Heirs to the Empire

One of the things I hate the most is when publishers come out with new books using a property created by an author who's deceased.  James Bond, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Tom Clancy, The Godfather, and even Gone With the Wind have been victims of this. You can almost count To Kill a Mockingbird but that wasn't a sequel and the author was technically not dead.  Or in cases like Ray Chandler's Poodle Springs they actually take a partial manuscript and have someone else finish it.  Maybe because I write books this seems so disrespectful.  It's like pissing on the author's grave to churn out what are usually inferior books exploiting the author's work so the publisher can make some money.  And in most cases I doubt the author they have continue it is making much money; it's probably about what you get for a movie adaptation or something.

Last month longtime author Lawrence Block Tweeted a reply to someone who asked who should write Sue Grafton's 'Z' book since she passed away before completing the whole alphabet.   To which Block said basically he didn't think anyone should.

I Tweeted him to ask if there was any kind of legal action he could take to make sure his books would be protected from publisher schemes to revive his characters like Matt Scudder, Bernie Rhodenbarr, or Keller the hit man.  To my surprise I actually got a response!

Basically what he's saying is that in these cases it's up to the estate to decide what to do.  Usually that's the author's family, but if the author has no family it could be his/her agent or some other delegated person.  That person(s) then gets to decide whether to let publishers use some other author to continue the series or not.

A couple other people horned in to yap about copyrights not expiring for 95 years.  Which doesn't really matter.  That only means the property doesn't become public domain for 95 years.  Which means it's under the estate's control for that long.  So the gist is that after you die, your works end up in the hands of your family or whoever controls your estate.  It's up to them then what to do with the future of your work.  Since you're dead, you're powerless to do anything.

Now maybe you spell out your wishes ahead of time.  That might do the trick.  Or they might not care.  Or if they get in a tight spot financially they might sign over the rights for whatever they can get.  It's all a crapshoot and as I said, you can't do anything about it.

It doesn't seem fair, does it?  Of course there is a simple solution:  people could just not buy these books.  Then publishers wouldn't bother trying to exploit authors after they've passed.  They wouldn't try to make authors like Tom Clancy a brand name like Disney or Sony or Chevrolet. But can you really expect that?  Not really.

The same applies to music.  Not so much movies.  But you know how it is:  after someone like Elvis, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Tupac, Michael Jackson, David Bowie, or Prince dies there are suddenly all these "new" songs that are "discovered" and in the case of Elvis they've been issuing and reissuing "new" versions and compilations for 40 years now.

I was happy when Terry Pratchett's estate said there would be no continuation of the Discworld books.  I hope they can continue to resist the call of money.  Like with Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide series it's just not the same written by someone else.

Probably when Stephen King, JK Rowling, GRR Martin, and John Grisham die, publishers will keep using their names for the next 95 years.  Whether it's with new stories written by someone else or publishing every scribble they ever wrote, there's money to be made, damn it.  Respect for the dead be damned.


Of course for most of us it'll never be an issue.  I mean no publisher is going to want to continue pumping out Eric Filler books.  Still, it's a shame that you can only control your work until you hit a slab at the morgue.  I guess I'm Type A like that.