Yesterday I wrote about freelance work and non-disclosure agreements and other nonsense.
I thought I should clarify something I neglected to mention.
Jamie… If You Don’t Want To Use Other People’s Material, Why Do You Sell Usage Rights?
Prospective clients often ask me about rights to the work.
Namely, I’m a proponent of selling usage rights to material as opposed to giving people the full copyright of my work. I’ve written about it here before.
Some might say, “But Jamie… if you don’t want to re-use material, why do you reserve the right to do so?”
I’ll tell you why I don’t do this before I answer the question: It’s not because I’m looking to write a 1000 word article about what the best protein powder is, sell it to you and immediately start my own site about protein powder as soon as the cheque has cleared. As I wrote yesterday, I’ve already got enough writing to do, enough websites to manage and if I’m not already writing about your niche, I probably have no interest in doing so.
So back to the question:
Why Do It?
Firstly it’s because I have a legal right to do so. As writer and creator of the work, few people understand that naturally every piece of work you create is protected and enshrined in copyright law from the moment you create it.
Obviously proving that is somewhat trickier and I’m not a lawyer, so go and find the material out for yourself.
There’s a myth that writers are doomed creatives sentenced by their muses to starve without appreciation as corporate talking-heads take their work and make millions from it.
That doesn’t have to be the case, but as a writer, it all starts with knowing exactly what your work is and what it’s worth.
If you’re willing to sell your work for $0.01 a word, copyright and rights to it forever included and for some guy to claim he actually created it, then good luck to you. It doesn’t have to be that way, and I’d argue it shouldn’t be that way either.
Speaking of rates…
If You Want Unlimited Rights To A Piece Of Work, You Should PAY For It
Some clients say to me, “I don’t like the idea of these usage rights things… what if I want to own the work?”
I don’t slam the door for those clients. I’ve done ghostwriting for people. I understand that people sometimes want to publish and republish work – but I charge more.
If you want to put your name on work I’ve created, sure you can, but you’re not getting it at the same rate. It doesn’t make any sense to sell unlimited rights for the same price as limited rights.
Most clients are fine with this… some aren’t. Again, I’ve got no ill-will towards those people who choose not to use my services (it’s a free world) but sometimes I do wonder what people expect – especially when they want hours of my time, complete rights to my work and all the benefit of my brain for the low-low price of what a barely-literate Fiverr worker charges.
Mostly Though… It’s A Hangover From Content Mills And Stupid Clients
I started doing the usage rights while working for content mills. I read Bob Bly’s book having been frustrated with the heavy workload and low pay.
A few issues arose:
- “No… you can’t use this work in your portfolio”
- “Hey… I paid for this article and now someone else has copy-pasted it onto their site”
- “Hey… I’ve been reselling your books and now your price has gone up but listen I need you to keep writing these books because I’ve set up a pen-name”
- “You’re not writing for any other health sites are you because you might write similar articles for competitors?”
Those sorts of issues created a customer service headache for me which I didn’t want to deal with. Trying to explain to someone that if they own the copyright to a piece of work it’s not my job to stop other people from copying it onto their site is a headache.
Also, the fear that someone might say, “Hey… you’ve written the words “BUY NOW” on my article but also “BUY NOW” on someone else’s article… I paid for this article and you can’t take elements and put it somewhere else” came true. I’m simplifying what actually happened, but dealing with variations on “You can never write a product review for anything ever again” is one of the most idiotic wastes of my time ever.
Final Thoughts
In practice, I hardly ever reuse any of the material I own the rights to. The point is that I can though, and by retaining all of the rights, I not only build up a library of material I can draw from in the future without worrying about it, but also I can a) charge more for exclusive rights and b) exercise my rights – and, by extension, the rights of my clients – without worrying.
If I’m the copyright holder, I can chase up pirates. If I’m the copyright holder, I can say, “Yes you can use this to X but you can’t use it for Y.”
Also, I’m completely open about this process with all of my clients. Other freelancers can do their own thing, and people hiring me have the right to say no.
It might be that you disagree entirely with my argument above. That’s fine. However, you should know your rights and how copyright law works – whether you’re hiring or working.
The more you know, the better your life will be. The less you know, the more trouble you’ll run into.
P.S. Enough with the pseudo-legalish “Dear Diary” entries for now… tomorrow I’m going to be talking about the Gary Halbert Challenge, how I fared in it and what I learned from it.
See you then!