The analogy to the book publishing industry has some merit, but it only gets you so far.
If this were a book deal, the author would be assigning copyright to a company in exchange for an advance and a non-controlling share in that company. And that company's business plan is premised upon the dilution of the author's equity.
Once there's dilution, the author remains with the company at the pleasure of a guy he met on the internet and some other investors. They may be swell people, they not. Likewise with the the author.
Yes, the value is probably zero. But in this scenario, the possibility of an upside is not just dependent upon the product's success but also upon their being some lucky alignment between his financial interests and those of the other shareholders - and they are likely to have multiple intermingled financial arrangements.
Both the previous reply and this sound more like convoluted motivated reasoning towards the desired outcome - that the author gets paid. I'd love to see the author get paid too! But I don't think these are particularly strong analyses of what looks like a complicated contract case. As far as I can tell, nobody (in thread) had as much as checked the copyright ownership. But I'd love to be wrong and learn me a thing or two!
Not really sure what this comment is trying to demonstrate.
Using what actual published authors make on book deals is a good way to estimate what the value of such an initiative should be.
Maybe a lot of people will be interested in the project and fund it, then great. But publishers investigate the market thoroughly before signing a deal with an author, and they offer advances and royalties based on what they think the book will make. When an author received a $7,500 royalties advance on a book it's because the publisher thinks this is a good indicator of what the book will generate in royalties.
if the value created by the author is worth 1-2$ I don’t think the rest of the work on the actual content is worth more.
Leaving much of the rest on the brand.
I think that the brands have successfully commoditized the authors witch is the valuable portion of the book and have mostly monopolised their position. Now they will use their excess capital to keep their position because that is what is most valuable to them.
At the same time they act as a filter judging what is worth putting in a book with their name on it, creating a standard of quality.
So what is the ideal scenario, in the author's mind, for how creative work should be compensated? Let's say I wrote a book, and I want to get compensated for the time I spent writing the book. In his ideal world, I would ____________ ?
My impression from the article is I would sell one copy to one person, that person, or future recipients of a copy, would copy it for every single other person that might want to read it, and then I would just wait and pray for donations. Am I misinterpreting his article?
I think that is up to them. I can imagine an author and editor producing a book and selling it on Fifobooks (my startup), and have an agreement between the two of them.
I see it similar to cofounders launching a startup; they each bring something to the table and it is up to them to agree on a valuation/profit share.
I have little money but I write an amazing book and it sells to millions. Each books takes, say, $5 to print, and yet I sell it for $15. Therefore I end up wealthy from this endeavor.
Did I exploit the people who chose to buy my book? The people who printed it?
Are the writers of the libraries software developers used owed a continuous royalty based on how profitable the software built using it makes?
The author of a book could just as easily negotiate a large payment up front to give up rights to their book in exchange of one lump sum and invest their money and let the publisher both take all of the upside. But get all of the downside.
So people will set up companies that work for the authors to set this stuff up, and those companies won't be able to capture most of the proceeds from the authors work, but instead will be forced to price according to the value their work provides to the authors.
Yes. In general the content owners (less often so actors, screenwriters, etc.) work on a combination of upfront fees and royalties. This is true of book authors as well who typically get an advance against royalties. Purchasers generally won't pay a fee commensurate with "if this is a big hit" so the content owners are willing to accept a smaller fee in exchange for a cut of the big hit proceeds--even if those often don't come about.
You state this as a fact, but it's actually much less certain wherever it's ever been net-positive.
It was probably intended that way, but the reality is that the power has been with the publisher since the beginning, and they've absolutly been screwing over the author's as well. Only the most successful author's have gotten decent deals.
I don't have an answer to this either though, i just wanted to point out that copyright has arguably never been successful at getting money to the content creators proportional to the value the Publisher extracted from the work either.
This sounds nice, but the problem is that the author creates value, the downloaders receive value, but no exchange is made. The idea that the author has to create MORE value to MAYBE be able to participate in an exchange is just a weak argument for people who don't want to admit that an exchange should take place right off that bat, and if not, the downloaders should not receive any value from the author (i.e. don't download and read the book).
I don't see the connection. Vanity publishers make money from the author by basically selling books with a big markup.
Here they are just taking IP (of which 99.999% is going to be basically valueless). The only part that might make money would be selling lesson plans, but that would become a saturated market pretty quick.
If you re-read what I wrote, I was specifically talking about the "very niche book" that would not likely earn back the advance (hence the royalty rate is not something to worry about).
Good point. Sorry, I missed that reference. In that case yes, I agree on the math, though gleefully accepting a (relatively) big advance for a book you believe won't sell too well could burn some bridges ;-)
If this were a book deal, the author would be assigning copyright to a company in exchange for an advance and a non-controlling share in that company. And that company's business plan is premised upon the dilution of the author's equity.
Once there's dilution, the author remains with the company at the pleasure of a guy he met on the internet and some other investors. They may be swell people, they not. Likewise with the the author.
Yes, the value is probably zero. But in this scenario, the possibility of an upside is not just dependent upon the product's success but also upon their being some lucky alignment between his financial interests and those of the other shareholders - and they are likely to have multiple intermingled financial arrangements.
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