Thursday, November 27, 2008

What a concept!

Another blog entry yanked out of an email. A reader contacted me about a children's charity book a colleague was putting together. I told the reader I had a few pages that had only appeared in a mini (I was going to say "very limited" mini, but that's a redundancy).

He wrote back saying the publisher would probably want original work, even if it did appear in a mini. I wrote back and said that if the guy wasn't paying, he should be on his knees to all the nice artists, crying, "Thank you! Thank you!"

The GALL of these people, putting together everything from charity books to 24-hour comics, and all of it riding on FREE work from artists. But do they ever think of putting together the cash first? Do they even look for an arts grant or get a LOAN?

The goddamn printer gets paid, and UPS, and everybody in the project -- including the PUBLISHER -- and who gets hung out doing it all for free? The people doing the most work! How the hell did THIS mess get started??

I'll give you one guess who's fault this is, for building the system -- even admitting it in his books -- but that would make too many little heads spin. Let's just say I get sick of being expected to paint bed-frames in a production line.

What a lot of people don't realize is you can get an author or artist to do ANYTHING -- if you just pay us!

What a concept! You get what you pay for! Are your heads spinning yet at such a revolutionary idea?

For example: Transformations (where I'm just storing the damn thing).

I don't LIKE writing TF -- but I get paid for it, and I'm good at it.

Here's another project I got paid for pretty nicely (but not enough for what they wanted) and don't want to do any more of:

Yaoi Hentai #4

Mostly because the publisher doesn't understand this: Artists' Rights.

So the next person who gets the idea to put together a nice little book, find a damn arts grant to pay the artists first, before making us do all this damn work, because you want to swan around at SDCC pretending to be a Publisher, with your own little stable of grateful scribblers.

Or are you just too butt-LAZY?

2 comments:

Tammy Lee said...

Word! I don't mind doing little comics for friends' minis or self-publishing endeavours, emphasis on little comics, but I would never again sign away any rights to my work or art without a large transaction happening first.

I'm STILL waiting for this one contract to run out so I can further develop a story. Never again.

Donna Barr said...

Tammy, just remember this -- if they can't afford to pay you, they CAN'T AFFORD TO SUE YOU. There's been too much publisher nonsense taking people's rights for nothing. Now everybody google "Berne Convention" and READ IT.