I knew about the music. I got that part but I wanted to know the business, I wanted to know about royalties, how people got paid, producers and stuff like that so I read all those books like twice.
When my father died in Greece, leaving my mother strapped, a cheque arrived next day from my Greek publishers who'd just bought two of my books for pounds 500.
Certainly, my many years working in the comics industry, creating products that I do not own, has made me rather fierce on the subject of giving up rights.
When you think about it, we sold about 120 million records, which relates to about £1.2 billion in the U.K. economy. We've seen very little of that.
When people who are songwriters say 'That's my property and if you give it away for free then I'll lose my incentive,' then, well, good riddance.
We never realized how much money there was to be found in character products.
To be honest, the real money is in merchandising and performances.
It's one thing if you write a song and somebody else sings it because you give the OK. But if your voice is on something and you don't get the credit, it's kind of hard.
I'll go through the budgets for tours and recordings, royalty statements... You have to wise up about it a bit more.
When a record co. finds a guy now, they want to own everything. They want to own the rights to market that person's particular name. They want a piece of the action all the way through.
We protect monopolies with copyright.
Once you work with a studio on a film, the studio is sort of like this enormous clam that just opens, takes everything and then closes, and no one enters again. They own it all.
When you get a song placed with two of the top stars in the world, like Rihanna and Eminem, especially as a new writer, they're gonna take a huge chunk of your publishing. That's just the way the business is. I'm not complaining.
I'd never been paid for the first Roses LP - it was 2002 before we received any royalties.
Typically, when you sell your story rights to a movie production company, they can do whatever they want with it. The writer is typically not involved anymore.
I would say the hummingbird really deserves the royalties on [some of my songs].
There's this thing called compulsory licensing law that allows artists through the record companies to take your music at will without your permission.
I think overall, and this isn't specific to Spotify or any streaming service or any label... when you consider the overall value chain of the music industry and how important the songwriter is to the business - I think there needs to be another look at the value chain.
At a major label you can start to feel that you're working for them, and that any work you do, you're never going to see any benefit.
Composers and lyricists are not responsible for storyline and casting. One can imagine actors shouldering this responsibility, since they charge for half the film. But producers never ask actors to share the losses. Instead, they train their guns on composers and lyricists.
Unfortunately writers take a very small part of the profit on their books, and I think in the e-book world there is a real danger they will take even less, unless they are vigilant and robust about protecting their own interests.
After going through years of litigation to get royalties due to him, the guy who coined the term 'happily ever after' lived reasonably well for a while.
I'd sold the book first. Actually to a paperback publisher. I had nothing. I just had the idea.
It's hard to give your song away. They're like your kids.
Films always make everyone else rich save the author.
