Structural Adjustment

Forthcoming in the November, 2022 issue of Locus Magazine.

If the bullies at the school-gate steal your kid’s lunch money every day, it doesn’t matter how much lunch money you give your kid, he’s not gonna get lunch. But how much lunch money you give your kid does matter — to the bullies. Hell, they might even start a campaign: “The children of Jack Valenti Elementary School are going hungry! Congress must step in to give those kids more lunch money before they starve to death!”

There are five major publishers (maybe four, by the time you read this, depending on whether the FTC allows Penguin Random House to go ahead with its acquisition of Simon and Schuster). There’s one major national brick-and-mortar bookstore chain. There’s one major global ebook seller (which also sells more than 40% of all trade books, and sells nearly every trade audiobook). There’s one independent national trade book distributor.

Between them, these firms demand an ever-greater share of the wages of writers’ creative labor. Contracts demand more — ebook rights, graphic novel rights, TV and film rights, worldwide English rights — and pay less. Writers are expected to hustle more — on social media, on book blogs, on review sites — while publicity departments dwindle.

We’re the hungry school kids. The cartels that control access to our audiences are the bullies. The lunch-money is copyright.

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For 40 years, the scope and duration of copyright have monotonically increased, the evidentiary burden for copyright claims has declined, and the statutory damages for copyright infringement have expanded. Publishing and other “creative industries” generate more money than ever — and yet, despite all this copyright and all the money that sloshes around as a result of it, the share of the income from creative work that goes to creators has only declined. The decline continues. There is no bottom in sight.

The expansions in copyright are largely the result of lobbying by the entertainment industry, often with the help of high-profile entertainers, who are far more sympathetic than the corporations who are cheering them on. When Paul McCartney demands mandatory copyright filters that will algorithmically decide which words, sounds…