Why writers should make a will by Neil Gaiman

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mirandashell

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Just found this on his blog. As he says, it's important so pass it on.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2006/10/important-and-pass-it-on.html

ETA: Just in case anyone jumps to unwarranted conclusions after reading the second para, this is the really important bit:

Shortly after Mike Ford's death, I spoke to Les Klinger about it. Les is a lawyer, and a very good one, and also an author. I met him through Michael Dirda, and the Baker Street Irregulars (here's Les's Sherlockian webpage).

Les immediately saw my point, understood my crusade and went off and made a document for authors. Especially the lazy sort of authors, or just the ones who haven't quite got around to seeing a lawyer, or who figure that one day it'll all sort itself out, or even the ones to whom it has never occurred that they need to think about this stuff.
 
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Jamesaritchie

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He lost me in the second paragraph. It could be titled, How to use a will to screw someone who was with you when it all happened in favor of someone who leached on in the last five years. The subtitle could be How to guarantee a protracted lawsuit after you die.

The best way to handle a will is to go to a lawyer in your state, and let him handle everything. Anything else is asking for trouble.
 

mirandashell

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Er what?

I didn't see that all. He's saying that not naming someone to havecontrol of your work after your death is going to cause huge problems for your family.

He certainly never said not to see a lawyer. In fact he said you should. Twice.

Try reading the whole thing before passing judgement. Two paras doesn't really cut it.
 

TheNighSwan

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Well fortunately we French writers do not have these concerns, as for traditionally published French books, it's the publisher who owns the copyright*, and therefor the author has no say over what happens to the right when they die: the rights stay with the publisher.

Releaved of this burdening responsability, we thus do not have to worry about making a will!


*: I've seen people question this statement, even though it's very easy to check —open any book published in France that is not a translation, and see who the copyright mentions —appart from rare exceptions, it's the publisher alone.
 

aruna

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I remember we had this thread a few years ago, but good to see it brought up again. Back then, I did make a will using his template. It's the only will I ever made.

And as an example of what CAN happen, we only have to remember Stieg Larssen of The Girl with the DRagon Tattoo Fame. He didn't leave a will and so his girlfriend of many years got nothing when he died.

Well fortunately we French writers do not have these concerns, as for traditionally published French books, it's the publisher who owns the copyright*, and therefor the author has no say over what happens to the right when they die: the rights stay with the publisher.

Releaved of this burdening responsability, we thus do not have to worry about making a will!


*: I've seen people question this statement, even though it's very easy to check —open any book published in France that is not a translation, and see who the copyright mentions —appart from rare exceptions, it's the publisher alone.

This leaves me a little gobsmacked, to say the least!
Glad my French books are only translations! Rights revert to me automatically after a couple of years.
 
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mirandashell

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Well fortunately we French writers do not have these concerns, as for traditionally published French books, it's the publisher who owns the copyright*, and therefor the author has no say over what happens to the right when they die: the rights stay with the publisher.

Releaved of this burdening responsability, we thus do not have to worry about making a will!


*: I've seen people question this statement, even though it's very easy to check —open any book published in France that is not a translation, and see who the copyright mentions —appart from rare exceptions, it's the publisher alone.

So how are your royalties and foreign rights worked out?
 

Weirdmage

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Well fortunately we French writers do not have these concerns, as for traditionally published French books, it's the publisher who owns the copyright*, and therefor the author has no say over what happens to the right when they die: the rights stay with the publisher.

Releaved of this burdening responsability, we thus do not have to worry about making a will!


*: I've seen people question this statement, even though it's very easy to check —open any book published in France that is not a translation, and see who the copyright mentions —appart from rare exceptions, it's the publisher alone.

This is the first I have heard of this. Can you show any evidence of this? I tried going to French amzn, but couldn't get a "look inside". (Could be because I am in UK.)
This does not in any way seem like something that any French person would allow to me. France has also signed on to the Berne Copyright Convention, and I am pretty sure that protects creator rights. Could it be that it is just a difference in how copyright pages in books are set out?
 

Twick

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Er what?

I didn't see that all. He's saying that not naming someone to havecontrol of your work after your death is going to cause huge problems for your family.

Read the whole thing, and he is basically saying "Oh noes! If you don't have a will, your stuff goes to your wife you never bothered to divorce, not your gf you never bothered to marry, because 'marriage is only a piece of paper'!" Kind of like a will, in fact.
 

ishtar'sgate

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It's only sensible to make a will. This merely details the specifics of creative property and is an excellent idea. Most wills and estates lawyers aren't well versed in creative property rights.
This made me think of my cousin. She knew for months that she was dying of cancer. A creative person, she had some gorgeous paintings in her home - some she'd painted and some collectibles by other artists. She died without making a will and her brother, who wouldn't even let her in his house, wound up with everything.
 

Layla Nahar

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Why writers should make a will by Neil Gaiman

Wait - Neil Gaiman is gonna write my will? How can I sign up?
 

lizo27

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Why writers should make a will by Neil Gaiman

Wait - Neil Gaiman is gonna write my will? How can I sign up?

It would no doubt be a delightful will, full of memorable characters, but I doubt it would hold up in court. ;)
 

Robert Dawson

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Here's a variant I suggest that may make sense if you are not Neil Gaiman. (Everyone here who IS Neil Gaiman may go to the bar and get a drink. Hell, put it on my tab.)

If you're like me, you write so people can read your stuff. You make a few bucks here and there, but you wouldn't put the time in digging ditches for that money. It's the poker chips that keep track of how you're doing, a celebratory dinner here and there. (If this isn't you, go join Neil at the bar. I think it's his round.)

So, ask yourself. Do you sincerely expect anybody to pay serious money to reprint your work after you're dead and no longer sending it off to reprint anthologies? Maybe it's archived on some ezine's website. How many years are _they_ going to be paying their service provider for? I've only been writing for a few years and my stuff's already starting to evaporate.

Worst case: Your literary heir doesn't know how to market your stuff, forgets they own it, and it ends up as "residual estate" or whatever the term is. It gets divided among their three kids. Now anybody wanting to reprint anything you wrote has to get permission from all three - and eventually more - until the ever-extending Mickey Mouse Protection Act finally expires, or the heat-death of the universe, whichever comes first. Hello, oblivion, my old friend.

If you've been a bestselling author, not just in your best few years but up till the time of your death, with books republished repeatedly, then your literary estate is likely worth money to your loved ones and you should not do what I am about to describe. If you have an agent, still actively representing you, they will tell you not to listen to me, and they will be right. If your estate contains an unpublished novel manuscript, especially about girls with unusual skin art, forget this advice. But otherwise consider this option. (Warning: I am not a lawyer, and if I were, I'd be a Canadian lawyer.)

Get your ducks in a row - omit that story you always wished you'd trunked, if you like - copy it onto archival media, and put a clause in your will putting it in the public domain. Get your executor to send your collected works to Gutenberg or somewhere, if they'll take it. If you have a posthumous publication, have them put a note in the bio (after "Joe Smith no longer lives in..." ) saying that your works (subject to expiry of individual contracts) are now all PD and fill your boots, kidz.

That way if there IS a posthumous craze for what you wrote, somebody might actually get to read it. Otherwise, if you're most of us, you might as well have it buried/cremated with you.

Of course, you'll still need a will.
 
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Weirdmage

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The point here is that you have no idea of knowing what happens in the future. Stig Larsson's girlfriend has no rights to his works, because they never married. They're said to have been living as partners for a couple of decades, but she gets nothing because there was no will.
And having read Larsson...I doubt he would have been a success had he not died before publication. So, there's always that to think about. The novel that could have made you enough for a holiday a year when alive may make your heirs millionaires.

Suggesting that anything you wrote just be given away after your death is silly. Even if you hate your whole family you can give the rights to a charity so the money comes to some good.
 

Robert Dawson

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As far as Stig Larsson is concerned, I really doubt if very many people bought the book because OMG!!! A Book By A Dead Guy!!! (I mean, they've read all of Proust? He's dead too, after all.) They read it for the sex and violence. And because the guy was a better writer than, perhaps, he gave himself credit for.

As I said above, if you have a work that's kept on making you money while you're alive, by all means leave it to your nearest & dearest. And don't do this with a MS that hasn't been out yet. But if it's published and hasn't made you money in the last few years - or relies on your actively submitting it to reprint anthos to do so - don't kid yourself that it's suddenly going to start earning once you shuffle off this mortal coil, unless you do so in a vulgarly newsworthy fashion. And inheritance law, as she is spoke, is not kind to intellectual property without commercial value.

If you give the rights to an out-of-print book, or a short story, to charity, there will be no money. There won't be any readers, either.
 
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aruna

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As I said above, if you have a work that's kept on making you money while you're alive, by all means leave it to your nearest & dearest. And don't do this with a MS that hasn't been out yet. But if it's published and hasn't made you money in the last few years - or relies on your actively submitting it to reprint anthos to do so - don't kid yourself that it's suddenly going to start earning once you shuffle off this mortal coil, unless you do so in a vulgarly newsworthy fashion. And inheritance law, as she is spoke, is not kind to intellectual property without commercial value.

If you give the rights to an out-of-print book, or a short story, to charity, there will be no money. There won't be any readers, either.


Very wrong. Out-of-print books can easily be put back into "print" these days. I have two out-of-print books, with rights reverted to me. If I were to exit this world tomorrow I very much hope my kids would carry out my plan to put them back on the market as digital books and PoD. As I have books which are selling and making money, and unpublished ones in the pipeline as well, this could be a source of income for many years to come. You don't have to be a famous bestseller to make money from writing these days. You might not make a fortune but once your books gain a little traction it goes on and on, and the more books you add to them the better.

Not to mention foreign sales etc. OK, my kids are my legal heirs anyway, but there is a stepson who COULD make trouble if he cared to.
 
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Diana_Rajchel

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Having lost my father - who did leave behind a small piece of intellectual property - here's why I think this is good: it does not matter one whit whether your work is worth saving. It is all about saving your loved ones from that extra piece of stress on top of the exorbitant pain of losing a loved one. It's hard to make decisions when you're grieving, so you making clearheaded decisions for everyone before you go will make that part of loss that much easier.
 

frimble3

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And, unless you're foolishly waiting until the last minute to write your will, you have no way of knowing how your career will turn out. The will you write in your thirties may have to cover the next fifty years, so you may as well be optimistic.
 

Weirdmage

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As far as Stig Larsson is concerned, I really doubt if very many people bought the book because OMG!!! A Book By A Dead Guy!!! (I mean, they've read all of Proust? He's dead too, after all.) They read it for the sex and violence. And because the guy was a better writer than, perhaps, he gave himself credit for.

I am actually Norwegian, and am very well aware how Larssons Millennium Trilogy was promoted. That he died before publication was a major selling point, and also mentioned in almost everything written about the books.
The sex and the violence is nothing special for a Scandinavian book, and if you wanted sex and violence there are loads of other books out there that would give you more of both.
There's of course no way of telling how the books would have sold if Larsson had lived, but his death was without a doubt a part of its huge success.
 

mirandashell

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Having lost my father - who did leave behind a small piece of intellectual property - here's why I think this is good: it does not matter one whit whether your work is worth saving. It is all about saving your loved ones from that extra piece of stress on top of the exorbitant pain of losing a loved one. It's hard to make decisions when you're grieving, so you making clearheaded decisions for everyone before you go will make that part of loss that much easier.

This is the most important thing said on this thread. I don't know how it works in other countries but if you die intestate in Britain, your estate goes to the Government who then put it on a list for 'heir hunters' to pick over. They then find every single relative you have and charge each one of them to get their hands on a share of your inheritance. Which means relatives you didn't know you had will get a share of your money. And the heir hunters will get the biggest share. And if they think your estate isn't big enough to bother with, the Government will get it.

Much more responsible to sort it out yourself and save any hassle later.
 

aruna

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It's different here in Germany. If you die intestate, there's a legal hierarchy of relatives who inherit by law. Your partner, if you have one, gets half of everything. The rest goes to your kids in equal measure. If you have no kids, your legal partner gets it all. When you die the state informs your heirs of the death and makes them aware of any will. If you have neither partner nor kids, then your parents, your siblings, your nieces and nephews etc get a share, depending on where they stand on this hierarchy.

Even if you leave a will, you cannpt disinhe rit completely unless you have strong reasons -- such as the person tried to kill you or whatever. If you disinherit one of your close relatives, still that person would get half of what would be his or her due.

That's why I said that as long as I live in Germany, I didn't really HAVE to make a will. But I did, because I have a husband who has an evil son (really!) and if I died before my husband there is a possibility that the evil stepson could get a part of what I leave ... shudder.
 
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TheNighSwan

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Ok so, I have obtained photographic proof:

http://imgur.com/a/dRwSu

(sorry for the crappy webcam quality, that's all I had access to)

There are two old books, two recent books, and one translated book (the second to last one in the album) for comparison.

Ok so, in practice, of course, it doesn't mean the rights of French authors are that different: we still get royalties (10% is considered normal), advance payments and stuff. But due to this system, an author can't, say, have his books republished by another publisher (or even by himself) if the first one is no longer doing anything with them, and when they die, yeah, the books' right are not part of the inheritance (at least the financial rights, not sure about the moral rights). Foreign rights and adaptation rights are usually the publisher's exclusive business (so if you want an English translation and your publisher is not interested in negociating one, well, sucks to be you) (though that's spelled out in the contract, it's not automatic).

I know at least one author who sued his former publisher so he could get back the rights to his out-of-print books and republish them by himself (he won, though in part because his relationship with the previous owner of the publishing company was based entirely on trust: they never signed a contract, so there was no proof that the publisher actually owned the books).
 

TheNighSwan

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I think it's a mixture of imagining things have always been that way and inability to see how they could be different, and seeing the publisher as more important than the author in the book making process.

The French publishing system is more archaic (it reminds me of how the recording industry worked in the US before people like Ray Charles negociated agressively for better contracts), but ultimately these attitudes are current in most the western world, I think. They explain why, even in the US, authors find perfectly normal to be payed 10% of the retail price of a book into which 90% of the time and effort invested is theirs, or why no one questions why, with equal sales, a publisher can live from their work full time, but an author can't.

I remember an anecdote: during the time when Victor Hugo was in exile, a French publisher came to see him in Guernsey with a deal for publishing "La Légende des siècles". The deal proposed that Hugo would get 50% of royalties on the sales. At the time, this was considered scandalously advantageous… for the publisher!
 

ULTRAGOTHA

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Here’s what happened with the author who inspired Gaiman’s blog post, as I understand it.

The author typed up a “will” that gave his partner control of his intellectual property. Unfortunately, it was not a valid will and he died unexpectedly. Legally, he died intestate.

That meant that his parents and siblings got his estate, including his intellectual property. He was, I have heard, estranged from his birth family who allegedly deeply disapproved of him, his work and his partner.

Evidently his family will not approve any reprints of his work in any form, regardless of how much publishers would love to reprint it (and fans would love to read it).

Now this is an extreme example, but it will save your heirs a lot of pain and angst and time and trouble if you DO write a proper will, preferably with legal help, that addresses what will happen to your intellectual property after you die.

If you don’t want to, and are fine with what your heirs and those close to you who care about your work will go through having to deal with this after your death, fine. Whatever. Your choice.

But that doesn’t invalidate that it’s good advice to encourage every creator to think carefully about who they want to control their works after their death and take proper steps to make sure that happens.
 
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