Business Musings: Lessons From The WGA Writers Strike

To Get a Free AI Audio Version of this blog, click here. For most of you, the main issue in this year’s Writers Guild of America writers strike is whether or not your favorite TV programs will be affected. Already, some of the streaming shows, such as Stranger Things and Cobra Kai have shut down due to strike issues. The broadcast shows haven’t started next […]

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Business Musings: Kate Bush and the Multimillion Dollar Long Game

This summer, Kate Bush broke three Guinness Book of World Records: Oldest Female Artist To Reach Number One, Longest Time For A Track To Reach Number One On The UK’s Official Singles Chart, and Longest Gap Between Number Ones. She did all of this with the song, “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),” which she first released in 1985. The song, which initially […]

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Business Musings: Long-term IP Management

In writing about the Las Vegas Licensing Expo, held in May, I spent a lot of time discussing how writers should think about their intellectual property. In short, writers should consider their IP a living breathing entity that has a lifespan all its own; IP is not something to be easily discarded or sold for a quick buck. Writers who do that will live to […]

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Business Musings: Copyright Fun Part 3

Let’s talk money for a minute, because really, copyright and copyright licensing translates into money, if you do it correctly. Copyright is one of those lovely assets that will continue earning for writers if the writers manage the copyright correctly. A short story can become a novel (more money, different licenses), sell in foreign editions (more money, different licenses), become an audio book (more money, […]

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Business Musings: Copyright Fun Part 2

This post is probably just for me and Dean and other copyright geeks out there in the world. And it’s mostly U.S. specific, although we will touch on Duran Duran and U.K. law farther downstream. Also, it’s important for you all to note that I am writing this blog in January. Some of the cases I mention here are ongoing and might have developments that […]

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Business Musings: Copyright Fun Part One

When I wrote my year in review for 2021, all seven posts of it, I was going to write a single post on copyright, highlighting all the interesting things from the year. Copyright issues dominated the news in 2021…and I was taking the first half of the entertainment law class that I’m finishing up this semester. I was all about copyright. (If you want to […]

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Business Musings: Contracts: Traditional Publishing (The Year In Review 4)

Here’s a weird thing about businesses: When a business is rolling in cash, the people who run it loosen their grip on the details. Instead of solving a problem, they throw money at it. Often they don’t recognize the problem for the danger that it might be, until it comes back to bite them, years down the road. However, when the business notices that its […]

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Business Musings: Time and Licensing (Licensing/Contracts)

I’ve spent much of the past week on licensing for my Diving Universe. Some of this is because of the Kickstarter we’re running right now. Kickstarters can garner a lot of attention for a project, the kind of attention you can’t get anywhere else. (If you want to know more about that, and what else Kickstarters can do for your writing, then sign up for […]

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Business Musings: Then And Now

Recently, Dean told me about a conversation he was having on Facebook with a group of writers who, in the 1990s, shared the table of contents in an anthology featuring stories about the X-Men. Apparently, that anthology has just gotten an audio edition, and one of the authors in the anthology was thrilled about that. Then Dean threw some cold water on the excitement. Who’s […]

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Business Musings: Paradigm Shift (Rethinking The Writing Business Part 16)

I knew, when we planned this year’s Business Master Class, that bringing in a representative from the Global Licensing Group would be essential for the business-minded writers who were attending. I did not realize how essential. One of the reasons it was so essential was Deidre Manna-Bratten herself. She came in as prepared as a non-writer could be to explain licensing to a bunch of […]

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