[Free-sklyarov-uk] concrete examples

[Edward Welbourne]

>>> The question I always like to ask is: "do authors have a moral right

Note, in passing, that the phrase `moral right' has a special meaning in
copyright, at least in Europe - an author's moral rights protect against
plagiarism (you have to credit the true author) and misrepresentation,
such as someone
   publishing such a badly prepared edition of your work, or
   quoting so selectively from your work (or etc.)
as to give the reader a false (e.g. defamatory) impression of the
author's opinions, character, literacy or etc.

I assume the above was using the phrase in a more colloquial sense ...

>> and where, I might ask, did you get the naive idea that the *author*
>> sees any of those profits ?  Copyright servers publishers.
> Copyright serves the copyright holders.
Sort of.

However: back in the days when a page was printed from a rack of lumps
of lead, there was a lot of work involved in typesetting, proof-reading,
re-typesetting, re-proof-reading, copy-editing, re-typesetting, re-...
etc., in order to turn a (hand-written) manuscript into a printed book;
but a competitor could then take the book and be saved a lot of the work
(notably page-boundary resolution, paragraph/line breaking issues, etc.)
the original publisher did; so the competitor could reliably undercut
the original publisher on price (or do a better job for the same price);
so being the first publisher of the work was rather risky.  As I
understand it (in the UK), authors were given (other than `moral rights'
under) copyright precisely so that their deal with a publisher (and the
publisher's copyright on the typesetting) would provide some guarantee
of return on investment for the first publisher of a work.  So, on the
one hand, copyright (albeit (mostly) vested in the author) was
originally formulated to address a need of publishers.

On the other, publishing was expensive and, crucially, involved serious
equipment costs; so publishers (who already owned the equipment - and
knew the game) were in a controlling position when it came to writing
the deal by which an author got a work published: they could make
demands which went way beyond merely guaranteeing they recovered their
investment - e.g. the right of first refusal on any later works by that
author.  Publishers have always been highly profitable (and authors
frequently shamefully poorly rewarded) as a result.

The publishing industry has functioned as a cartel, in the sense that
publishers have been able to push a hard bargain because each: knows the
author won't get a better deal from any other; and knows that the author
will remain too poor to do anything about it until the book gets
published.  Even if an author knew their work was going to sell huge
numbers of copies, they wouldn't make a penny out of it unless they cut
a deal with a publisher, which put publishers in a position of strength,
which they exploited ruthlessly.

Furthermore, publishers are typically corporations, which don't die, so
their copyrights (e.g. in the typesetting) don't expire (IIRC): they get
a better deal out of copyright than do authors (well, their estates ...)

Result: most of the fruits of copyright have always been enjoyed by
publishers rather than authors, even when the author has retained the
copyright.  This is what I meant by `Copyright serves publishers'
(albeit I mistyped it).

> That authors often (not always) choose to give it up to publishers in
> return for the work that publishers do is their affair.

Try asking the artist formerly known as Prince how much `choice' he had
when it came to signing (before he was famous, so in a good bargaining
position) the deal which has now lead to him losing the right to use the
stage name he made famous ... and he's just one example among many (the
music industry being particularly familiar with such coercion).  His
choice was: remain an unheard-of nobody or become one of *our* `assets'.

Imagine if slavery were legal: employers could offer recruits the choice
  we get to train you and exploit your labour for as long as we like
  you remain penniless and unemployed
which they'd happily justify in terms of the need to guarantee a return
on the investment in training.  Once that was possible, how long do you
think it would be before many large corporations made this offer the
normal mode of employment, at least for `blue collar' jobs ?

A deal between two parties satisfies a nice ideal of fairness, except
when one of the parties is in such a stronger position as to be able to
dictate terms knowing that the other party has no real choice but to
accept.  Publishing has illustrated this at length.
Similar issues afflict patents.

> marketing and editing account for rather more of publishing costs
> (AFAIK) than printing and distributing, which is actually pretty
> cheap.

Well ... printing is cheap, but you have to have the equipment, which
isn't (but at least there are independent printers (and `vanity
publishers') to whom an author can turn).  Distribution may be cheap,
but you have to have the right connections; i.e. it's cheap for
publishers, but is it for anyone else ?  Publishers control distribution
channels fairly well: a publisher with some very popular titles can use
these to pressure retailers into stocking others of their titles and
(these days, thanks to on-line catalogues) offering their whole range
for sale; and `discounts' are a whole nother racket.  So, while printing
and distributing may account for a small proportion of *a publisher's*
costs, they may still be significant costs to anyone trying to bypass
the cartel (capital costs, connections and overheads are always
effective `barriers to entry' to any market).

The costs of editing (including typesetting, proof-reading, etc.) have
come down significantly in the last century (before computer-aided
typesetting, every time you tried to fix one error you presented the
option of creating new ones (not just unavoidable knock-on effects of
the fix, but also simple finger-goofing as, once more, every block of
lead had to be put into its place) and the error-rates thereby made a
big difference to the cost of publishing) but it is, indeed, still
expensive (good copy editors, etc., aren't cheap to hire).

[I'm always a bit skeptical about marketing and advertising.  The folk
who do them persuade us that they make a big difference to our sales, so
we have to pay what they ask ... but I wonder whether they aren't merely
very good at selling what *they* do (i.e. marketing and advertising) and
have much less effect on sales of what *you* do than they make out ...
especially when you're a publisher and have good distribution channels.
(Unfair e.g.: imagine this year's Harry Potter were published without
any attempt at marketing or advertising, beyond mentioning the book in
the publisher's catalogue, as seen by book stores; how much difference
would this make to the book's sales ?)]

Still, as long as retailers are persuaded that marketing (beyond
offering the product, nicely packaged, for sale) is necessary, the
publisher is more-or-less forced to do some so that the retailer will
believe they're going to make some sales, without which conviction they
won't stock the work.  So marketing does remain a big cost.

> Simply ask "How much would you pay for a CD that you could only play
> on one CD player and that was uncopiable?" and point out how soon,
> that might be the only kind you can buy.
Yes.

	Eddy.
--
Remember: before the days of movable type, the owner of any book had the
right to copy it and sell copies - that's *how* books got copied, and
copying is how they out-lasted the physical media on which they were
originally written.