Tuesday, September 25, 2012

E-book Sales: Copyright Laws Must Change!


I just read about an article that says Amazon stands to make a fortune offering out-of-print books.  One of the most appealing reasons for indie authors to publish e-books is that they will be offered forever.  No out-of-prints; Amazon’s policy is that, if you buy a book from them, they will always have a copy available for you to download.

So, if copyright laws are for the life of the owner plus fifty years, and Amazon and other e-book retailers must provide copies of them forever, and 49 years after an author’s death, their books suddenly become branded as ‘important literary works’ by history or literature professors for studying our era, and the sales dramatically spike of that author’s books, and those new readers are in their 20’s, with a potential lifespan in their 100’s….  Can you say, “cash cow”?  How about, “windfall of astonishing proportions”?

And WHO gets that money?  The digital provider, who spends mere pennies sending you an e-book, would get it all.  Not the descendents of the author.

What can we do?
  • a.      Change copyright laws for e-book rights to belong to their assignees ‘in perpetuity’, and let the heirs fight it out
  • b.      Register our books’ copyright under a business name/corporation, and let whoever runs the corporation decide where the royalties go


What I would prefer is:
  • c.      Create a corporation just for e-book copyrights – the executor of the estate of the author’s family signs up their e-books, the CEO guarantees a huge chunk of sales (95% minimum) will go to the designee of the family as determined by the executor, and the corporation uses its profits to maintain the database.

Now is the time to make these decisions!  Look at how long copyright laws have been in effect!
Although many people laugh when referred to Wikipedia as a source, the minimum we should do is read their article on copyrights:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

So, who can we indies trust to establish the standards?



4 comments:

Unknown said...

Can't you just take your books OFF the Amazon list/shelf/link after some time (once you had enough of it being online)?

You are still the owner/creator of it and Amazon only the distribution place 8as long as you allow then).

Eva Caye said...

Very true! STILL, the Amazon contract specifically states they will always maintain a copy to send to customers who have purchased it before and might lose it for whatever reason. My point is that there should be a change in the copyright laws such that e-books are recognized as distinct from physical books, specifically because they can exist forever, so the laws should change to reflect that 'perpetuity'.

Thanks for reminding people about that point, though! Amazon is so dominant that so few indies realize we have other ways we can pursue e-book publishing!

Eva Caye said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Charles Fudgemuffin said...

I totally agree with you on this point, Eva. Option C is an interesting idea and would be my preferred choice as well.

It's also worth mentioning that charities have lost out because of UK copyright law with respect to book ownership. JM Barrie willed the rights to Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital but in 2007 these rights expired. The book therefore went into the public domain which meant any publishers could print up copies without paying a penny to Great Ormond Street Hospital.

As it turned out I remember reading that one publisher did make a one-off payment to Great Ormond Street Hospital but I still feel that copyright law needs to be looked at again so that charities don't lose out in future.