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Business Musings: Poor Poor Pitiful Me Is Not A Business Model
Last week, I wrote a blog about the Authors Guild letter of 2016. I explored a number of things about the letter, but avoided the one thing that annoys me the most. The letter’s tone. It begs. It...
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Business Musings: Introductory Remarks (Dealbreakers/Contracts)
In 2012 and 2013, I published a series of blogs on contract deal breakers for traditionally published writers. I’ve been promising to update it for years now, but I’ll be honest: The very topic...
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Business Musings: Fair, Compromise, Clout, and Balls (Contracts/Dealbreakers)
I’ve been ordering books to help me with this blog series on contracts and deal breakers. Some of the books cover topics I’m less familiar with, but some look like they might be useful to beginners. I...
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Business Musings: Know Your Rights (Contracts/Dealbreakers)
I recently got an email that sent a chill through me. It was a newsletter from a traditional publishing organization. This organization is geared toward publishers and editors, not toward writers. The...
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Business Musings: Prince, Estates, and The Future...
Last week, the death of Prince hit me hard. I was in the middle of teaching the Romance Workshop, here on the Oregon Coast, and working my tail off. A satellite radio station that I always listen to...
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Business Musings: Long-Term Thinking: Rights Reversions (Contracts/Dealbreakers)
As I’ve been looking over my book Dealbreakers from 2013, it’s surprising to me how much I’ve had to change. Things have gotten worse, rather than better. However, I found a couple of topics I could...
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Business Musings: Things I Learned From My Readers
I wrote this post piecemeal as I compiled the contracts blog posts into the book Closing The Deal…On Your Terms. As a result, this post is a bit disjointed and somewhat short. My method, in compiling...
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Business Musings: Writers, Scam Artists, Agents, And More (Sigh)
Just when I thought it was safe to get back into the water… I’m editing a lot these days. I only edit short fiction projects. Anthologies, anthology series (Fiction River), the occasional nonfiction...
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Business Musings: I Spent Decades Developing My IP (Contracts/Dealbreakers)
I’m conducting too many negotiations right now. I discuss them as if they’re easy. They’re not. They’re stressful and take time. But I always learn something. And yesterday, I gained a brand new...
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Business Musings: Stealing Intellectual Property (Contracts/Dealbreakers)
I just had the most illuminating conversation. I had been consulting with someone about one of the TV deals I’m currently negotiating. I had run into a situation I had never encountered before, and I...
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Business Musings: Licensing Opportunities
I think the moment writers dream of being published, they have the same wish. They want to write the books of their heart. They want those books to reach a vast audience, and they want someone else to...
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Business Musings: More Negotiation Advice From The Hardass
One of the major reasons I write a lot about contracts and negotiation is because in the entertainment field, which is where we writers work, contracts are a nightmare. They’re often written by people...
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Business Musings: Copyright Savvy
Gloria and Emilio Estefan have an estimated net worth of 700 million dollars. Jimmy Buffett has an estimated net worth of 550 million dollars. What do those artists have in common? They kept control of...
View ArticleBusiness Musings: Audio (Planning For 2019 Part 4)
Initially, I started this post as a highlight reel of things that we need to pay attention to in 2019, but which I don’t have the time to explore deeply. I started with audio, and although I don’t have...
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Business Musings: The Growing Importance of Intellectual Property (Planning...
I need to be clear as I start this post. We writers create intellectual property. We license our copyrights. We do not sell stories. In fact, the stories we tell, along with their titles, are often not...
View ArticleBusiness Musings: Learning, The Future, and CES (Contracts/Negotiations)
In November, 2007, the members of the Writers Guild of America (East & West) walked off the job as part of a contract negotiation with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers....
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Business Musings: Outrage Fatigue
Every time I log onto my Twitter feed, everyone is screaming at everyone else about something. Even my go-to writers are angry right now. I logged onto #Caturday last Saturday, terrified that the...
View ArticleBusiness Musings: Patreon, Copyright, And Personal Choice
On February 9, The Passive Voice published a piece titled “The Beginning of the End for Patreon.” [link] As he so often does, the Passive Guy linked to another blog post, and then did his own riff on...
View ArticleBusiness Musings: Licensing Expo Prep 1
As I write this, the Las Vegas Licensing Expo is over three weeks away. When this goes live, it’s less than a week away. The expo, which is the biggest of its kind in the world, puts licensors together...
View ArticleBusiness Musings: Here It Comes
I didn’t mean to go down the rabbit hole this afternoon. I blame Led Zeppelin. Seriously. I blame them. In mid-May, I flagged an article on Rollingstone.com titled “The Eternal Revenue Stream of Led...
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