That's all it takes with that guy?
If you've got the guy's email, I'm sure we'll all have ideas for him...
Aspiring writers?
- Thread starter Nerdius Maximus
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That's all it takes with that guy?
If you've got the guy's email, I'm sure we'll all have ideas for him...
Technically, you don't pay your agent at all, the publisher does. Agents work on a commission, which is a percentage (15% is the industry standard) of whatever you make. The publisher pays the advance to the agent rather than you, and then the agent sends you a check for the same amount, minus that 15%.
This also motivates the agent to get the best possible deal for you, since the more money you make, the more money the agent makes...
AHHHHHH....
Much more better, as the Sparrow would say!Okaaay... So what exactly is the minimum age requirement for writing a Pocket Trek Novel? I know the SNW min. age was 18, but there was nothing in the book guidelines about an age requirement....
Old enough to know better, but young enough not to care.
SNW had age limits and residential restrictions - for legal reasons - because it was a competition.
Pocket Books will take a ST manuscript for a proposal and sample chapters from a five-year-old, so long as it was well done (and not written in double-spaced yellow crayon). But they probably would need a guardian to sign the contracts.
Hmm... interesting food for thought. Thanks, mate!
...what about green?
I don't know much about writer payouts for plot ideas, but I do know that guys like Chuck Dixon, Frank Miller, and Denny O'neill have apparently gotten some niiice checks from Warner Brothers for concepts of theirs that were used in Batman Begins. Keep in mind that anything any of these guys has ever done for the Batman comics is 100% work for hire, they have zero rights to this stuff. However, as longstanding contributors, they were recognized for their work, even though Warner's had no reason to fear legal action. It does happen occasionally. I'm sure more checks went out for the Dark Knight too. Hell, Alan Moore probably would've gotten one too if they weren't sure he'd burn it in some sort of fucked up sacrifice to his goat deity.
"100% work-for-hire" isn't as specific a term as you might think. It's entirely likely that those creators have contracts guaranteeing them percentages of the work they create if it gets made into films.
Doubtful, as until recently, the contracts that writers and artists signed in that world could be best described as draconian. A good portion of the concepts and characters that I'm referring to have been adapted and re-adapted multiple times without their creators seeing a dime. Now, though, a lot of creators got checks, and Jerry Robinson (creator of the Joker) has a position as an "Executive Consultant" at DC, despite the fact he hasn't contributed much of anything to the comics field in thirty years. It's not because Warner's fears legal action, it's that they don't want another debacle like the Siegel/Schuster disaster. It makes them look like the good guys.
Anyway, I'd assumed that, as authors for media tie-ins, you guys were working under a similar deal. Did John Ordover and Paula Block get a check for the Day of Honor episode that Voyager did? Their concept after all. If Paramount decided to make a Titan movie that used some of the concepts from Taking Wing would Mangels and Martin benefit somehow? How about an Articles of the Federation movie? Would DeCandido make out like a bandit? I'm honestly curious, but if that's investigating a little too far into the author's dealings with Pocket, let me know and I'll drop it.
^ The short answer to your queries is, We wouldn't get a damned thing. When we agree to write Trek novels, we surrender all rights beyond initial compensation and limited royalties should the book(s) earn out. As far as I know, John and Paula received neither cash nor screen credit for the Voyager "Day of Honor" episode, nor were they entitled to any, under the terms of "work for hire" contract under which all Trek derivative works are created.
Thanks for clearing that up, Mr. Mack, though I'm kind of disappointed to hear that I was right about that. I'll never quite understand how it is that you guys get the shaft in a situation like that, yet they had to substitute the name Tom Paris for Nick Locarno just to avoid paying an assload of royalties. Shows the benefits of an organized union, I suppose.
That's precisely it, in fact. The term for the character-creation fee that applied to Nick Locarno / Tom Paris is "separation of rights," but it only applies to material written for the screen in the first place. Writers working under the WGA Minimum Basic Agreement receive a lot more money and far greater protection of their intellectual property than do those of us creating "derivative" works.
It's just the economics of the matter, to be honest. The reading audience for any given media property will be, at best, between 1% and 2% of its average episodic viewing audience. Consequently, we don't generate enough revenue to call the shots.
Actually I find them to be fairly straightforward. But then I haven't ever written a comic for DC or MARVEL.
Yes. That's true but a good many of the big comic book characters were created in the 1930s 40s and 50s by and for people who had no idea what would come of their work. They signed work-for-hire deals accordingly. I don't have any sympathy for those who "got the shaft" because, at the very same time, one Will Eisner was protecting himself and his estate from just such eventualities. You snooze, you lose.
I'm willing to bet, sometime after SUPERMAN (I), creators and especially creators who were also editors (O'Neill), began working percents of percents into their contracts when it came to "derivative" or "ancillary" works. The formation of IMAGE comics was partly due to the intractability of Marvel on the point of paying creators what they felt they were owed on a work-for-hire creation.
The point is, one size certainly does not fit all.
Up to a point. In reality it boils to down to bean counting- cost/benefit ratios. It's never about being sweet or just. Never.
The point is all of us sign contracts that we've presumably read beforehand. Nobody's getting shafted by an agreement they knowingly signed off on. It's part of the deal. It IS the deal.
And, of course, there's always just making up your own univeres and jumping into the big pool as more than a few Trek (and other media) writers have done. In that venue all bets are off. you own everything and can peel off the bits you like for licensing or tattoos or whatever you like.
I like writing Trek becaue I've been Trek-obsessed one way or another since I was a kid. So, if some movie decides to focus on the Seleneans and I don't get "my fair share" of the take from said blockbuster, well, I know I invented them and added to the tapestry. Nobody's taking that from me. It's not always exclusively about money.
But, if i can get into position to write canon material, so much the better.
I've done it. It's less rewarding than one might think.
Doesn't that depend on who's in charge at the time? I'm sure writing for Michael Piller was more rewarding than writing for Rick Berman, just to use two names.
Well, Dave wrote for Ira Steven Behr, which would probably be toward the more rewarding end of the spectrum. I figure Dave means that writing freelance for someone else's TV show isn't going to be as creatively rewarding as writing novels.
After all, even if a novel is work-for-hire and you don't own the characters or concepts, you still write the whole thing yourself, get your own words and ideas on the page. If you sell a script to a TV show, it can be drastically rewritten by the time it reaches the screen. If you just sell a story outline, what ends up onscreen may bear only the vaguest resemblance to it.
After all, even if a novel is work-for-hire and you don't own the characters or concepts, you still write the whole thing yourself, get your own words and ideas on the page. If you sell a script to a TV show, it can be drastically rewritten by the time it reaches the screen. If you just sell a story outline, what ends up onscreen may bear only the vaguest resemblance to it.
^ Essentially, yes. I was just too tired to type all that out, but that is what I was driving at.
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