Friday, October 31, 2003
Names and Not Selling What is Yours
NAMES
I heard Rosie O’Donnell on TV today. This is a trial I wish I had time to follow. I remember when she first wanted to split with her magazine making this argument. ‘Putting her name on the magazine is kind of like having a Pepsi vending machine selling generic coke. You can sell the coke but you can’t call it Pepsi.’ She was going to let the magazine have her money but
she wanted her name back.
DON’T SELL YOUR SHIT.
Or if you are going to sell yourself, make sure you have a great lawyer write the contract. On TV today Rosie was saying that a corporation shouldn’t have the right to own someone else’s name. I disagree. A company gets the right to use whatever you sell to them. You would have to write laws preventing people from selling their names in order to get the outcome Rosie wants.
It is the willingness to sell that screws so many artist right now. It is hard to explain to the kid from the ghetto that he should not take the thousands of dollars a record company is offering him because then he won’t have the rights to use the words he writes unless the company says so. Record companies end up getting richer and artist, typically black artist, don’t figure out exactly how they are getting screwed until they get older. They just want someone to pay the cost for recording their music and they end up getting the shaft. To the record companies I say beware, your time is coming and I will gladly throw a handful of dirt on your grave.
As for publishers—I was reading a book of poems by one of my favorites and in the book he thanks a publishing house for letting him publish some of his poems in the newer compilation. It pissed me off so much. You should not have to thank anyone for letting you reprint your own work. If you sell it to them though, you have to, they own it.
This ownership thing inflames me. I am working on a book (aside from my poetry). I have had it pointed out to me a billion times that I am one of those stories people love (that is another blog post). I know I could ride the names of my schools and pitch the book to publishing houses and get an advance and not have to prostitute myself (not really) in order to pay for my third year of law school. However, a publishing house could give me an advance, buy my book and then choose not to publish it. They could just sit on my book. And I wouldn’t get to publish it either. The frustration would kill me.
On a bus from my hometown back to the city I sat next to another lawyer/writer. He told me about the wonder of buy back options. I could take an advance for my book and put a clause in that says that if they don’t publish it within a certain amount of years I can buy it back and try to pitch it to another publisher.
I am wondering what Rosie’s lawyers were doing before the litigation started. Where were her wonderful contract advisors? Homegirl has money. Someone should have told her. Hopefully her lawyers are better litigators than they were contract advisors.
NAMES
I heard Rosie O’Donnell on TV today. This is a trial I wish I had time to follow. I remember when she first wanted to split with her magazine making this argument. ‘Putting her name on the magazine is kind of like having a Pepsi vending machine selling generic coke. You can sell the coke but you can’t call it Pepsi.’ She was going to let the magazine have her money but
she wanted her name back.
DON’T SELL YOUR SHIT.
Or if you are going to sell yourself, make sure you have a great lawyer write the contract. On TV today Rosie was saying that a corporation shouldn’t have the right to own someone else’s name. I disagree. A company gets the right to use whatever you sell to them. You would have to write laws preventing people from selling their names in order to get the outcome Rosie wants.
It is the willingness to sell that screws so many artist right now. It is hard to explain to the kid from the ghetto that he should not take the thousands of dollars a record company is offering him because then he won’t have the rights to use the words he writes unless the company says so. Record companies end up getting richer and artist, typically black artist, don’t figure out exactly how they are getting screwed until they get older. They just want someone to pay the cost for recording their music and they end up getting the shaft. To the record companies I say beware, your time is coming and I will gladly throw a handful of dirt on your grave.
As for publishers—I was reading a book of poems by one of my favorites and in the book he thanks a publishing house for letting him publish some of his poems in the newer compilation. It pissed me off so much. You should not have to thank anyone for letting you reprint your own work. If you sell it to them though, you have to, they own it.
This ownership thing inflames me. I am working on a book (aside from my poetry). I have had it pointed out to me a billion times that I am one of those stories people love (that is another blog post). I know I could ride the names of my schools and pitch the book to publishing houses and get an advance and not have to prostitute myself (not really) in order to pay for my third year of law school. However, a publishing house could give me an advance, buy my book and then choose not to publish it. They could just sit on my book. And I wouldn’t get to publish it either. The frustration would kill me.
On a bus from my hometown back to the city I sat next to another lawyer/writer. He told me about the wonder of buy back options. I could take an advance for my book and put a clause in that says that if they don’t publish it within a certain amount of years I can buy it back and try to pitch it to another publisher.
I am wondering what Rosie’s lawyers were doing before the litigation started. Where were her wonderful contract advisors? Homegirl has money. Someone should have told her. Hopefully her lawyers are better litigators than they were contract advisors.
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