You may recall last year’s case of Alan Dean Foster, who stopped receiving royalties for his Star Wars and Alien novelizations. After Disney ended up with the rights to those works (via its acquisition of Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox), it continued selling the books but didn’t continue paying authors. The good news is that Foster resolved his issues with Disney. The bad news is that he is the only author Disney has dealt with.
The #DisneyMustPay Joint Task Force has been formed to secure royalties from Disney; it includes high-profile authors, such as Neil Gaiman and Chuck Wendig, plus major writing organizations, such as Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the National Writers Union, Romance Writers of America, and others. The president of the SFWA tweeted, “While we’ve been cautiously pleased to see that Disney is working to make things right with Alan, the fact that they are flatly refusing to work with the author organizations is a bad sign. We offered them an opportunity to send a statement to our members. They declined.”
If you’ve written works related to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Spider-Man, Stargate, Angel, or Predator, you should get in touch with the task force. Learn more in Publishers Weekly.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
