Here’s UK sex blogger GirlOnTheNet on the getting-people-to-work-for-free aspects of this and the total rights grab Bloomsbury Publishing is executing here:
Some extracts:
As a baseline, I believe that if someone is making money off your work, you should be paid . The book could not exist without these stories, so the stories should be paid for.
Contributors whose material is used won’t even be credited:
In this case, it feels only fair to offer those who send their juicy writing appropriate credit if they’d like it.
There’s legitimate frustration from creative people who are constantly asked to work ‘for exposure’, so in this case it feels appropriate to point out that it contributors to this project won’t even be given exposure!
And then there’s the issue of rights. Bloomsbury says: “once you have made your submission it will belong to us. We will be able to use it for any purpose.”
these are the terms you agree to when you submit, so the publisher will own the rights to your work regardless of whether it is actually included in the book . So let’s say you submit a cool story but they don’t select it, these terms mean you’re not able to sell it to a different publisher (or website), nor even publish it on your own blog if you want to. Regardless of whether your story is chosen, it no longer belongs to you.
Meh. There is a whole series of Penthouse Letters books based on that model.
When it come to sexual fantasies, anonymity is often needed to feel comfortable with free expression. (As well as with a lot of sex research in general.)
So - uh - yeah. Capitalism bad and all, but this isn’t the hill I’d want to die on condemning this specific project. Especially since women-centric erotica is rarely in the spotlight.
Side note: I like Gillian Anderson even more for her work with Neurofibromatosis which I suffer from, and which her brother sadly died of.
Good point. Bloomsbury will be relying on having bigger and scarier lawyers than anyone who submits a story for this book. But yeah it sure sounds like there’s no consideration flowing to the contributor.
I wonder if Gillian Anderson is going to find out how many women’s sexual fantasies involve… Gillian Anderson? (I see a whole lot of women getting thirsty for Anderson on social media, and increasingly with each new thing she does.) Probably not, as I suspect women are far more likely to be polite about not making Anderson potentially feel uncomfortable, compared to men being asked the same thing…
This isn’t a collection of case studies, it’s an open solicitation for women to contribute free porn to a book Bloomsbury might reasonably expect to sell thousands of copies, propelled by Gillian Anderson’s star power.
I’ve done a bit of anthology editing, and I have to agree. For what they’re aksing for and the terms being offered, there should be some pay, even if nominal. I mean, five cents a word for a 1000-word contribution would be $50; Bloomsbury can spare it for a book they expect to sell pretty well. The transfer of ownership of copyright is just bad practice. Even work-for-hire writers can get a share of a royalty payment.
I found Nancy Friday’s books pretty interesting. Beyond the obvious reasons. She compiled 4 of them as I remember, 3 from women and 1 from men. They were pretty groundbreaking in pre internet days. There really wasn’t anything quite like them. Or are they perceived differently today?
This bears repeating. Far too much of modern society is still tied up in the Victorian world-view of sexuality, where Male sexual desire is this inherently dangerous, out of control thing that must be repressed and controlled, and Female sexual desire is non-existent, and anyone who claims otherwise is a deviant who isn’t womaning properly.
We’ve broken down some of this over time, but it still infects so much of our culture that we really need things like this to demystify it further and get the idea into people’s heads that sexual desire isn’t alien or dangerous, and it’s OK to find things sexy. And you know what, other people are probably into that too, and fun things can result from that.
