Does anyone know what has happened to the rights to Trek magazine and the Best of Trek books now that Irwin and Love have both passed?
Trek/Best of Trek Rights?
- Thread starter ChallengerHK
- Start date
I guess the rights would have passed on to their estates.
All writers of articles in "Best of Trek" paperback collections were sent "standard contracts", which granted ownership of the writing to the two editors in perpetuity. A friend of mine was savvy enough to cross out that clause and still have her work accepted, but her popular piece was never included in any "Best of the Best of Trek" trade PB volumes.
There was always a lot of interesting reading in those BoT paperback collections. Any chronology or timeline speculations would be hopelessly outdated by subsequent series, but I still have all the collections.
So, who owns the rights now? Granted that they bought the rights for the history of the universe, that means that some entity has inherited them. I don't think that Love had any children. How about Irwin?
What I'm wondering, though, is who holds the rights to the mag, not the articles.
Took me a while to find it, bit looks like it might be the Intergalactic Trading Post, of all things.
Took me a while to find it, bit looks like it might be the Intergalactic Trading Post, of all things.
What leads you to that conclusion?
Computer on the fritz, and I can't find the info I found earlier using my phone, but it appears that ITP bought New Eye Publishing.
False lead. ITP does not have the rights.
I think ITP was a source of back issues for "Trek" fanzine, but are you thinking of James Van Hise's "Enterprise Incidents", which for a time was a rival to "Trek" and evolved into a more commercial magazine series in the 80s?
That does back up what I found out. New Eye was the Trek distributor, but not the publisher, so it would make sense that back issues would go that route. At this point, I'm back to thinking that whoever survived Irwin and Love have the rights.
Mrs. Irwin lives around the corner from my parents. She owns a small horse farm and their phone number was just one digit off from ours so we would get calls for them occasionally.
Would this be Walter Irwin's widow? Any chance you'd like to contact her and ask about the rights? :-)
Wow, that's something else. I write on a freelance basis for BACK ISSUE magazine from TwoMorrows Publishing. Their standard contract gives them exclusive rights to my articles for six months from the first publication and first reprint rights, after which all rights revert to me.Good for her! I wonder if the editors noticed that and decided that it wasn't worth the hassle to try and reprint her work in book form.
Of course they noticed! They would have had to send her another contract to use her work in "The Best of the Best of Trek".
Future "Best of Trek" books featured "More Star Trek Jokes", but not by my friend.
I had a similar go-round with them. They published one piece and all was handled professionally. The next one just appeared without contract, payment or notice; color me surprised. I tracked both of them down (this was pre-internet, and it was a PITA), and got payment from them, but they never published anything else from me. People I've talked to who knew them have told me that this behavior came mostly from GB Love, who was of the opinion that pretty much everything submitted to them belonged to them them moment it was opened.
Truthfully, though, I think it's just the publishing industry, all the more so now. I've had one publisher send me a bad check, and another one contacted my source and tried to get the article from him so he wouldn't have to pay. There's a game publisher who treats anything sent in like I'm told Love did, and he got me too. It's a hard business to be in, and I pretty much gave up on it except for the things I do for fun.
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Fascinating insight, especially as I’m re-reading the 18 volumes for the first time in decades (9 down, 9 to go).
...John, is that you?
Oh, damn. You've cracked my alias.
How are you doing, Clay?
