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🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽

@romiesays.bsky.social

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Author Romie Stott, who is the same person as filmmaker and musician Romie Faienza. Poetry editor at Strange Horizons. Texan in Massachusetts. Capisco italiano un po. ⚥ Sign up for my mailing list at romiesays.kit.com.

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🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · Jul 31

You should trust Gillian, who is brilliant.

You can order the book in many places, including through the Strange Horizons affiliate link: bookshop.org/a/114270/978...

Gillian Daniels @gillianlynndaniels.bsky.social · Jul 31

I got “Nothing in the Basement” by @romiesays.bsky.social at Readercon. I sped through it and can’t stop thinking about it. Absolute banger of a haunted house story. 🏚️ #amreading #horror

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🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

This is solid. Perry Bacon (the interviewer) is one of the best out there, in my opinion, not just for what he asks but for who he chooses to talk to. Longtime fan.

newrepublic.com/article/2013...

Chris Van Hollen Is Angry—at Trump, and at His Party’s Lame Pollsters

The Maryland senator explains why he went to El Salvador earlier this year while the rest of the party tried to downplay immigration issues, and his decision to go to Iowa and flirt with a 2028 presid...

newrepublic.com

🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

Oh wow, yeah, I'd never heard of this.

🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

I specifically remember giving Atlas Obscura a 50/50 cut of movie rights to a piece about an ancient Egyptian trash heap, because if anyone ever reads that essay and wants to make a movie out of it, it will amuse the heck out of me. www.atlasobscura.com/articles/oxy...

Oxyrhynchus, Ancient Egypt's Most Literate Trash Heap

An ancient Egyptian landfill of plays, gospels, and mash notes gives new meaning to trashy writing.

www.atlasobscura.com

🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

Totally fair, and I apologize if I've put you on blast or seemed to come at you; not my intention. There are any number of situations where I have given away various rights for free (and/or used creative commons). Like SFWA, I'm objecting to it as a *standard*, but case-by-case? It's your story.

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🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

What if I write a sequel to the story? Oops that's using characters and ideas in the work. They have first rights to that. I can't do it.

🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

And it's a "first" right! You could NOT develop a game based on your story or make a t-shirt of your story if they haven't done it first.

Reposted by 🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽

🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

I'm going to repeat what I said earlier in passing. Right now, there are more than 30 SF publishers currently in print who take un-agented electronic submissions and pay as much or more than Analog/Asimov/F&SF. It's not their way or the highway. The rest of us are shocked.

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Reposted by 🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽

🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

SUMMARY: Taken together, my overall impression of the contract is that it's a work-for-hire contract trying to get you to waive your copyright while only paying you first publishing rights.

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🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

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🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

Look, I'm in a bad mood. But if someone asks me out to dinner and then tells me that since I agreed to dinner I owe them something else, I know what I think of that. "Oh but I really like them and wanted to go on the date, so maybe I should go along." I get it. But no you don't.

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🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

It looks to me like MRM wants to make that money come to them. You get 6%. You know what you'd get in a normal situation? 100%. You're the copyright holder. It's your original work. You sell FIRST PUBLICATION RIGHTS, not ownership of the story.

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🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

For a lot of authors, their windfall (if it ever happens) does not come from a short story's first publication. Maybe it gets podcast by Wil Wheaton. Maybe it gets developed into a TV episode by Love and Robots. Maybe it gets optioned as a movie.

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🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

People can get weird about writing, so think of it in another context. If I sell you a print of one of my photos, I'm not going to charge you as much as if I'm selling you the negative. In one case, I can make other copies, so it's worth less money. In the other case, I can't ever make another copy.

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🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

As you might imagine, authors expect to be paid more for work for hire! A lot more! If I'm doing work for hire, that's all I'm EVER going to make from that work. And I'm not going to have control of it. Maybe the next issue has the character do something totally against my morals.

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🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

In a work-for-hire situation, the person who pays you owns the artwork outright (e.g. I'm hired by Marvel to write an issue of a Marvel comic). In contrast, with a normal sale of publishing rights, you're just licensing something *you* own for one specific use.

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🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

SUMMARY: Taken together, my overall impression of the contract is that it's a work-for-hire contract trying to get you to waive your copyright while only paying you first publishing rights.

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🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

That's not "we're putting your story's title on a t-shirt to promote the magazine." That's "we could develop a board game based on your story and not involve you." That's "we could license a skin based on one of your characters to a video game without asking."

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🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

Correction: I'm rereading and it looks like they DO carve out best-of anthologies. Maybe. They say they do in one place. But there's that other "first reprint rights" phrase I mention later.

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🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

4. This is the one that makes my head spin. Clause 2e. "The first right to develop or license the development of special projects, including, but not limited to, games, toys, T
shirts, calendars, and other items based upon characters, ideas, or plots from the Work"

What. The fuck.

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🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

3. Another thing they want you to sign away: all foreign language rights. They're only paying the standard industry rate for English language first publication rights, but "oh is it ok if we also translate it?" They want first publication rights in all languages worldwide. For zero extra money.

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🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

That switch could be clumsiness, but I think it's more of a freudian slip. If they have not just first publishing rights but first reprint rights, and they never reprint your story (which is plenty likely) you can't sell any reprint, ever.

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🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

2. More weird anthology tomfoolery from MRM: in clause 2a, they ask for nonexlusive anthology reprint rights, which is again normal (a lot of magazines release compilations), but then in subsection (i) they switch to talking about "first reprint rights".

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🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

Meanwhile, authors make money from reprints. If Analog pays 8 cents a word and a reprint pays me 2 cents a word, I'm making 10 cents a word. I've increased my pay by 25%. Why am I signing that away when there are 30 other magazines who would pay me as much or more and not restrict me?

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🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

Most publishers recognize this and carve out an exception for best of anthologies - partly because being selected for these anthologies brings prestige and awards back to the magazine. How do you decide to subscribe to a new magazine? You notice that you keep liking reprints of their stories.

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🌈 Romie glows in the dark 📽 @romiesays.bsky.social · 1d

The majority of anthologies which make it onto store shelves are best-of anthologies, and most of them are a survey of work that's come out in the past year. If you're not allowed to be in them, you're probably not going to be in any anthologies.

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