Academics, writers, independent intellectuals: please read the fine print of your contracts with conventional publishers. Do you realize what you are doing when you grant rights to the publishers? Nearly all of them — and actually all of them, really — insist on exclusive rights. That means that you have lost control over your own work. Your own words are no longer yours. If you repeat what you have already written, and print it elsewhere, you are in violation of the contract you made. (All of this applies to music too, by the way.) Why would any author go along … Continue reading The 100-Year Sentence