Wall Street Journal to take percentage of writers' book deals

That's a completely different issue.

 

Not really. If your newspaper can tell you it owns a piece of your future work because it paid you to do the original work, there are some serious lines being blurred.

Of course, I can see the business angle here; the first thing I tell my clients is GET PERMISSION (because as many of you know, permission is often denied).

I was just wondering how many of you here would be happy about paying your newspaper a percentage of your book income--I haven't met a writer yet who was okay with it.

 

It's not only petty, it's short-sighted.
The promotional aspect and "credibility" of having "authors" on staff outweighs the 10%.
(I'll let you figure out why they parentheses).

And often times what drives a reporter to complete a long and tedious series of stories is the thought that there might be a book in it, so the paper benefits from that incentive.

 

While it kind of gives me the willies, the newspaper can easily make the argument that the only reason you had the information in the first place is because of the access gained through that paper. If you were just some schlub off the street, you'd never get that access in the first place. No access, no book.

But then again, I agree pretty much wholeheartedly with EE.

 

Anyone who has paid attention to my posts knows that I rarely side with current newspaper practices. But in this instance, I do. I agree with deskslave, even though I always have been a writer, mostly covering pro beats and features. You have your access and your credential thanks to the position the paper has put you in. It is paying for all that research time while you're on the beat, and it is highly unlikely that you could do a book using all fresh material and keeping all reporting/writing hours separate from the first eight hours of each work day.

The promotional value of having authors on staff is dubious, and certainly intangible. If the paper wants 10 percent AND gives a boost to marketing and promotion (house ads), that's a decent deal. If the paper didn't ask for 10 percent, that's a better deal.

But we all owe our papers an honest eight, and first dibs on the results of our labor, in whatever form. That's why, unless the paper is sponsoring the radio show or TV spots, I think most of us who chase those things are cheating the day job. But that's just me.

 

People writing books are smart enough to go do a lot of things that make a lot more money than doing this. Law. Business. A lot of these people are probably in the top 1/10 of 1 percent where intelligence is concerned. And they choose to do this because they find it, for whatever reason, a fulfilling and worthwhile pursuit.

You advocate treating them like 9-to-5 workers at the factory?

I'm sorry, but you can't measure this job as putting in an "honest eight" every day. It's different. And when it ceases to be different, it'll lose those people, who will just as soon go work somewhere where their intelligence and talent is valued.

 

Really?

 

You can't really set Murdoch up as a straw man on this. It's the industry standard.

 

No it's not different, not to the degree that you can double-dip by taking my (playing newspaper role at the moment ) money while doing the job I hired you for, and then turn that work into money exclusively for yourself -- while even offering up stories that didn't appear in the paper but are the fruit of your reporting for the paper. And you shouldn't double-dip by using the position "I" have put you in, and often the expenses "I" have paid on your behalf, to do radio and TV work on location for your B and C jobs.

Mostly because it's not honest or fair. And also because it lets those doing the real grunt work for their newspaper checks -- the preps folks, the deskers, the GA people -- see a bad double standard.

If you don't like the terms of the job, then leave it. Go. Write your books as the sole source of your income. Don't do us the favor of foregoing those loftier careers (which remain only a claimed possibility rather than a reality) and then expect us to let you cut corners, just because we're lucky to have you.

Be a professional, give an honest eight, limit your B job to hours nine, 10 and beyond. Don't think that's too much to ask. . . . Look, I sneer at most newspaper management these days, but they have the right to expect you to put the paper first.

 

Putting the paper first and writing books aren't mutually exclusive ideas.

Guess we'll have to just agree to disagree here. To me, this is quite different than going on ESPN and screeching five days a week.

 

Anybody who doesn't "double dip," given the state of the industry these days, is being silly.

 

I'm fine with agreeing to disagree, P.W.

I would just encourage you to focus on the 90 percent of the book revenue that still flows in your direction, from a topic in which the newspaper already paid you once to become an expert.

A 50-50 or 40-60 split would have a much more chilling effect -- and prevent a lot of books from getting written at all. But a 10 percent slice to get the paper's higher profile and marketing machinery on board? There are a lot of authors out there who gladly would cut that deal and they aren't even staffers of the paper.