[cc-community] selling book rights, and CC-BY-SA

drew Roberts zotz at 100jamz.com
Tue Jul 14 08:30:26 EDT 2009


On Tuesday 14 July 2009 05:26:13 Chris Watkins wrote:
> I just got an email from one of our partners. They're sharing their work
> under CC-BY-SA - we suggested it, and their publisher happily went along
> with it. I was surprised they agreed so readily, but we do know the
> publisher is very progressive.
>
> Now we just got an email: the publisher has been reading through the
> licence and are concerned about how it affects their ability to sell rights
> for the book overseas..  why would a publisher in, say, Korea buy the book
> when they could just download and publish?
>
> It seems to me that this is a completely valid concern - a CC-BY-SA license
> makes it unsellable internationally. The only thing I can suggest, if they
> do have any expectation of selling the rights, is that they restrict their
> work with an NC clause and do it on their own wiki or subwiki.

Why would the publisher pay the authors in the first place? What prevents them 
from making use of the BY-SA license locally and not paying the authors?

What is special about the internation situation?

Why would the publisher pay in the local market when other local publishers 
can print and sell copies without paying the authors monies?

I think answering this may shed some further light on the issue.

(Asking out of ignorance...) In the book business, is it normal for the author 
to sell the publisher worldwide rights and the publisher to then sub-sell 
those rights to various regions? Or is it normal for the author to sell 
regional rights around the world? It seems from your statement of the problem 
that it might be the former but I was curious.

How are authors going to convince their readers to purchase BY-SA (or BY) 
works from sources where the authors get some income rather than from sources 
where the authors get no revenue?

One person suggests musicians can do it this way and that they can do this 
without the help of copyright laws:

http://www.musicmarketing.com/2009/07/how-to-connect-with-fans-and-give-them-a-reason-to-buy.html
>
> To be honest, I'm not a fan of the NC license as it's normally used, but
> the restriction could be softened a bit:
>
>    - Add a notice that the work will be released under CC-BY-SA after (say)
>    5 years, in addition to the NC license.
>    - Release segments of the book and/or the older version of the book
> under CC-BY-SA. This is less commercially desirable material than the
> latest work by the author, but still enormously valuable to a wiki like
> ours, and helps spread awareness of this author and his work.
>
> Any other ideas? Or is there something I've missed about the CC-BY-SA
> license?
>
> Another idea, if the author take the NC route: We could continue to allow
> people to make additions to the book on our wiki, but add a notice saying
> that these pages are under a dual license: CC-BY-NC-SA as well as the
> wiki's default CC-BY-SA. That way, the author could choose from these
> additions to use in his own work. This has the advantage of being a bit
> complex, but does allow for better sharing. (Using just CC-BY is the other
> option, but I think we're more comfortable with the Share Alike clause.)
>
> Feedback appreciated!

Someone is working on a market to allow creators to sell to their fans:

http://contingencymarket.com/index.php?title=Introduction

"For example, an author can bargain with their readership in the same way that 
they might once have dealt with a publisher, or a musician may haggle with 
their audience as if with a record label.

    * Art for money, money for art "

Also:

http://packet-in.org/wiki/index.php?title=Income
http://www.robmyers.org/wiki/index.php/How_To_Get_Paid_For_Copyleft_Art

I hope some of that helps.

all the best,

drew


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