SiSU: - Homeland - Cory Doctorow

About derivative works
Homeland
Most of my previous books have been released under a slightly different Creative Commons
license, one that allowed for derivative works (that is, new creative works based on
this one). Keen observers will have already noticed that this book is licensed “NoDerivs”
-- that is, you can't make remixes without permission.
A word of explanation for this shift is in order. When I first started publishing under Creative
Commons licenses, I had to carefully explain this to my editor and publisher at Tor Books.
They were incredibly forward-looking and gave me permission to release the first-ever
novel licensed under CC -- my debut novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (‹http:
//craphound.com/down/)›. This ground-breaking step was only possible because I was able to
have intense, personal discussions with my publisher.
My foreign rights agents are the inestimable Danny and Heather Baror, and collectively
they have sold my books into literally dozens of countries and languages, helping to bring
my work to places I couldn't have dreamed of reaching on my own. They subcontract for
my agent Russell Galen, another inestimable personage without whom I would not have
attained anything like the dizzy heights that I enjoy today. They attend large book fairs
in cities like Frankfurt and Bologna in order to sell the foreign rights to my books, often
negotiating with one of a few English-speakers at a foreign press, who then goes back and
justifies her or his decisions to the rest of the company.
The point is that this is nothing like my initial Creative Commons discussion with Tor. That
was me sitting down and making the case to editors I've known for years (my editor at Tor,
Patrick Nielsen Hayden, has known me since I was 17). My foreign rights are sold by a
subcontractor of my representative to a representative of a press I've often never heard
of, who then has to explain my publishing philosophy to people I've never met, using a
language I don't speak.
This is hard.
Danny and Heather have asked -- not demanded, asked! -- that I consider publishing books
under a NoDerivs license, so that I can consult with them before I authorize translations
of my books. They want to be able to talk to potential foreign publishers about how this
stuff works, to give me time to talk with them, to ease them into the idea, and to have the
kind of extended conversation that helped me lead Tor into their decision all those years
ago.
And I agreed. Free/open culture is something publishers need to be led to, not forced into.
It's a long conversation that often runs contrary to their intuition and received wisdom. But
no one gets into publishing to get rich. Working in the publishing industry is virtually a vow
of poverty. The only reason to get into publishing is because you flat-out love books and
want to make them happen. People work in publishing for the same reason writers write:
they can't help themselves.
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