-Andrew Grossman

April 19, 2009

   For content owners and creators, the internet is a sieve. The holes through which free

content can be acquired are everywhere. Until those holes are plugged the content for

fee model, at least for non-business end users, will be difficult to implement. Why pay

when you can surf to another site and find the same content, similar content, or at least

a piece of it for free?

   That question bedevils every online content provider from Viacom to professional

cartoonists and writers. Within that question are many others, such as:  if I put my work

on the internet, will it be stolen without compensation? How can I compete for sales to

non-discriminating buyers when there are amateurs who offer for free what I am trying

to sell? And the existential:  how can I continue to be a freelance creator in the new

online content delivery world?

   The answer that has been tried by media companies is to identify certain end users

who are guilty of copyright infringement and go after them in court. Hearing of these

cases, the millions of web users who know that they also have been guilty of copyright

infringement by the old economy definition of the term, took to the forums and reviled

these 'overbearing' companies. The PR hit was large. The frustration that selective

enforcement had not stemmed the tide of illegal use led media to conclude that there

must be a better way to keep their industry from being bankrupted.

   The new answer is to accept that the movie and music on DVD industry is dead. The

formula now is to accept that revenue from downloads may never reach old levels. While

this may be the case, the success of the itunes store coupled with the wild popularity

of the newest portable music players, has given the industry hope that many millions of

song downloads for 99 cents may someday equal less many millions of DVD sales for

$24.95. In the meantime, there are always concert ticket sales and merchandise.

   In other words, the program of plugging the holes where free content leaks has largely

been abandoned by large companies. This abandonment is a complete disaster for individual

creatives, who are caught between the hell of rampant copyright infringement and the

heaven of the possibility of the internet for allowing individuals to circumvent the big

companies and control their own careers.

   Someone else must plug the holes, one by one, case by case, culture change by culture

change. This long campaign will be left to the small creators. Their chance of success will

be dramatically improved if they can band together, work together as a unified force with

sufficient legal heft. It won't be enough to highlight a few of the guilty and hope that the

rest of the guilty will desist. That has already failed. What is needed is a uniform approach,

combining the minutiae of communicating through every internet form that stealing will

not be tolerated and a pr campaign that drives home the message.

Category:  Film Industry, Music Industry, Copyright Laws, Cartoon Income, Artist Rights  

 CartoonResource.com

AllContentNetwork.com

 IllustrationBase.com

 MangaMango.com

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.

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

New Reality for Creatives

-Andrew Grossman

April 10, 2009

        In the free for all known as the online content selling model, those who are aggressive will be rewarded. As with all revolutions, the process begins with the destruction of the old ways and the old institutions, foments an egalitarian atmosphere in which those who were beneath destroy those who were above, and ends with a new set of institutions.

        For content creators, I'll list the the limited career options of  the old reality vs. specific opportunities of the new reality:

Creative Form      Old Reality                                     New Reality                 How to Get There

Fiction                                   Write Book, Hope to Get Agent                               Write Book                                       Get a Website, Learn Web Authoring

                                                 Hope Agent Finds Publisher                                       POD Publish                                     Hook up With POD publisher

                                                 Hope Publisher Spends on Marketing                      Market Your Brains Out                 Links to Your Selling Page

Poetry                                    Get MFA Degree, Become Professor                        Work Any Job, Write Book          Get a Website

                                                Teach Sept-May, Write June-August                        Determine niche                              Learn about i-universe.com

                                                Publish Through Academic Publishers                      Publish Hardback                            Links to Your Selling Page

Film Making                       Get Entry Job/Pay Dues                                                Start Where You Are                      Recruit a Crew

                                               Land Agent                                                                         Buy Camera, Make Film                 Pool Money for Equipment

                                               Get Producer to Hire You                                              Get Invited to Film Festival          Post on YouTube                    

The imperatives of the successful web creative:  be aggressive; accept that you will always have more interest in promoting your work than any agent or any publisher could have; be seen online on expert sites, on social networking sites, on fan and niche community sites; be a hungry wolf.

Category:  Film Industry, Fiction 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

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

A Funny Thing Happened to the Cartoon Business

-Andrew Grossman

April 6, 2009

        The cartoon world has been rocked by the fallout of the newspaper industry decline. Syndicates such as United Media, King Features and Creators Syndicate have based their revenue on a combination of sales to newspapers for their comics page, book sales of comic strip collections and licensing of the most popular comic strip characters for product endorsements. As newspapers go out of business, the comics page market is drying up. This is having a major effect on the income of syndicated cartoonists, especially those who have not been able to derive significant income from book sales and licensing. Syndicates are now focused more than ever on licensing characters such as Garfield, Snoopy and the hilarious pair from 'Get Fuzzy'-Bucky the cat and Satchel the dog.

        The cartoonists whose strips and panels have derived less income from character licensing are being hurt the most in financial terms. There is a decreasing possibility of being able to make a living from newspaper

sales alone. Sales of comics to online newspaper publishers remains a very iffy proposition, since the newspapers themselves have been unable to prosper at this point from online reader subscriptions. The newspaper industry is counting on making the bulk of their online income from advertising sales. That model may provide enough income in the future, but because of the recession the ad dollars have taking a hit.

        Already established online stock cartoon companies, such as CartoonResource.com and CartoonStock have focused on what will possibly be the new syndicated model-custom cartoons using popular comic characters to feed the niche web community market. There will be a race between old media syndicates and new media cartoon agencies. The winner will be the one who survives long enough to reach the new income producing model of online cartoon content.

Category:  Newspaper Industry, 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