jake – Page 8 – The Jake of All Trades

On Pro-Rates and Pro-Rights

When you look at the requirements for a ‘pro-sale’ for both the SFWA and the HWA you will see payment, word count, but you won’t see rights anywhere. And I think that is an issue.

It is one thing to say that 8¢/5¢ per word is professional rate, but for what? First sale? Print? Ebook? What if it includes audio (podcasting) rights, future anthology rights? What about the exclusivity period? Is three years exclusive ‘professional’? What about 5? What about perpetual?

When someone buys a story for X¢ per word, it is those rights that they are buying.

At LampLight we paid about 3–5¢ per word for most of our run, which is not a professional rate most of the time. But, we did not ask for professional rights either. Non-exclusive (no period of exclusivity at all), sure it is ‘perpetual’, but that is simply to keep old issues of the magazine in ‘print’ since they are ebooks/POD. We explicitly state we cannot use the stories outside of the issue/annual.

It was this balance between what we needed to publish a magazine, and our budget that led to this.

And yet I see places asking for long exclusivity periods, for audio rights, either audiobooks or performance, because they have a podcast. Hell, there was a horrible anthology that asked for movie and video game rights.

But hey! They paid 10¢ per word…

The point I’m trying to make is that we should be linking ‘pro-sale’ to a certain rights / exclusivity period as well. Something like:

X¢ per word
Print / ebook
Max of 1 year exclusivity (exclusions for Best of… and Author collections)

And make it clear that additional rights have additional costs to be considered a pro-sale.

We should have guidance for what things like audio rights¹, derivative rights, adaptation rights, video games, etc, should be to meet a pro-sale requirement. (Yes, some of this is in the SFWA and HWA requirements, for which I am grateful)

And if you are a ‘for the love’ market, the word ‘exclusive’ should not appear in your contract.

I think that this, perhaps more so than the price-per-word is what marks a publication / market as a professional sale: a market paying correctly for the rights it is acquiring.

We need to stop pretending ‘podcasting’ is something different than audiobooks. The ‘podcast’ part is just a means of distribution. ↩︎

My Hopes for Magsafe’s Possible Return

Today, 16 October 2021, I purchased a MagSafe charger for my 2011 MacBook. Affectionately called “the Beast” the computer, despite its age, still runs well and lets me run older programs with ease.

I have lost count of how many Magsafe chargers I’ve purchased, but this is at least the 5th; I suspect more like the 7th. Each charger, btw, is (still!) $70–80 USD. You see, while most of the time the ‘brick’ part was fine, the cable that connects to the computer, the part with that beloved magnet, will inevitably fail, fray, and otherwise destruct over time. And since it is fixed to the brick, the whole charger is done at that point.

But I need that charger to run my computer, because the 2011 MacBook Pro has a MagSafe port, and it is the only way to charge it.

I also have a newer MacBook, one that charges via USB-C. When that charger cable frays and breaks, when I go somewhere and forget it, when I lose it, I will buy another for less than $20 from the nearest electronics store¹. They will be available from multiple companies, and come in many options.

There are rumors that the MagSafe port is going to have a grand re-entrance into our lives on Monday, returning to the side of the MacBook where it was meant to be.

Now, once upon a time our laptops had ok battery life, 2–5 hours depending on the make and model, which meant that a lot of the time you were using them they were also plugged in.

This is the advantage to MagSafe, the safety feature, if you will. You’re there typing away on the couch, plugged in to the wall, chords strung about the living room floor—then someone rushes through, trips on the cable but the charger disconnects since it is just a magnet holding it in and your computer is safe!

(Well, that’s the theory, the magnets are pretty strong, so I suspect the computer is going for a flight in this specific example…)

But it is a proprietary port. One that is still as frail as any other cable, but expensive to replace. Our computers have fantastic battery life these days; we aren’t sitting tethered to the wall anywhere near as much as we were.

One day, I won’t be able to get a charger for the 2011 anymore. Maybe the machine will give up the ghost before then, hopefully. But this new MacBook? I will be able to buy USB-C cables and chargers for a long time.

And, when I go on travel? I bring one cable. I use it to charge my Mac, my Switch, and my camera. I use it to connect to my camera, to monitors, external hard drives. And that makes it much more valuable than the perception of safety a magnet charger gives me.

So my hope for Monday, should MagSafe see its way back onto the Macintosh—it made its way on the iPhone last year, in a way that makes me fear Apple is moving towards a port-less phone, which would be a step too far for me. Especially considering how inefficient wireless charging is.

Seriously, I don’t understand how you can claim to be pro-environment and then offer wireless charging. /rant

So my hope, if we are indeed to see MagSafe return to the MacBook is that it is, simply, optional, and they keep the already established USB-C charging as an option, for those of us who very much prefer to have one charger to rule them all.

The Beast will live another day with the new charger. But it has only reminded me why proprietary ports are bad for the consumer, bad for keeping things running past their ‘expiration.’ That computer’s life span is more connected to the availability of a proprietary cable than the lifespan of the components inside.

Also, a related side note, BACk-UP YOUR SHIT.

Edit

Well, we got the best of both… no three worlds. The new MacBook Pros were announced and they indeed have MagSafe back. They also include the ability to charge over USB.

BUT. Here’s the part that makes me happy. It is not a MagSafe charger, it is a MagSafe Cable, meaning that the expense to replace it will be less, and much simpler that for the MagSafe 1 and 2 chargers. And that’s a good thing.

Yes I know not all USB-C cables are the same, but that is a different discussion ↩︎

A Virtual Visit to 2000

When I was a freshman I wanted to change the name of my computer to “Sanctuary,” over dramatic I suppose, something I do well, but the idea is there. This space, this thing contained inside my monitor is something that is mine is a way that nothing, not even my bedroom is mine.

I’m writing this from WordPerfect 9 running in Windows 2000. WinAmp is playing some Lauren Hill in the background, and I am back in the virtual space that was mine as I was leaving college back in 2001.

It is just a Virtual Machine, so a computer inside of a computer. My Mac and all of its modern-ness is just right over there, a three finger swipe away.

But this, this? This is something. This was me so long ago, and it feels so welcoming in a nostalgic way. The only thing that is missing is AOL Instant Messenger, something I very much miss. It was, in a way, a very real social network, but one where we talked to each other, rather than post in the noise and hoped someone heard us. Social media, ironically, disconnects us from each other in a way easy to feel but hard to describe.

Hell, I imported old email into Outlook from a back up so I could see what was in those PST files, so even Outlook is filled with this time period.

I was a fucking mess, for the record. But this post isn’t about that.

A lot has changed since then. I use so little of my computer these days outside of the internet. The start is there, AIM and lots of email, but also I did things, like write, more. So is there something about the space itself that is the issue? Something that has crept into our computer sanctuaries to remove us from that experience?

It’s not like I wasn’t online, using my browser, but I was also making things, playing games. I don’t even do that anymore on the computer.

And if I could, through this Windows 2000 machine, interact with the 2000 internet and all those people I miss, I would.

The space, familiar, the sounds, how I remember those sounds. It is so fast, so damn fast.

I need to use it a few days more to collect my thoughts, but my modern computer feels, thick? Dense? There is a lot, at all times, maybe that’s where I need to start, maybe not minimal install but minimal presentation. Return things to … I don’t know.

I know I was always one with 1,000 windows open. So maybe this is just the nostalgia speaking, the overload of remembering the marble table in the front room, the love seat I lived on, the monitor and 100′ phone chord that was the internet, and all the possibility that was still there.

But at this moment, listening to Enigma, it feels like it would be better.

Yes, “Return to Innocence” is a bit on the nose, but what the hell.

It was here, in this space, first in Windows 95, then 98, 2000, then over to OS X, that I would go to retreat to, to relax, to vent, to create, to dream, to dream, so much dreaming, to lament, to center myself after heartache, to let that heartache just loose in a way that was free, but private.

And no, I don’t need to be in this Windows 2000 world to experience this, but something like my phone or iPad, which I spend more time on than my computer do not offer this… this…? what? Personalization isn’t the right way of saying it but is as close as I can get. This connection to the space as mine. Apps are closed and don’t offer the kind of space a desktop does.

And this space is mine, even new and shiny, even old and pixelated, even cluttered and full of memories. So many files, filled with so many moments.

So I’m slowly making my 2000 era space again, sans internet. (For computer safety reasons, I’m keeping the VM offline) If anything, just to experience the overflow of nostalgia. (But also to go through some old files) Maybe to see if I can spot whatever it is that I’m feeling and move that into my modern OS experience.

And who knows. Maybe I’ll open up some of those WordPerfect files that haven’t been touched since I jumped to a Mac in 2002 and pick up where I left off.