foreign publishing - just an idea

[Bear aka HNU]

just an idea for now, i'm going to be toying around with it and come
back with details. but would like some feedback. so, here it is.
when cory doctorow released "someone comes to town, someone leaves
town" under Creative Commons on the net, he also added a "developing
nations" clause, which allowed people from the said nations (defined
in the CC blahblah at the beginning of the file) to do whatever they
pleased with the novel, including printing it, even for profit.
whatever project the co-op will take on, we should do something
similar, but with a catch: allow publishers from anywhere (outside the
US) to publish the result of the project, with the only condition that
the co-op will get credit, and a minimum sum (what a normal copyright
would bring), but only after the publisher has started to get money.
this would make publisher interested.
any ideas about this?

[nicola griffith]

In principal, I'm perfectly okay with this.  But depending on the project others might not want their work used this way.  It would take a lot of discussion.  The two parts that give me pause for thought are 'do whatever they like with it' and 'started to get money'.

I wouldn't mind someone taking a standalone short story of mine and adapting it for their own purposes.  I couldn't stomach a whole novel, or a story featuring a character like Aud, being used in someone else's work.

And how do you define 'start to make a profit'?  Hollywood, for example, is extremely creative when it comes to 'profit' and 'loss'.

So it depends on the project but, essentially, yes.  I think.  Any other thoughts?

Nicola

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[Karina Melendez]

Pros: international exposure, free translations, the co-op is perceived as 'good' and generous.

Cons: Your profit catch would not work. The co-op members may end up feeling betrayed or cheated if they expect to get anything other than exposure out of this.

I'll speak for Mexico, since it's the country I'm familiar with. There's no way the publisher would contact you to say, "Hey, we're making money now, here you go," unless you had a very personal relationship with that publisher, say, the owner is your sister-in-law. And maybe even then, you wouldn't be getting any checks, but lots of excuses.

I support this idea, because I think we need all the exposure we can get and we can afford to be generous. But we can't go into it expecting any financial rewards. And it would mean relinquishing control of it outside the US. Which is okay, because really our sense of control over copyright is mostly an illusion. A friend of mine who is from China basically told me, "Over there, you could write and 8th or 9th Harry Potter book and get away with it." There are varying degrees of copyright enforcement, but I'm guessing every Third World country has a similar loopholed modus operandi.