The Writers' Strike
This writers' strike, man. The more I learn about it the more I'm horrified at the AMPTP and their ridiculous disingenousness. But still I keep seeing responses from people who seem to think that the WGA is staffed with overprivileged whiners who want more money to pad their ludicrously large wallets already. To that end, let me break this situation down for you.
Let's pretend that instead of TV writers, the situation is with plain old fiction authors. Stephen King, Michael Crichton, Neil Gaiman, annathewriter, everyone. When they sign book contracts, they are told that they will be paid a certain amount for the writing of the book, plus a certain amount per copy sold. I'm going to make some numbers up, here: Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the author gets $20K up front, plus $0.50 for each $24.99 hardback sold and $0.05 for each $7.99 paperback sold.
Now, let's say that the author is approached about licensing her work for audiobooks. "Now, this is a newfangled untested medium," say the publishing houses. "So we're barely going to pay you anything in residuals for them, because they're expensive as hell to produce and nobody's going to buy them. The audiobooks will sell for $39.99 apiece, but we're only going to pay you a penny." The author, for some short-sighted reason, agrees to this, and then watches in dismay over the next ten years as iTunes and CD-ROMs make audiobooks incredibly popular, resulting in millions of dollars worth of revenue for the publishing houses but almost nothing for the author. "Well, crap," thinks the author.
Now, the publishing house comes up with a great NEW idea. E-Books! They're going to sell the author's work in a new, electronic format, either as a downloadable PDF or as online content viewable only through their special browser. Huge market, great idea, gonna sell for the same price as the paperback. Except they're not going to pay the author ANYTHING for those. Not fifty cents, not a nickel, not a penny. Nothing. In fact, they're going to ask the author to write special new short stories available ONLY online, for free. That's right, completely free of charge, because it's "promotional." In fact, the online content viewed through their appliance? That's promotional too. I mean, they're getting paid for it, but it's promotional, so the author gets nothing. The publishing house tells the author that it makes sense that they don't pay anything for these online works, because they don't MAKE anything off these online works. Meanwhile, the publishing house is telling everyone else who will listen that this online content is making all kinds of crazy money.
What the WGA is striking for is to change the residual scale for DVD sales, modelled above as audiobooks, and to gain syndication rates for online content, plus to be paid for web-exclusive content. It's not that out there, it's not that ridiculous. Writing for television is a pretty steadily middle class job; it's 100% freelance, the contracts are for thirteen weeks at a time, and the vast majority of the writers are making a quite modest salary indeed. Numbers I've seen vary from $45K to $62K a year. That's certainly not burger-flipping money, but (particularly in LA) it's not Hummers-and-Cristal money, either. It's okay-apartment-and-used-Corolla money, and if they don't get decent online residuals, it's going to get a lot, LOT worse than that. So I urge you to do what you can to support the writers in this strike; they're really not asking for the moon.
Let's pretend that instead of TV writers, the situation is with plain old fiction authors. Stephen King, Michael Crichton, Neil Gaiman, annathewriter, everyone. When they sign book contracts, they are told that they will be paid a certain amount for the writing of the book, plus a certain amount per copy sold. I'm going to make some numbers up, here: Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the author gets $20K up front, plus $0.50 for each $24.99 hardback sold and $0.05 for each $7.99 paperback sold.
Now, let's say that the author is approached about licensing her work for audiobooks. "Now, this is a newfangled untested medium," say the publishing houses. "So we're barely going to pay you anything in residuals for them, because they're expensive as hell to produce and nobody's going to buy them. The audiobooks will sell for $39.99 apiece, but we're only going to pay you a penny." The author, for some short-sighted reason, agrees to this, and then watches in dismay over the next ten years as iTunes and CD-ROMs make audiobooks incredibly popular, resulting in millions of dollars worth of revenue for the publishing houses but almost nothing for the author. "Well, crap," thinks the author.
Now, the publishing house comes up with a great NEW idea. E-Books! They're going to sell the author's work in a new, electronic format, either as a downloadable PDF or as online content viewable only through their special browser. Huge market, great idea, gonna sell for the same price as the paperback. Except they're not going to pay the author ANYTHING for those. Not fifty cents, not a nickel, not a penny. Nothing. In fact, they're going to ask the author to write special new short stories available ONLY online, for free. That's right, completely free of charge, because it's "promotional." In fact, the online content viewed through their appliance? That's promotional too. I mean, they're getting paid for it, but it's promotional, so the author gets nothing. The publishing house tells the author that it makes sense that they don't pay anything for these online works, because they don't MAKE anything off these online works. Meanwhile, the publishing house is telling everyone else who will listen that this online content is making all kinds of crazy money.
What the WGA is striking for is to change the residual scale for DVD sales, modelled above as audiobooks, and to gain syndication rates for online content, plus to be paid for web-exclusive content. It's not that out there, it's not that ridiculous. Writing for television is a pretty steadily middle class job; it's 100% freelance, the contracts are for thirteen weeks at a time, and the vast majority of the writers are making a quite modest salary indeed. Numbers I've seen vary from $45K to $62K a year. That's certainly not burger-flipping money, but (particularly in LA) it's not Hummers-and-Cristal money, either. It's okay-apartment-and-used-Corolla money, and if they don't get decent online residuals, it's going to get a lot, LOT worse than that. So I urge you to do what you can to support the writers in this strike; they're really not asking for the moon.