I've gone on this anti-content rant before--many times--and I wish I had the time to actually go back and find some of it to show as examples, but it's late and I'm on the edge of being too high. It disgusts me whenever someone refers to art as content. And now that I think about it, IP is another term that can take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.
I'm a huge Ed Brubaker fan. I've been reading his stuff since he did Scene of the Crime at Vertigo back in the 'Nineties. And his is one of the many newsletters I get, and in one he sent not too long ago he goes on a rant about referring to art as content or IP. It reminded me of me, so I thought I'd quote some of it.
I thought I'd open this time with how sick I am of the words 'content' and 'IP.' They sound like scientific terms, like referring to a car as a "transportation device" or food as "processed nutrition." Which are both technically true, but you never see people actually calling them that like it's some cool industry jargon.
Yet somehow in the last ten years, I've seen writers and filmmakers, some comics people even, start using the phrase IP regularly and not getting mocked for it. That lack of mocking was a mistake. IP is what the studios called what you did so they could say it was their property and go get a billion dollars from a bank. Banks don't like "comic characters" but "intellectual property" sounds like a real asset.
And there we have it. Art is worthless, but IP and content are quantifiable things that corporations can make gobs of money off of. I get it. No one wants to take a chance on your art if it's not going to make money, but to reduce value to strictly financial terms is fucking horrible. No wonder the corporate greedheads have been fighting so hard to change the terminology. Art is something worth fighting over. Content doesn't sound like much of anything, does it?
And then he gets to this part:
You even hear about book publishers asking for media rights on novels sometimes now, after hundreds of years of them not doing that.
Aspiring writers, please take note. If a publisher says they're going to buy your book and also wants media rights like, say, for example, movie rights, then DON'T SIGN THAT CONTRACT. They're counting on you being overtaken by the thrill of getting a publishing contract that you won't think this is out of the ordinary. The only rights you should be selling them is the right to publish your book. The only way you should ever sign any other rights to them is to get your money's worth. Make it a price so high that they'll think you're crazy. My price is $100M. If they're willing to pay me that much money for the movie rights to a book, then they're welcome to it. But chances are, they won't. One of the good things about being an author is that you can sell OPTIONS to your work instead of the rights. Sometimes that's the gift that keeps on giving. I wish someone would option some of my books. They don't ever have to make the movie. I don't care. Because that, my good fuckers, is money for nothing.
You'll have to get your chicks for free some other way, though.
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