Cost Cutting Through Repackaging

-Andrew Grossman

April 13, 2009

     If you read an article in the daily newspaper or the online version of the paper and the text of the article sounds familiar, it is probably because you have read it before. Which is to say, you are reading repackaged content that has been reprinted by one branch of a media group-say, one of its community newspapers-into another branch. Repackaging costs less than purchasing new content. Editors know they usually have distinctly separate audiences for different publications. The content can appear fresh, even if it has already been published.

        Publishers save money by repackaging content, if they already own all rights.. Typically, when the company first makes the purchase from the content provider, they ask for reprint rights within their own group. They also typically ask for the right to publish the content online with no additional payment to the creator. Seldom does the creative realize how much money is being signed away. These rights can result in many additional appearances of the content, such as:

1.  repackaging of original magazine content into a book compilation

2.  repackaging of music by an individual artist into a compilation of various artists

3.  repackaging of music by an individual artist into a greatest hits album

4.  assumption of 'download rights' when the original sale of a cartoon is for one-time rights

5.  reprint of an article sold to a daily newspaper into all editions of the publishing group's weekly newspapers

All of this possible future income can be realized by the creative if the language is in the original contract, but seldom does the artist, especially if she is early in her career, have the knowledge to ask for a separate negotiation of subsidiary rights.

        In the era of online publishing, when content is almost exclusively presented as part of a massive database, directed by a database administrator, a royalty for future sales is more valuable than a lump sum up-front payment.

Category:  Music Industry, Newspaper Industry, Article Income

Daily Content Comment is Copyrighted by Andrew Grossman.  All rights reserved.  The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman. He can be contacted through the All Content Network at:  andrew@allcontentnetwork.com

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The Kindle Pit

-Andrew Grossman

April 9, 2009

        The popularity of Amazon's electronic-book device, Kindle, has electrified the market. E-book readers have been

around for years, but none of them provided the connectivity and the depth of content provided by Kindle. Even

Sony's own entry in the market, Reader, does not provide wireless access. But it soon will. And many other offerings will

follow from additional tech companies coupled with additional wireless services. Five companies have already applied to

Verizon, which provides wireless access, for new e-book devices. AT&T will soon jump in with an announcement of their

first agreement with a device manufacturer. Nothing succeeds like access.

        The effect of reading devices on the income of writers has not yet become clear, but the fervent nature of consumer

content demands is very well established. On April 8, a group called The Reading Rights Coalition, which represents

disabled readers, staged a protest outside the Authors Guild's New York offices. The reason for the protest:  the Guild,

when it negotiated a vast content sale on behalf of its members last year, refused to allow a blanket availability of content to the

text-to-speech function, which is built into Kindle. The reason for the refusal is that the Guild felt such access would

be a major threat to the billion dollar audio book market.

        One result of the Guild's intent to protect the income and rights of its member:  limiting the rights of the disabled.

Is the Guild at fault? Only of wanting to slow down content access in order to examine rather writers are cannibalizing

their sales in print without achieving equal dollars from e-book download sales. The hesitancy is justified, in order to study

the implications of such access, and to conduct this study without the warp speed of consumer device advances. Devices

demand enormous databases of content-the Kindle offers more than 260,000 books, plus newspapers-and such quantity

cannot help but lessen the author's sense of the integrity and the uniqueness of individual works.

        What we know, but only the first implications, are the insatiable content demands of current devices. What creatives

fear even more are the heightened demands of future e-book devices, and the likely expectation, from manufacturers, from

network providers and from the public, of ever more access for ever less money.

This entry is part of a larger article. To receive the full article, contact:

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Category:  Kindle, Fiction Income, Author's Guild

Daily Content Comment is Copyrighted by Andrew Grossman.  All rights reserved. 

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted through the All Content Network at:  andrew@allcontentnetwork.com

Creatives Fight to Survive

-Andrew Grossman

April 8, 2009

        The fight against unauthorized use of copyrighted content on the Web is not merely being taken up by large media outlets such as AP, which on Monday announced that they will pursue copyright infringement suits against web sites that use work from AP without permission. Individual content creators are also part of this life and death struggle for payment and control of how and where their content is used. Professional writers, journalists, columnists, cartoonists, illustrators, photographers and film makers are on the front line of this battle. What is at stake is their capacity to make a living from their creative work. In other words, their careers.

        In the Old Media, freelance creatives in print media sold their work to magazines and newspapers. Some would eventually sign contracts with media companies such as United Media and King Features to distribute their work in return for splitting the profits. Others were able to forge successful careers by representing their interests directly in sales to print media. That success has now been made inestimably more difficult by the advent of the internet.

        At first, when the internet was young, the sale of rights was made in a package-the primary rights, those that would allow media to publish the content in hardcopy editions, were what the publication was purchasing. Subsidiary rights, for online publication, were considered too minor to charge additional money for. Print media certainly treated online rights this way, since there was no prospect of generating additional revenue from online editions.

        As the internet has matured, and as hardcopy publishing is moving rapidly toward near extinction, the online rights are now the primary reason for purchase. Print publication has become the subsidiary sale. That means that for profit creatives have been sucked into surviving in the internet world, and that means that individuals face the same daunting task as media companies-how do we make money in this new form? What complicates the formula is the tradition of the internet, back to the pre-dawn of web

history, for providing an open source culture. Open source essentially means that everyone shares and shares alike, no money changes hands.

        Battling this online model is now the primary and formidable task of media and its content providers. The enemy comes in many forms:  amateur artists who 'are just delighted to be published on the web'; bloggers who have never expected to be paid, since most of them approach their work as non-information oriented diarists; savvy creatives who have assumed that offering free content online will swell the audience for their work and thus make offline sales more likely; overseas creatives who look

at the internet as a chance to break into the American market.

        They are all making one fundamental mistake-they do not realize that the internet will soon be the only surviving content delivery system. There will be no other forum in which to sell content. It must happen online or not happen at all. Given these parameters, the imperative of the new model has changed how to conduct a creative career:  it is no longer of paramount importance whether the content is of highest quality (although quality is still a factor in become a professional). All that matters is name branding. All that matters is strengthening the perceived value of what you present electronically.

Category:  Copyright Laws, Article Income, Cartoon Income

Daily Content Comment is Copyrighted by Andrew Grossman.  All rights reserved.  The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman. He can be contacted through the All Content Network at:  andrew@allcontentnetwork.com