You have just said everything I have been half-assedly thinking for the last few weeks. Thanks. This is the analogy I've been groping towards. (Also, wow, you didn't give The Lord of the James Estate his Full Title! He is Stephen James Joyce!)
I asked once why reworking a fanfic story for publication means you have to pull the original story, and someone who's done that told me "it's not logic that matters. It's business. And it's bad business for an editor to spend money to buy a story that, in a slightly different form, is available for free somewhere else. Especially if they think they're buying something that's never been published."
That seriously just seems like flimsy reasoning to me. There are plenty of places that will accept previously-published work, for one, and for another, most publishers aren't fanatical about total control over the work unless and until you're Stephen King or Anne Rice or Whoever Bigname Author. You're not making them enough money to be worth the effort.
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Date: 2006-10-26 12:11 pm (UTC)I asked once why reworking a fanfic story for publication means you have to pull the original story, and someone who's done that told me "it's not logic that matters. It's business. And it's bad business for an editor to spend money to buy a story that, in a slightly different form, is available for free somewhere else. Especially if they think they're buying something that's never been published."
That seriously just seems like flimsy reasoning to me. There are plenty of places that will accept previously-published work, for one, and for another, most publishers aren't fanatical about total control over the work unless and until you're Stephen King or Anne Rice or Whoever Bigname Author. You're not making them enough money to be worth the effort.
*sigh*