Should ARI buy the rights to Ayn Rand's books?

[DavidV]

Do you think that all of Ayn Rand's books should be bought by ARI and possibly placed in the public domain? I am speaking of both the publishing rights and the royalty rights. Let's presume that ARI could purchase and release the rights for a significant, but affordable sum.

Some observations:

If the rights are abandoned or cheap, more people will be able to afford the books.

While the cost of buying the rights will be high, there will be a long-term savings if ARI owned the rights, since they currently buy them from the publisher. If they owned the rights, they could get them directly from the printer, and license them to others to distribute them.

Presumably, ARI is more optimistic about the long-term success of Objectivism than the current owner of the rights (the publisher). This suggests a profitable opportunity for speculation on the future value of the rights.

Even though Leonard Peikoff owns the royalty rights for the books, he only gets a very tiny percentage of their sales. Presumably, ARI could buy out his rights, or continue paying him royalties (in which case, the books would still be copyrighted, but could be sold for less.)

[CICEROSC]

I completely agree and said so here: http://forums.4aynrandfans.com/index.php?s...ic=9377&hl=

I hope you get better responses than I did! This really needs to happen and the sooner the better.

[Rudmer]

Does anyone know how much of a financial stretch it would be for ARI to buy the rights? Because I think it's a good idea, but not at running the risk of going broke.

[DavidV]

They don't have to buy everything at once, of course. Atlas Shrugged might be pricey, but ITOE might be had for a few thousand. There are people who specialize in researching and negotiating rights to old books.

[softwareNerd]

If one acquires one of the books that typically "hook" readers to Objectivism -- Fountainhead or Atlas -- one could end up hooking many more. However, I'd guess the cost would be many times ARI's annual budget. With the smaller books, one might pay less, but one has to weigh that against the lesser impact.

I think the big question is: what's the ballpark price for which the rights would be available for any particular book? If the rights to some book were available "really cheap", it would be a no brainer. Since ARI interacts with publishers, it is possible that ARI has explored the question.

[bbrown]

I think that now, with sales of Atlas Shrugged setting new records every quarter and every year, would be the very worst time to buy the rights. While ARI could sell the book cheaper (by taking less profit per unit) it doesn't appear that the book's price has hindered sales in any significant measure. (This seems like such an odd reason to buy the rights to a book and, I gather, self-print. When I saw the headline, I thought the rationale would be to largely self-fund the Institute.)

If I had to speculate why the book is not read by every man, woman, and child in America, I'd say that its heft is more of a reason than its price.

Bill

[DavidV]

I think that now, with sales of Atlas Shrugged setting new records every quarter and every year, would be the very worst time to buy the rights.

Markets price goods according to the their total future earning power. Even though sales are high right now, the publisher probably believes that the current spike is just a fad, and prices it accordingly.

If I had $10 million to invest, I would consider the following two posibilities:

1: Objectivism takes off and my future earning potential is higher than the publisher's estimate.

2: Objectivism doesn't take off, and my fortune will be useless anyway.

[RussK]

Interesting proposition, but I'm not convinced its results, if it became fact, would be better than the current way that the books are produced and acquired. Although, I haven't given much thought to it, and don't know much about the publishing industry, I think ARI buying the rights and being responsible for publishing the books could actually cause problems. Problems that come to mind include the cost--amount of donation required--to cover publishing, marketing, etc... of the books; possible distortion of the books' market; and the potential for destroying the works themselves, if ARI were to relinquish them to the public domain.

Supposing that ARI did have all the rights to the books, the prices of them for the consumer could very well be lower; however, what comes to mind is that they could really only be substantially lower if ARI chose to seek little to no profit. If that were to be the case, there would probably be less books published because ARI wouldn't have enough money to publish all of Ayn Rand's works, yearly, to the quantity and quality that they are currently published. Not to say that I know the cost it takes for all of the different publishers to put out their yearly prints of all the works, but my guess is that it's well over that of ARI's yearly budget. Currently, ARI relies on donation to send out around 300,000 copies of Anthem and The Fountainhead to schools; ARI is also looking for donations for the new AS initiative, with the goal of raising over $2million. They're going to require many more benefactors, giving much more money, before they could honestly think about the idea of being responsible for the publishing of all the works, if they didn't plan on sustaining it through the profit of the books.

One of the best reasons I can think of for keeping the profit motive for publishing and selling the books alive--essentially, keeping things how they are--is a concept inherent in the pursuit of profit successfully: supply and demand. The way the books are published and sold now is based on that principle, with publishers and other parties looking at what ever data they have for the matter and making decisions based upon that data. Although, ARI could make some very good decisions concerning the publishing of the books, I don't think they would make better decisions than a party who would sell the books for profit. A party not seeking profit could make errors that would lead to inflation of the works, which would waste money; deflation, which would harm the spread of the ideas from the books; and possibly the preferential selection of some books over others, resulting in inflation and deflation of certain books in particular.

Public domain, though will happen eventually, isn't something that should happen for its own sake. Without copyright protection, anything goes, and that leads to the potential for Ayn Rand's works to be improperly edited or changed in some way. Of course, the destruction or distortion of a particular work in the public domain is just a potential; I recognize that most people are not going to want to read something that has been distorted, and the market for as accurate a read as possible will continue to be a primary for books in the public domain. After all, most of the things I am usually interested in reading is probably in the public domain, so I'm not totally and finally opposed to the idea. However, I do think that while copyright protection is still available, it should be utilized for as much security and benefits that can be had from it.

[bbrown]

Markets price goods according to the their total future earning power. Even though sales are high right now, the publisher probably believes that the current spike is just a fad, and prices it accordingly.

1. We don't know what the publisher would seek in return for the rights to Atlas Shrugged. With sales at all-time highs for a 1,200 page book 52 years after its original publication and the prospect of a movie looming, I would have to guess that its stock is looking pretty strong.

2. "... the publisher probably believes that the current spike is just a fad ..." Sorry, but how on earth would you arrive at this conclusion? Do you know someone at Dutton? Are you privy to something that you'd like to share? A publisher doesn't have to be owned by an Objectivist to stand behind the book; the fact that it's a classic that generates excellent sales is sufficient for a publisher to not throw the book in a dumpster if sales waver.

3. The rights around a bestselling book aren't a singular thing. There's rights to domestic, international (per market), audio, and digital publication at the very least. I would suspect that that's only scratching the surface as far as how complicated things might be.

Bill

Edited July 19, 2009 by bbrown