$50k in a year is not an insubstantial amount. Boutique / Cottage self publishers are probably under that threshold.
I didn't say otherwise. It's still probably most people who would do this for a living, rather than a side hobby. And $50k is total revenue, not net. Someone who sold $50k worth of material might be scraping by on $20k personal income, at best.
$750k of licensed product is pretty darn substantial. I get that the first book you make costs you a fortune but every book after that has a pretty darn good margin right?
From comments here and there, the profit margin most publishers are working on is in the 10%-20% range. Making the book is a lump sum cost, but printing the book is a pretty large repeating cost. And that doesn't count other fees (eg: Kickstarter fees), taxes, shipping costs, inventory/storage costs, etc.
What is the suggested alternative to being able to terminate the licence at any time? Not being able to terminate the license?
Well... yeah? The GPL, the Creative Commons, most any open source license, they're all implicitly or explicitly irrevokable. So yes, that's a perfectly viable alternative.
Outside of this case who would willingly enter into an agreement that would tie your hands regardless of the changing circumstances?
If some part of the license is subject to "changing circumstances", that's your first clue that this shouldn't be an open license. At the very least it should be a separate contract, and probably a privately negotiated one, not a global public one.
It’s pretty rare to be in a contract you can’t get out of… ever!
Not rare at all. Consider pretty much every piece of open source software on the planet. It's fundamental to most Linux distributions, with the GPL. The world is teeming with such contracts. (Or at least for the duration of the copyright, which is effectively forever for most people in the US.)
I’ve seen the FAQ information that makes it clear that the clause about using your material is to stop creators suing frivolously, not to enable WOC to steal the stuff though I get that people are naturally suspicious. These clauses have been in place for a while though… are there any actual cases where WOC has stolen someone’s work for their own under a licence? From DMsGuild etc or is this just scaremongering.
I didn't make any assertions about the argument over what WotC can use of the licensees' works. I have no specific stance on it at this time.