You could be a professor, a journalist, or just a gifted writer. You have finished your book. It contains your best ideas, the most treasured possession you own. You look for a publisher and find one. You think your job is done. The contract you sign hurriedly because legalese is not your specialty. You sit back and wait for the royalties to roll in.
The book is published, but it is very expensive and doesn’t sell well. Your publisher stops answering your emails. The hoped-for royalties never arrive. It’s disappointing, but what are you going to do?
A few years later, you wonder if you picked the wrong publisher. Maybe you can reuse that material. For the first time, you get curious about that contract you signed. The copyrights to your book belong to the publisher. So too do the distribution rights. You can’t so much as quote your own words on a blog without gaining permission from the publisher. You can do so only at their discretion.
For how long is this true? So that you believe me, I will
quote the copyright office itself:
As a general rule, for works created after January 1, 1978, copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years. For an anonymous work, a pseudonymous work, or a work made for hire, the copyright endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first publication or a term of 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever expires first.
That’s right. From your point of view, it never expires. And let us be clear: the right to publish your work is not something you personally possess. It belongs to a publishing house. Even if you were somehow clever enough to get yourself named as the copyright holder, it wouldn’t matter. The distribution rights are owned by the publisher.
Before digital publishing, there was a slight hope that the publisher would stop even carrying your book in the catalog. In that case, after some unspecified number of years, the rights reverted to you, the author.
This is no longer the case, because digital publishing allows publishers to keep you in print at zero cost. In practice, you never again gain access. You wrote the book that contains your ideas, but now you face a full lifetime of having no control over them again.
It’s in the contract. You signed it. There’s no going back.
After you die, your child could inherit your future rights, but it is very likely that he or she will be dead too. You have to rely on your grandchildren to bring your work into print. Just think about how many grandchildren are interested in the writings of granddad. Not likely. Great-grandchildren, less so.
Unless you are self-publishing, and set out to use a specialized contractual system like Creative Commons (of which there are many varieties), this is the situation in which all authors find themselves. It’s doesn’t matter whether it is commercial or academic publishing; the moment you agree to a publisher, your rights are gone for your lifetime plus another lifetime after that.
www.britannica.com
