift card. But now I'm getting out of Workshop and into Gold Room territory.
Garamet or Storm could give you the best answers, but from my perspective, if this publication is telling you they will have sole ownership of the materials you produce, and they aren't planning to pay anything for them, I would be telling them to kiss my ass. Either pay me, or the rights revert to me after some period (say a year), or there's no deal.
Yeah, I haven't PMed G, but I've got a message out to Storm. Other side of the argument, though, is people go on talk shows all the time. A contact of mine recently did one about about adding vintage clothing to a wardrobe. I'm sure they didn't pay her to be on the show or give her any rebroadcast rights and I'm sure she put a fair amount of time and effort into the segment. It might be just marketing costs. But I still have a damned hard time signing something relinquishing rights for something I created in exchange for nothing but exposure.
Yeah, I couldn't see myself signing over all rights to an article for nothing in return except exposure. Maybe initial publication rights for a given period of time (like a year), but that's about all. If they won't go for that, then make'em pay you. This is reality...you gotta pay your bills.
What Lanz said. There should be a firm contract, in writing, before you write Word #1, and they should either pay you a fee, however nominal, or give you control of the rights anywhere other than in their publication. (Ideally, they should do both, even if the fee is only a coupla bucks, but the rights are more important, because you'll probably want to reuse this material elsewhere, and if they own the rights and you write something even remotely similar, they can claim plagiarism...of your own work. Sounds bizarre, but that's how it can shake out.) So, yeah, you can sign over the rights to first publication (with your name as the byline) and maybe - maybe - one reprint. But after that, the copyright should revert to you. And in future, whether you write more for this publication or for someone else, you're no longer a noob, so you should hold out for all rights. Because, let's face it, newspapers are dying, and you can generate your own publicity online without them once you've gotten that first byline.
