Scalzi on Dragon

[kenmarable]

One thing to note, though- I don't believe Dragon is soliciting for Fiction at all, which would be standard (they haven't solicited for original fiction in a long time, only having fiction pieces from authors they selected- and presumably worked out terms with). I don't see anything on the submission page regarding fiction- just game-related articles, which wouldn't be easily resold outside of Dragon (and certainly not outside of the RPG market- I don't know offhand of any other RPG game magazines that publish d20 material, though there certainly may be some).

That said, if they were to accept fiction submissions, personally I'd probably avoid using any original settings. Just use some WotC owned settings (Eberron, Realms, etc.) and some original characters. Not that that would completely mitigate things.

It's been purged from wizards.com, but I found a cached version on Google just to make sure we didn't have a collective halucination. So WotC was soliciting fiction under these terms for 2 weeks (or less) and then pulled it, even scrubbing the news items referencing it.

Hopefully they realized how bad these terms are for fiction. I haven't heard these things about their novel line, so I'm sure there are people at WotC that know how to best handle fiction rights. They just need to talk to the Dragon folk(s).

 

[Storm Raven]

I recall that WotC has had several disputes with the SFWA over writer's rights in the past couple years - the reprint rights for material to be used in the Dragon anthology CD was a big bone of contention between them.

 

[WizarDru]

The other magazines he mentions have circulations many, many times the size of Dragon's at it's height and Dragon still offers a comparable rate compared to those other magazines.

The magazines he mentions most certainly do NOT have circulations "many,many times" larger. In fact, the exact OPPOSITE is true, and has been for years. Dragon was averaging a circulation of 70,000 issues/monthly in 2006, iirc. "Fantasy & Science Fiction" had a circulation in 2006 of 14,575 subscribers (plus 3691 on the stands). "Asimov's" has about 15,000 subscribers, too. "Analog" sold roughly 28,000 between subscribers and newsstands. "Realms of Fantasy" is about comparable with F&SF.

In other words, other niche publishers are paying better and NOT demanding complete rights to the author's works. Scalzi is merely calling that out. He's not angry about it. This is a man who's website's motto is "Taunting the Tauntable", after all.

 

[WizarDru]

I recall that WotC has had several disputes with the SFWA over writer's rights in the past couple years - the reprint rights for material to be used in the Dragon anthology CD was a big bone of contention between them.

And that's discussed in the comments section beneath the write-up. It was a big deal at the time because WotC went ahead and published the CD without securing the rights to all the content. In some cases because they couldn't locate the person who held them...but also because they assumed that they had the rights, even though the contracts didn't specifically give them electronic publishing rights (since the technology didn't even exist in the 70s and didn't make it into contract language until the late 80s). They assumed they could do this because of the Tasini case...when that was reversed, WotC got hit with threats from the SFWA and Writer's Guild, among others. They made good with most of the authors, AFAIK, and KenzerCo's access to the D&D logo was part of their settlement.

So I have no doubt that they'd just as soon have TOTAL rights to any material to avoid future such entanglements, but I think it's a bad idea, pure and simple.

 

[Morrus]

I don't understand why people get angry because someone offered them a deal they didn't want to go for. Just say no, politely, and move on.

It's like being incensed because I saw a toaster in a shop the other day - but I dont want to buy a toaster! How dare they!

 

[frankthedm]

I don't understand why people get angry because someone offered them a deal they didn't want to go for. Just say no, politely, and move on.

It's like being incensed because I saw a toaster in a shop the other day - but I dont want to buy a toaster! How dare they!

Because there comes a point where a deal is so bad that a person's own sense of right and wrong demands they warn others or take more drastic action.

Someone sees a pit trap, they walk around it. But some folks will also take the effort put up a sign "DANGER, PIT TRAP!" in case others do not see it.

 

[WizarDru]

I don't understand why people get angry because someone offered them a deal they didn't want to go for. Just say no, politely, and move on.

It's like being incensed because I saw a toaster in a shop the other day - but I dont want to buy a toaster! How dare they!

Naturally, I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, and I can certainly see how an author could choose to sell for low pay, or sell most of their rights, depending on their situation. However, selling all one’s rights and receiving low pay? Dumb. People are free to do as they will, but I’m not obliged to say their choice is a smart one.

As I mentioned, he's not angry. He's just calling out what he thinks is a bad deal. Some of the writers who respond in that post, including Sean Reynolds and Wolfgang Baur, point out that they pay better on their own works.

 

[d20Dwarf]

including Sean Reynolds.

Where did Sean say that? All I saw was him defending TSR stealing rights.

 

[Storm Raven]

Because there comes a point where a deal is so bad that a person's own sense of right and wrong demands they warn others or take more drastic action.

Someone sees a pit trap, they walk around it. But some folks will also take the effort put up a sign "DANGER, PIT TRAP!" in case others do not see it.

One thing is that the SFWA is very big on giving warnings about publishers who give bad deals to writers. I think a major reason why they do this is that a lot of the people who try to get published in the field are basically enthusiastic amateurs who probably would not know a bad contract when they see one. So the SFWA has a lot of resources available to warn people away from specific publishers and editors, and general advice to warn people away from particular contract terms. In this context, it seems like Scalzi is just doing what experienced SFWA members do by giving a warning about something he sees as a bad contract term.

 

[WizarDru]

Where did Sean say that? All I saw was him defending TSR stealing rights.

Oops, my bad. I was thinking of comments by John C. Burnell, not SKR, and conflating them. You're right...SKR merely put out a 'company line' statement, and Burnell replied about it, specifically referencing his work in Dragon and how Tasini affected it.