So there’s this publishing horror story making the rounds the last few days-
the saga of Mandy DeGeit, who submitted a short story to a small press that did anthologies and discovered that it was published with a whole lot of changes, including animal abuse, which she never saw, never okayed, and never had an inkling of until the bizillion copies
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Of course since English isn't their native language there wasn't really editing on the book, beyond "oh geeze this is turning out about 2x longer than we budgeted for, I can push it a little but SOMETHING NEEDS TO GO".
But aside from that? The object itself is great, it's gotten some promotion, and if the Muse taps me on the shoulder and says "You need to do a second Tarot deck", I'll be offering it to them first thing, no questions asked.
edit.
> Small presses are fraught with peril, mostly in the form of well-meaning people who have no idea how much work they’re getting into and how much money they won’t be making, so yes, vet your small press thoroughly.
yeah I'm kind of backing into setting up a small press focused on SF/fantasy graphic novels and oh my fuck I am so gonna be in over my head at some point. I am at least trying to structure it in ways to severely limit the Not Making Money part.
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I'm not a writer but SO much agreement here. There is a VERY SMALL number of things that are legitimately comparable to rape. Editorial malfeasance is NOT one of them.
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Plus, we owe Kevin for the extremely efficient provisioning of jumper cables at a time when we were away from home and in dire need of them. So, he gets a lifetime subscription to the "odd Gin that we find while we travel about" club.
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I'm so glad this hasn't happened to just me. There was a business 3 years ago that commissioned a watercolor landscape painting from me. When I saw it hanging in their office later, they weren't hanging the original. They had a print made, blew it up, and it looked like they had turned the saturation up to dangerous levels. Raw umber had become cadmium orange. Worst of all, they left my bleed edges showing - staple marks and all - instead of putting a mat in the frame or making it big enough to crop them off.
I think I died a little inside... especially after they told me clients were coming in and complimenting on what a wonderful painting it was.
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Also, NY, CA, and MA law all have additional protection for artists.
Too many contracts for visual artists include VARA waivers off the bat.
Also, the first commenter's post sounds to me like a clear violation of copyright (without even getting to VARA). Obviously, most artists don't want to sue their customers or hint at it, but it's a remedy if you hate it. They're not allowed to take an original and just make a copy of it and change it (unauthorized "derivative work" = copyright violation).
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