Lately, I keep seeing these controversies about creative people getting paid for their work. They're about writers or artists who contributed to a website or magazine or business venture and agreed to let their work be used for nothing, then found out that the nature of the enterprise had been misrepresented to them. There is then this argument over whether they should have been paid…or there are resolutions where they do get paid…and it's all about getting paid. Owing to the line of work I'm in, I'm all for writers and artists (and actors and everyone) getting paid but I think "getting paid" misses the point. The question is whether they're paid properly.
Quick story. Years ago in the comic book business, there was a rather seedy publisher who liked to reprint other folks' work without their permission. Often, he claimed the work was Public Domain…and sometimes, it was. Other times, he'd reprint something that was in no way p.d. but he thought maybe the ownership of it was a little cloudy so no one would sue him…or the creator had died and the work was now owned by heirs who'd never notice. I don't think anyone ever sued him. He had such a fly-by-night operation that it wasn't cost-effective. It was like: Why spend a few thousand bucks to sue someone who doesn't have a few thousand bucks?
But others told him that they thought he had all the ethics of plankton and when they did, he'd fire back with the following defense: "Hey, I paid them." And he had. If his victims complained (and only if), he would send them a check for ten or twenty dollars and then he'd say, "I paid them" without, of course, disclosing the amount.
Another example. There have been a number of comic book artists who've imitated or traced the work of Jack Kirby and a couple of them over the years have felt that out of gratitude, they'd feel better if they paid Jack (or later, his widow) a little something so they sent checks. Now, there's no standard fee for this so it's tough to say what would constitute a respectable — as opposed to an insulting — amount. But I remember seeing the totals and thinking they were decent, especially since the folks who sent them were not running around trumpeting that they'd paid Kirby.
There was, of course, one exception. Isn't there always one exception to things like this? There was that guy who sent ten bucks along with a letter that asked that the Kirbys not disclose the amount. He was the one who went around telling everyone he sent a portion of his income to Jack Kirby — technically true, I guess, but still…
The phrase "getting paid" denotes compensation that satisfies the payee, either because they decide the amount seems fair or because it equals some agreed-upon figure. If I owe you fifty thousand dollars and I send you five bucks, I have not really paid you. For me to say, "I paid that person" or even "I paid him in part" would be misleading and probably deliberately so. I say "probably" because sometimes, one or both sides of these transactions don't think that way. The person who owes thinks that it's not about the money, it's about the principle; that he or she merely has to agree or acknowledge that something is owed. The person who is owed accepts a token, way-too-low payment and says, "Well, at least they admitted they had to pay me."
I worked (briefly) for a TV producer who loved to not pay people…and it was amazing how often he got away with it or how often his niggardly stances resulted in him having to pay less than was owed. He never did this to me, perhaps because he'd tangled once in another matter with my attorney. Still, I watched with a mix of awe and outrage as he did it to others.
He would agree to pay you a thousand dollars if you did a certain job for him. You'd shake on it, you'd do the job…and then — then! — negotiations would start. He'd find fault with the work. He'd claim you hadn't understood some aspect of the agreement and the real amount was less than you thought. He'd make a huge deal of the fact that you turned it in two days late. (General rule of thumb: Lateness doesn't alter a deal unless you actually held up production. If you cost them extra or forced a schedule change, then there might be a case for adjusting the fee.)
It was like a game with this fellow. One of his favorite tactics was to suddenly involve you in his financial problems and make them yours. He'd call you from his beachfront house in Malibu to tell you, "I have to pay you out of this certain account I have and there's no money in there right now because this other guy hasn't paid me for something. Once he pays me, I can pay you." So suddenly, it wasn't him not paying you. It was this other guy who was holding up your check.
He would draw it out and draw it out…and I guess he figured that even if he wound up having to pay you the thou, at least he would have earned a few months of interest on it. He was a very wealthy man and one reason he was wealthy was that he so rarely paid people the full amounts he owed them. When you finally got angry and started talking about lawyers — and not a minute before — he'd say something like, "Look…a lawyer will cost you more than you'll get. I like you. I really want to make things right between us. I can pay you out of this other account but there's only $500 in it…"
You'd be amazed how many people would take that, and not just because they needed the $500 to pay that month's rent. Some of them just wanted to get that battle out of their lives so they wouldn't even say, "Okay, I'll take the $500 and you still owe me $500." They'd accept it as payment in full just to be done with it. They'd convince themselves they got paid and even tell others, "That bastard tried to cheat me but I stood up to him and I won. I got paid."
When you talk about money, amounts matter. Paying people something is not the same as paying them properly. Payment is a mutual agreement. I agree to work for X dollars. You agree to pay me X dollars…and yes, we can renegotiate later and agree to change X. There are sometimes good reasons on both sides to do that. And if someone really, really can't pay…well, maybe settling for fifty cents on the dollar ain't so bad. It's a heckuva lot more than zero.
But the point is that we too often think that paying something is the same as paying the proper amount. If you're a writer or artist or in any other field that gets abused this way, you need to remember something. When you pay your Visa bill, they expect every cent. They charge you interest if you don't pay every cent. That's how it works in the world you have to live in…and you can't pay them in full if people don't pay you in full. Or at all.