The Egatz Epitaph

Marc Aronson recently published interesting thoughts on the cost of copyright reprints, e-books and micropayments. With permission costs spiraling out of control, many publishers have encouraged authors to not include excerpts of poems, song lyrics, or photos in their work. Authors can’t afford these costs when self-publishing, of course. Publishers themselves are throwing darts blindfolded when trying to estimate how many copies of each book will be sold. It’s impossible for them to foresee the future to establish how many books will sell, how many copies are needed, and hence, how much a bad, unpunctuated line from Frank O’Hara is worth when reprinted in the next big thing.

The answer is go digital. To fix the permissions cost guessing game, do it sooner, rather than later. Things will get easier when there’s an exact accounting of how many copies of any e-book sold. This is happening whether we like it or not. While a sick bibliophile like myself will always love to turn a page of dead tree pulp, eventually, I and others like me will be dead. If we don’t blow ourselves up any time soon, future generations will save forests by reading electronic media.

If you’re a writer who has created something someone else wants to reprint, here’s something to consider. Would you rather get a small renumeration for each copy sold, or would you rather let a few guys in an office decide what they were going to pay you as a flat rate? I need not remind you of how creative accountants can get. Ask anyone who owned Enron stock.

This is worth thinking about. If publishers of the future and authors who create what they publish are not worried about repressive payments for permissions, more material will be quoted. Characters in novels will be able to sing entire verses and songwriters will get paid. Movies and television shows can be quoted in short fiction. Paintings can be used in biographies. The list is endless.

As a poet, I’d be most happy if I was getting my lines quoted in other books. Some readers who had never heard of me might get their interest piqued, attracting more readers to the source material. Me. That could also mean more sales of my books.

As a publisher of other peoples’ writing, I’d be more than happy to have a fair way to divide the proceeds of a sale. All it will take is some new blood on the Quicken team, and the publishing and writing industries can be changed forever.

As technology has made the electoral college obsolete, so stands poised the roulette wheel of permissions payment estimates. Now, if we can just get corporations to give up without the lengthy, ugly death throes we can expect whenever anyone is asked to give up power they’ve abused for far too long.