Pleasures Of The Heart

Like, you suddenly notice a string instrument in the background music and you haven’t seen a few of them in a while. And the more musically versed you are, the more you figure it out (like in a mystery novel if you happen to have in-depth knowledge about the current riddle) while the “normal” people can get fooled into twists.

The non-musically versed audience hears a new brass instrument and is like “Oh shit, the dude with the tenor horn is probably dead!”, but then he suddenly appears perfectly fine and one minute later they find the body of the Euphonium player.

overgrown

Just the other day I was emailed by a relatively new indie journal looking for writers. They made it very clear that they did not pay writers for their work, so I figured I’d probably be passing, but I took a look at their Copyright policy out of curiosity and it was a nightmare. They wanted “non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide license and right to use, display, reproduce, distribute, and publish the Work on the internet and on or in any medium” (that’s copy and pasted btw) and that was the first of 10 sections on their Copyright agreement page. Yikes. That’s exactly the type of publishing nightmare you don’t want to be trapped in. 

Most journals will ask for “First North American Rights” or a variation on “First Rights” which operate under the assumption that all right revert back to you and they only have the right to be the first publishers of the work. That is what you need to be looking for because you do want to retain all the rights to your work. 

You want all rights to revert back to you upon publication in case you, say, want to publish it again in the future or use it for a bookmark or post it on your blog, or anything else you might want to do with the writing you worked hard on. Any time a publisher wants more than that, be very suspicious. Anyone who wants to own your work forever and be able to do whatever they want with it without your permission is not to be trusted. Anyone who wants all that and wants you to sign away your right to ever be paid for your work is running a scam.

What if the publisher goes defunct? What if they get bought by another publisher who doesn’t care to promote or publish your work? You still can’t to anything with it, you don’t own it anymore!

For a thorough overview of what you should be aware of regarding your intellectual property and publishing rights, please read through this collection of post [https://kriswrites.com/business-musings/contracts-and-dealbreakers/] by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. 

But if you want to know why you should read things for yourself and not, like, just randomly accept things other people say, the last comment is a perfect illustration.

So here’s an example of how you read a contract properly.

Amazon’s T&C are here. https://kdp-eu.amazon.com/agreement?token=eyJjbGllbnRJZCI6ImtpbmRsZV9kaXJlY3RfcHVibGlzaGluZyIsImRvY3VtZW50SWQiOiJrZHAiLCJjYW5jZWxVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL2tkcC5hbWF6b24uY29tIiwiY2xpZW50TG9jYWxlIjoiTkEiLCJkaXNwbGF5UGFyYW1zIjpudWxsfQ%7CeyJtYXRlcmlhbFNlcmlhbCI6MSwiaG1hYyI6IjNVTU9oejdYTENWY1dsMUZEWWQwYnRZN3FNR1FxOEJxVHpyaWhYS2dGVWM9IiwianNvbkhtYWMiOnRydWUsInR5cGUiOiJSRUFEX09OTFkiLCJhY2NlcHQiOmZhbHNlfQ&language=en_US

Does Amazon contractually own your work in perpetuity? Well, the things you need to look for are the term of the agreement (legalese for “how long this lasts” and then the rights they ask for.

Here’s the term of the agreement:

3 Term and Termination The term of this Agreement will begin upon your acceptance of it and will continue until it is terminated by us or by you… You are entitled to terminate at any time by providing us notice of termination, in which event we will cease selling your Digital Books within 5 business days from the date you provide us notice of termination.

In other words, this agreement is VERY easy to terminate–you just tell them you want out and you are out in five days. This is easier to get out of than your standard cable contract.

(Note that the section on KDP Select has separate terms/right grants, but that’s optional from what I understand.)

Then we get to:

5.5 Grant of Rights. You grant to each Amazon party, throughout the term of this Agreement, a nonexclusive, irrevocable, right and license to distribute Digital Books, directly and through third-party distributors, in all digital formats by all digital distribution means available. 

(emphasis mine). There’s more (and I’ll get to that), but that is most definitely a time-limited agreement–the rights you grant are for the term of the agreement. Remember the term of the agreement? Yep. You can cancel in five days. So…not exactly forever-level theft ownership.

So the next section of the rights grant gets more specific, and I’m going to snip most of it, but the question is… do any rights that Amazon asks for survive the term of the agreement?

I read the whole section, but I’m only going to copy the rights that survive the term of the agreement:

This right includes, without limitation, the right to:… © permit customers to “store” Digital Books that they have purchased from us on servers (“Virtual Storage”) and to access and re-download such Digital Books from Virtual Storage from time to time both during and after the term of this Agreement; 

That’s it, that’s the only right you’re granting Amazon that survives the term of the agreement–the right for customers who have paid you money for your  work to be able to read that work as if it were a real book on their shelves.

I’m guessing 99.9% of creators are going to think it’s totally cool that people who bought a thing get to keep enjoying the thing they bought even after you’re no longer working with the person who sold it to them. 

If you’re in the 0.1% of people out there who think that it’s theft for consumers to enjoy something they’ve already purchased, then definitely don’t publish through Amazon.

Blood, necromancy, women, dragons, and eye strain 🌞

🖤My free-to-play visual novel, “Phantom of the Black Rose Revue,” is now available!🖤 This nostalgic yuri game features 19 animated CGs, 13 original music tracks, and an introduction to the world, mysteries, and love interests of the Revue! 🖤

Tomorrow (and tomorrow, and tomorrow).

--

Their attack, which took place on 27 March 1943, was partially successful, and they managed to destroy 800,000 identity cards, and retrieve 600 blank cards and 50,000 guilders. The building was blown up and no one was caught on the night of the attack. However, due to an unknown betrayer, Arondéus was arrested on 1 April 1943. Arondéus refused to give up the rest of his team.

Arondéus was openly gay before the war and defiantly asserted his sexuality before his execution. His final words were:

"Tell the people that homosexuals are not by definition weak."

however. if you fucking hold R? it'll reblog the post instantly too, but MULTIPLE TIMES INSTANTLY. like I hit post limit bc I thought it wasn't actually reblogging the post. I only held the r button for a solit 10 seconds for it to reblog that post 200+ TIMES. my big ass mistake

it’s about james hong being in a triumphantly empathetic film with asian leads after 70 years of watching the landscape for asian actors change with his own eyes, it’s michelle yeoh being taken seriously as a leading actress who can anchor a movie with both humor and heart, it’s ke huy quan getting to play all the roles he never got to play over the last two decades, it’s stephanie hsu bursting onto the scene as a rising star next to all these established actors by walking the path that they helped pave

EDIT: I found it! Here it is!

One gets the idea, watching Gomez, that he delights in getting to be a man, short and boisterous and nurturing and bursting with hope and pocket watches. He’s especially delighted to be a man married to a woman, particularly when that woman is Morticia Addams. It’s hard to get the same idea watching Herman Meunster, or indeed lots of non-trans men both on and off the screen; maybe Herman is willing to be a man, or simply resigned to the idea. Possibly he merely considers it sufficient compensation for also being a monster of Frankenstein, but it doesn’t seem to strike him with renewed glee every morning when he gets to wake up and be one. One can imagine Herman Meunster waking in a spirit of tolerance, at most willing to get out of bed and face another day as the head of a family. Whereas it’s very easy to imagine Gomez’s inner euphoria-driven monologue when he wakes up every morning: Ah, how wonderful! Another stormy day! Ahahaha! Once again, I’m a short and stocky husband and father, with a wife as tall as God! What luck! Why else would he spend a thousand dollars a month on cigaars, or own so many bathrobes with exquisitely-designed lapels, or tend so carefully to such a thin mustache?