arsebums’s Comments

• Feb 21st, 2010 @ 4:14pm

  (untitled comment)

  on Australian Copyright Agency Paid Itself More Than It Distributed To Content Creators
  Listen up folks.
  
  1. If publishers were to collect the copying royalties they would all have to have their own assesment and collection bureaucracy or pool their resources and have one do it all for them. The first would be grossly inefficient and beyond the capabilities of most publishers....and the second is what CAL is....i.e. CAL is the most efficient option.
  
  2. How much of a books selling you price do you reckon an author gets ....a couple of bucks maybe or 10% of the selling price. All authors are on differing deals with their publisher - many/most get paid an amount upfront and then no royalty until sales pass 'X' amount and then a percentage of the remainder. Ergo the authors/creators are not entitled to 100% of the revenues from a foregone book sale.
  
  A collection agency (CAL or any other) cannot have control of all those individual contracts so much of the money collected is paid to the publishers for allocation on a case by case basis. Remember a lot of the authors are overseas based and so are the publishers which adds to the complexity.
  
  As I have said before I do not work in the publishing industry - I do have an author friend and am aware of the contractual arrangements in the industry.
• Feb 18th, 2010 @ 4:11pm

  Re:

  on Australian Copyright Agency Paid Itself More Than It Distributed To Content Creators
  For the record, I do not work in the publishing industry, never have and , considering my age, never will.
• Feb 18th, 2010 @ 3:54pm

  (untitled comment)

  on Australian Copyright Agency Paid Itself More Than It Distributed To Content Creators
  This is clearly a huge beat up by a junr hack who is poorly paid. If he looked in detail at CAL salaries he would find they are well below levels paid for the same skill set elsewhere.
  
  At around 15% of expenses to revenue CAL seems pretty efficient to moi considering what charities operate at...and a lot of their labour cost are free. As for the big dig at publishers they would be entitled to some of the revenues paid to them as book sales have been foregone as a result of the copying, but yes a proportion of the monies paid to them may be payable to the creators and may well be passed on.
  
  This hack has had his momentary glimpse of the sun, he clearly does not understand the publishing industry despite working in it. He would only have to check his pay slip and compare with the revenue of his publisher employer to get a glimpse of real life.