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Here is a McGraw-Hill Warning for Authors and Content Providers

In this WordPunk blog, we bluntly talk about the publishing industry, and on being an author, and how to value your work and why you must get paid on time.  Publishers don’t like authors and content providers to talk about contractual specifics because they prefer boilerplate contracts where everybody is paid the same — and nobody should ever blindly sign a boilerplate contract “as is” because there are always protections you need to ask for, and enforce, as an author and content provider that are not included in a boilerplate publisher’s contract.

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Obama Needs Turkey

The great thrill of watching President Obama rotating in the wilds of the world, is his deftness in convincing other sovereign nations that the USA is, in fact, a reasonable country despite our recent, warring, record in the world.  Evidence of his deference and respect has been demonstrated this week during his visit to Turkey even as local citizens protest his presence.

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Weak Leadership Dooms the DGA

The ongoing Writers Guild Strike in Hollywood took a reflective pause last week in the hopeful glow of a “done deal” with the Directors Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

Authors should not yet rejoice — the Directors Guild is notorious for rolling over and playing dead when it comes to hard-nosed negotiations with the producers — and any hoped-for “contract template” the Writers can use as a cudgel with producers based on the Directors deal will not even achieve most favored nation status. 

The producers are angry and they need to — and feel they must — punish the Writers for their disobedience in some formidable and permanent manner in order to save face and propagate their power.

There may be some easing of the tension between the Writers and the producers to get through the Academy Awards together — but that goodwill cannot last unless and until the Writers not only bend, but break, to the producers’ whims.