QWF Writes

Tag: business

  • Copyright: What’s the Big Deal?— By Julie Barlow

    Copyright: What’s the Big Deal?— By Julie Barlow

    The Federal government is in the process of revising the Copyright Act. If you don’t think that matters to writers, think again.

    I’m always surprised to see blank stares on writers’ faces when I launch into a speech about copyright. Some of them aren’t clear why copyright really matters. Others aren’t sure what copyright even is. Fair enough—it’s not the sexiest topic in the writing world. But even if you don’t notice it, it’s fundamental to our business.

    Here’s why. I am a non-fiction author of six books and a magazine writer. To earn my living I sell the right to use my work, either to publishers who pay me advances and royalties or to magazines who pay me fees to publish my articles. For most of my twenty-five-year career, this revenue has constituted most of my income.

    Simply put, copyright law is what makes it possible for me to get paid for my work. The Oxford dictionary defines copyright as: “The exclusive and assignable legal right, given to the originator for a fixed number of years, to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material.” That’s me—the originator. The Copyright Act is what legally makes my work mine as soon as I create it, and mine to sell.

    It sounds solid in principle, and I wish it was. Unfortunately, it’s getting harder and harder to enforce my copyright and get paid for it. So I jumped at the opportunity to attend a hearing hosted by the federal government’s Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, held May 8 in downtown Montreal.

    First, let me explain why it’s getting harder to make money from copyright. The reason, in a nutshell, is the Internet and digitization. By making it easier to “publish” and “distribute” creative work, the Internet has made many, many consumers of culture think they should get what’s online for free. The ripple effect in the publishing industry has led to dramatically less revenue for publishers, magazines, and of course writers.

    “By making it easier to “publish” and “distribute” creative work, the Internet has made many, many consumers of culture think they should get what’s online for free.”

    Magazine revenues fell when advertisers turned to online outlets. So magazines are trying to increase their profits by demanding (and the word is not too strong) more copyright from writers, but for the same fee. Whereas the standard when I started publishing in 1995 was to sell first publication rights (giving the magazine the right to publish it once), I now have to sign contracts in which I hand over the right to resell my articles in any form, in any language, anywhere on the planet, sometimes for periods longer than the rest of my life. I used to resell my pieces, sometimes up to five times. Now that’s impossible. Some magazines have even demanded I give them “moral rights” to my work, which means they can alter my work any way they want without my permission – or even take my name off it (I don’t work for those ones).

    The case in book publishing is a little harder to explain. The industry as a whole is suffering from the forces of technology and book advances to authors are falling. When I Google my own work, I discover so many sites offering free (i.e., illegal) PDFs of my books that I can’t keep track of them anymore. And neither can my publisher.

    In 2012, the Conservative government recognized that the Internet and digital economy were changing the dynamics of publishing, so it set out to revise the Copyright Act, originally passed in 1921, to take digital realities into account. But the resulting revisions made it harder for both writers and publishers to earn money. The Act already stipulated situations when consumers don’t have to pay creators. For example, “fair dealing” allows you to share one of my articles with a friend for personal consumption without infringing my copyright. The 2012 revisions broadened fair dealing to include situations like “education.” The problem was, the revised Copyright Act didn’t stipulate how much of the work could be used without infringement. The result? Universities and schools across Canada have been refusing to pay fees for copies of my articles or excerpts from my books. Since 2013, the revenue that Access Copyright collects from universities, schools, and other institutions to distribute to writers has declined by 80 percent.

    As a writer, what do I want the government do to about this? I’m not expecting them to turn back the clock—the Copyright Act has to be adapted to work in the digital world. But most writers would agree that in this already difficult context, we deserve at least as much protection as we had before, not less.

    “As a writer, what do I want the government do to about this?”

    Today, the government appears to recognize the 2012 revision was a misstep. One committee member told me in private that the previous committee let copyright users like universities pretty much dominate the agenda during the last reform, while we creators had little say. So this year the government decided to go back to the drawing board and start by asking for our input.

    At the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology meeting on May 8, about thirty-five creators spoke during the “open mic session.” We each got two minutes to make our case. The vast majority told their own variation on a common tale: over the last 20 years it’s become dramatically more difficult to earn money from our work because it’s harder to get anyone that should pay for the privilege of reading (writers’) or listening to (musicians’) or looking at (photographers’) work to actually pay for it.

    Creators are looking to the government to strengthen the copyright law so it protects our interests. For example, this means minimizing exceptions to fair dealing. I told the committee: “Some people own real estate and make money by selling it. I own copyright and make money by charging magazines and publishers for the right to publish my writing. Why would I be expected to donate my work for free to people who are making money using my work?” (Last time I checked, universities weren’t charities and professors didn’t work for free.)

    “Why would I be expected to donate my work for free to people who are making money using my work?”

    I actually feel a strange kinship with the taxi drivers and hotel owners out there whose livelihood is threatened by digital technology in the form of Uber and Airbnb. The difference, of course, is that the general public seems to get why taxi drivers and hotel owners ask for protection, whereas few understand how infringing on copyright takes money directly out of creators’ pockets.

    This time, I hope the government listens to creators. If they don’t, I’m not sure how we can be expected to make all the stuff people want to copy in the first place.

    I encourage other QWF members and all creators to draw on their own experience and submit a brief to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, explaining why copyright is important to creators. Here’s the link.

    JulieBarlow_headshot

    Julie Barlow is a Montreal-based magazine writer and author of books on language and France, including her latest, The Bonjour Effect: The Secret Codes of French Conversation Revealed (St. Martin’s Press) and The Story of French, winner of the 2007 Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction. She teaches the Quebec Writers’ Federation workshop, Narrative Non-Fiction: Finding the Story Among the Facts. Visit her at nadeaubarlow.com.

    Photo credits: Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images (header banner); Julia Marois (headshot)

  • Running a Small Press in 2015 by Guillaume Morissette

    Running a Small Press in 2015 by Guillaume Morissette

    Located in Montreal, Canada, Metatron is a small, independent press that publishes contemporary literature and works by new and rising authors. Almost all of its authors are under thirty years old, and their works reflect concerns such as love and relationships in the age of social media, existential angst, reconciling the spiritual with the digital and MySpace-era nostalgia, among others. Along with Ashley Opheim, who founded the press, I currently serve as co-editor of Metatron. We’re both writers with good intentions but limited time, and we have no concrete experience running a business. Metatron Press started with no safety net, investors or carefully thought-out business plan. Yet so far, everything is going great. When I joined Metatron in 2014, the press had already published six titles and received positive media coverage.

    I met Ashley in 2011, through Concordia University’s Creative Writing program. Our literary tastes overlapped, so we became friends and began working together on countless projects. We organized several well-attended readings in Montreal, a little miracle as we had virtually no budget. Later, in the fall of 2013, Ashley applied for a small grant from Emploi Québec’s Jeunes Volontaires program. At the time, I was living in Toronto, so I could only follow her progress through the grant application system from a distance. Though I knew she might receive money in the end, it didn’t feel like a game show, where you spin a wheel and win thousands of dollars and maybe a cruise, but more like something procedural and mysterious, as if she was defending herself in a court of law, trying to argue that she deserved retribution.

    The grant wasn’t an overwhelming amount of money, but it was enough for Ashley to start experimenting with different ideas. She made good use of this initial flexibility. It helped Metatron exit the grant stage and become a self-funded, independent entity. When I moved back to Montreal in 2014, it seemed perfectly natural for me to start helping Ashley with Metatron

    A few lessons from Metatron’s journey so far:

    1) Leverage pre-existing chemistry. My friendship with Ashley (pictured below) is a huge asset for Metatron, I feel, as we can pitch ideas to each other quickly, delegate tasks knowing the other will get things done and generally feel good when working together on projects. The sub-text of mutual respect and trust in our communications can only be earned through years of working together, and sometimes failing together. And countless other friends (and friends of friends) have helped Metatron. Ridiculously talented (and busy) local graphic designers Freyja & Zamudio, for example, took the time to create two high-quality book covers for the press. Metatron has also received a lot of support from Montreal artists like Claire Milbrath, Rachel Shaw and Rebecca Storm, and bookstores like Drawn & Quarterly. These contributions, big or small, are all invaluable. I am often surprised by how eager our friends are to pitch in.

    Ashley Opheim

    2) Work fast. One advantage of running a small indie press is that we’re usually able to fast-track the typical production cycle of a book. Instead of a book coming out a year or more after the initial publishing agreement is signed, it can come out a few months after work begins. This can give the final product an increased sense of urgency, though it also means there will be less time to let the work “rest” and to return to it later with fresh eyes.

    3) Build your community. Metatron doesn’t present itself as a literary press that takes itself very seriously, but rather as something artistic powered by positive energy and good intentions. It doesn’t only publish books and booklets – it also promotes the work of local writers, artists and musicians on its blog, fostering good vibes and a sense of community. This, I feel, gives the press a distinct flavour. In addition to being thought-provoking, literature can be entertaining, welcoming and serve as the basis for a strong community.

    Metatron pin

    4) Keep things small. Metatron’s finances often feel like an aquarium to me, like a delicate ecosystem. All profits made by the press are pumped right back into reprinting current titles or publishing future ones. To keep costs down, it’s been helpful to focus on smaller print runs, and to keep distribution entirely in-house. Moreover, some of Metatron’s titles are booklets rather than books. The booklets are a little bigger than your average chapbook, but more compact than a full-length, perfect-bound book. I really like this format, as it allows us to work with a lot of new and rising authors who haven’t been published in print before. Since booklets are also cheaper to produce and ship, they can also be sold for less.

    5) Have no idea what you’re doing. And finally: it’s okay to try new things, or figure them out as you go. In Spring 2015, Metatron will publish the full-length, perfect-bound debut of Toronto-based writer Sophia Katz, a big release for us. If we have to change our methods to produce and ship more copies, we’re confident that we’ll be able to figure out a way to adapt. Metatron has also announced the inaugural 2015 Metatron Prize for contemporary writers. The winner will receive $150, a publication deal with Metatron and a selection of past Metatron titles. Before announcing the contest, it seemed impossible for us to estimate how many submissions we would be receiving for something like this, so we simply decided to go for it and see what happened. In the end, we were blown away by the quality, quantity and diversity of manuscripts that we received, and we are now hoping to do the prize on a yearly basis. 

    Though not all of Metatron’s experiments will pay off, they should all prove valuable in some way, and it seems likely that this willingness to be playful and try out new ideas will remain an important part of the press’s identity.

    Metatron Books

    Guillaume MorissetteGuillaume Morissette is the author of New Tab (Vehicule Press, 2014), which was shortlisted for the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. You can find him on Twitter at @anxietyissue