tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post6378061241145205162..comments2024-03-25T10:22:04.995-07:00Comments on Ed Gorman's blog: Troubled watersEd Gormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06126267358266480356noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-77533804150944949462007-11-30T04:37:00.000-08:002007-11-30T04:37:00.000-08:00It's a form of art. I recently acquired rights to ...It's a form of art. I recently acquired rights to reprint a story by a Finnish wordsmith from the late fifties. I talked first with the widow, then the author's daughter. Both were very reserved. I had to persuade them, talk them over, secure them that there's no harm in this for the author and his inheritance (whatever that would be for a guy whose name 99,99 % of the Finnish people wouldn't recognize). Finally, after three or four long phone talks and some letters, the daughter said: "I guess you can use it." <BR/><BR/>This for a publication that has 100 readers, at best. <BR/><BR/>Some other heirs and widows just won't negotiate. I received a hand-written letter from a widow a while back just saying that they can't give their permission. No excuse, nothing. Okay, fine by me, I'll just wait for the next 60 years and then the story is out copyright, but by then no one will be reading your dead husband's stories or books (he'd written them by the hundred).Jurihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03021010310386744591noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-51219673399166391692007-11-29T22:20:00.000-08:002007-11-29T22:20:00.000-08:00Another, very full tribute to Peter Haining appear...Another, very full tribute to Peter Haining appeared at bearalley.blogspot.com, from literary researcher Steve Holland. Fascinating material, but Haining's death is very sobering for a writer born in the same home town only three years later.<BR/><BR/>Haining was best known in the UK for his horror fiction collections. I believe he was largely responsible for introducing the US <I>Weird Tales</I> classics to a generation of Britons only a few years behind my own.Chap O'Keefehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04404176810063857291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-31461819460876038262007-11-29T21:33:00.000-08:002007-11-29T21:33:00.000-08:00Then again, at least one agent I know of toyed for...Then again, at least one agent I know of toyed for years with dreams of his own projects for one of his deceased clients, but has managed to get out one (1) book's worth by this major writer, and that from a small publisher which faded quickly...another set of this writer's works was published by an associational publisher, and that's damned close to all we've seen, while Grania Davis has done good work keeping Avram Davidson's memory alive, and Paul Williams has done impressive things with Philip Dick and Theodore Sturgeon's short fiction...and THE LOST BLOCH has been a fine series, as has been the retrospective Wellman volumes. Meanwhile, one collection, the shortlived series reprint, and little else from this other major writer, and the agent wouldn't even cite a floor for reprinting three of this writer's linked short stories in a magazine project I was putting together. Those three stories still haven't ever been published together, at least in English, as far as I know.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-69188832093685292702007-11-29T19:05:00.000-08:002007-11-29T19:05:00.000-08:00When my wife was doing a PBS documentary on Doroth...When my wife was doing a PBS documentary on Dorothy M. Johnson, she sought permission to quote a few sentences from Johnson's novel, The Hanging Tree. Johnson's agents, Otis and MacIntosh, dragged their feet almost forever and almost sank the project, even though the documentary enhanced the value of the estate a great deal and resulted in classroom usage of some of Johnson's novels.<BR/><BR/> Getting permissions is so difficult, especially from outside lawyers who don't know the business, that a friend of mine, a veteran editor and writer and anthologist, won't do it. I am leaving instructions that my heirs should swiftly grant permission to republish anything out of my literary estate, for whatever fee or no fee at all, and I am toying with the idea of willing my copyrights to the Library of Congress with the instruction to treat my stuff as public domain material. <BR/><BR/>Richard WheelerAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36271824.post-10212154299987252992007-11-29T18:44:00.000-08:002007-11-29T18:44:00.000-08:00Not unusual for some heirs to do this on reprint r...Not unusual for some heirs to do this on reprint rights. Perhaps, they're getting back at daddy or mommy and want to assure their mortality. Other times they think their ancestor was a bigger star than he or she ever was in their lifetime. <BR/>Hugh A.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11191298140095953625noreply@blogger.com