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news:1193010197.490692.84500{at}i38g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
> System keeps glitching mid-send...trying one last time.
> jms
>
> ------------
>
> Let me jump in here for a second to try and turn the discussion a bit,
> in that the situation as it affects writers is vastly different than
> in any other union.
>
> First, to the non- or anti-union folks, a question: when you go into a
> book store to buy a copy of a novel by your favorite author, do you
> mind that roughly twelve percent of the price of that book goes to the
> author?  Or do you feel that he's entitled to that royalty?

Entitled.
I think the publisher bears the brunt of the cost of creating and
distributing the book, but without the author, there's no product to
distribute.
This does preume the production costs outweights the cost the author
incurred while writing.

>
> Most folks, I would suggest, are totally okay with that idea.  They
> wrote the book, the publisher published the book, they're both
> entitled to get something back from the publishing of it.  That seems
> only fair.

Indeed.

>
> The situation with the WGA is really no different.  It's a way of
> ensuring that artists -- who live in a very different world than the
> 9-5 universe everybody else lives in -- receive some regular form of
> compensation to keep them alive and solvent during the often very long
> periods of time required to create the next thing.

Yep.

>
> Leaving off such catastrophic events as being laid off or fired...most
> people go to work every day in expectation of a paycheck that will
> come regularly.  Writers don't.  They get paid when they a) write, b)
> finish what they write, and c) someone decides to *pay* for what
> they've written.
>
> It's not uncommon for writers to go a year, two years, even longer
> without working in their chosen field.  Doesn't matter who you are.
> After William Goldman won his first Oscar, he didn't work again for
> almost five years.

Ouch.


>
> As to this coming labor action, when you go into the store next and
> buy a DVD and a book, look at the two of them and know that the author
> of the book gets a full twelve to fifteen percent of the price...and
> the author of the DVD gets, *at most* four cents per DVD, and most of
> the time literally and absolutely *nothing* for it...and ask yourself,
> "Why the difference?"
>
> That's the question at hand at the WGA as well.
>

And I hope you're abe to come to a beneficial arrangement.

Dennis


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