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Re: POST


What do you think of publishers who insist on work-for-hire agreements.

I think there's been far too much made about rights, frankly. I know in my classes its something that concerns students far more than it should. And they tend to be confused by rights.

To answer your question, however, it's a simple matter of economics. If somebody wants to hire me on a work-for-hire basis, and the money is right, they are welcome to all my output.

Incidentally, I've never seen a work for hire contract from a magazine. Only time it effects editorial workers (as opposed to photographers) is for commercial work like catalogs, PR documents, advertising, and the like----where it is the typical way of working, not the exception.

Photographers have always felt that work-for-hire was the Devil incarnate. I've never understood why that was so. If somebody says to me, "we want to send you to Alaska for six months, pay all your expenses for you and your family, and then pay you $15,000 for a photo essay when you get back," I'm gonna say "fine." If they then say, "oh, by the way, this is a work-for-hire agreement," I'm gonna say, "do you want me to fly or to drive." To point is, there is nothing inherently evil about work-for-hire.

Also, lets get some definations right. If you rework a piece, as somebody posted, then it is a new work, and not subject to the rights you sold previously. However, there may be a clause forbidding you to sell a story on that subject for X months after it appears. If so, that's a contractual obligation, but it has nothing to do with the rights you sold to that story.

The fact is, unless you have a pure second-rights market, it's almost irrelevant what rights you sell; you won't have any need for that story again anyway. Besides which, 99% of the markets that buy all rights do so because they're lawyers tell them to. After the piece appears, they will gladly return rights to you.


Brook


 
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