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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mouseferatu" data-source="post: 4698896" data-attributes="member: 1288">Nobody who buys the book owes me money. I don't get royalties from WotC (or other RPG companies). We get paid up-front for work-for-hire. And not that much, either; anybody who gets into this to get rich is fooling themselves. We do it because--hey, wild idea--we love what we do. And the number of people who can honestly earn a living just freelancing is a fraction of a percentage of those who try.But as far as novels? Nobody's paying us much up-front for those. Royalties on novels and the like aren't bonus pay. They're essential for writers to make a living.You keep talking about writers getting rich, or being able to afford not to work because of royalties, but you're talking about the tiniest fraction of the most successful ones out there. Most writers can barely make a living writing even with royalties. It's like waiters and tips; tips aren't a bonus, they're an integral part of making a living.You don't like the current copyright system? Fine. But that system isn't the problem; it's a symptom of the problem. And that problem is that there simply isn't anyone who's going to pay writers (or artists, or whatever) enough up-front that they can afford to do what they do without royalties.How long do you think it takes to write a novel? How long to edit it? How long to find a publisher? We're talking about a process of years, all-told, unless you're Stephen King or GRR Martin or someone. Sometimes royalties on prior books are all that allows a writer to survive while working on his next book.Not taking a vacation. Not lazing about. Working on his next novel.For that system to work without royalties, publishers would have to increase their up-front costs by an order of magnitude, at least.And again, we're talking about making a living, not getting rich.You keep saying that the current copyright system needs to change. But even if that's true, changing how copyrights work is the last step in the process, not the first, unless you're looking to put every writer and artist in America out of work.</blockquote>

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