Royalties

The best and worst of the royalties game happened last week. The best, a surprise windfall, the children's play opening in SoCal with very decent royalties; the worst, a check from a publisher Saturday for $4.40, a joke. I wish I'd saved all these tiny checks over the years, made a collage of them. At least it still buys a cup of coffee ha ha.

My favorite royalties nightmare story concerns John Dos Passos. In his time, copyright law secured a writer's rights for 26 years, renewable once -- so he was still alive when his great U.S.A. trilogy, taught in many universities at the time, entered the public domain! In a single year, he lost tens of thousands of dollars in royalties.