My So-Called Freelance Life - Michelle Goodman [51]
Own It! (a.k.a., When to Give Up Your Copyrights, and When to Clutch Them to Your Chest as Though Your Life Depended on It)
To a creative freelancer, retaining copyright ownership can be as important as getting paid a fair wage. If I sell an article, photo, or comic strip to my favorite indie women’s magazine, you bet I want to retain as much ownership of my creation as I can. In doing so, not only do I have a say in where my work is distributed now and in the future, I have the option to make more money by reselling the piece to other clients or media outlets later—doubly important to me if the pay and PIE (exposure) I receive from the indie women’s publication isn’t much to write home about.
On the flip side, sometimes signing a contract that grants the client “all rights” to your story, song, or video or deems your creation a “work for hire”—in both cases, handing the client every last copyright to your creation—won’t hurt you. If I’m doing a bread-and-butter job writing web copy about the latest and greatest database program my client’s hawking or a radio jingle about a brand-new extra-plushy toilet paper product, I won’t mind selling all rights to my work. For a corporate gig like this, I’d even expect it. It’s not like I can resell those ditties anyway. And as long as the client’s paying me handsomely, who am I to complain?
Unfortunately, countless print, web, TV, radio, film, and music empires try to extend these same rights-grabbing contracts to the freelancers they buy articles, broadcasts, scripts, songs, photos, videos, films, illustrations, and animations from. Besides having the right to edit or tweak your work without consulting you, when you fork over all copyrights to a media empire, they can distribute and resell your work anywhere they dang well please without paying you a cent. Hardly seems fair when some well-fed execs who stand to make a mint off your content—the guts of their media empires—are driving around in Jaguars and you’re scraping to make rent.
“Some of those clauses can be so expansive, and suddenly you could find out, ‘Wow, they’ve published this anthology through such-and-such publishing house, and now they’re making all these royalties and I’m just sitting here with $150 I got for first publication,’” says attorney Michael Graham, board president of Washington Lawyers for the Arts. “You want to know where your work is going to end up and if you can keep it from winding up somewhere you may not want it.”
Remember that the editor, producer, or art director offering you the contract probably didn’t write it and may not even know what it says. If you explain your concerns, they may be willing to compromise. That said, don’t request twenty-five nit-picky changes or drag out the negotiation process for half a dozen rounds. Clients only have so much patience. Pick your battles and have a bottom line in mind (you retain ownership of all electronic rights no matter what, client gets exclusive dibs on the piece for ninety days, et cetera). Then fight the good fight, make any necessary compromises (or walk from the project), and move on.
If a client who wants to buy your masterpiece sends you a rights-mongering contract, by all means try to negotiate a happy medium. A writer, photographer, or illustrator could push a magazine to buy only the first-publication rights to her work, meaning she can’t sell the piece to anyone else first. Or she could press the publication to buy exclusive rights to the work for a specified period of time (three months, six months, whatever), meaning she can’t