Don Rosa gaat er zelf heel uitgebreid op in op zijn website.
Kort samengevat: Hij vindt het Disney Comics Systeem oneerlijk tegenover artiesten. Zij krijgen eenmalig een vast bedrag per verhaal en dat was het. Hoeveel keer het verhaal ook doorverkocht, herdrukt, aangepast en wordt gebundeld. Disney Comics Creators zijn de enigen waar dit voor geldt, bij ELK ander bedrijf en zelfs bij Disney krijgen tekenaars en schrijvers royalties voor zolang als het uitgegeven wordt of zij het betreffende karakters wel of niet hebben "bedacht" maakt hierin niet uit.
Tot zover geen probleem: hij is hiermee akkoord gegaan en heeft ook geen moeite met het herdrukken van het materiaal. Maar vooral in Scandinavië is hij heel populair en daar kwamen steeds meer uitgaven met zijn naam erop maar ook merchandise als kalenders die verkocht werden als Don Rosa Kalender. Zijn naam werd dus een promotiemiddel om extra uitgaven te verkopen. Hiernaast wilde hij zijn naam niet op producten waar hij het bestaan niet van wist, want zijn naam erop zou impliceren dat hij iets te zeggen had over de inhoud en achter het product stond.
Zijn uitgever Egmont is zelfs gelijk akkoord gegaan met een voorstel van Rosa om zijn naam te gebruiken. Uitgevers in Nederland en andere landen hebben GELIJK nee gezegd of niks meer laten horen zonder ook maar te informeren wat zijn voorwaarden zijn. In onderstaande tekst schrijft hij dat hij al blij zou zijn met enige creative control over de inhoud en extra teksten en artwork.
Mijn vraag is dus, als het zo onredelijk is wat Rosa vraagt, waarom ging Egmont dan wél in gesprek en zelfs na één voorstel akkoord en wilt Sanoma hier niet aan? Dit soort uitgaven zijn echt niet duur om te maken want de verhalen hergebruiken kost blijkbaar niks waardoor vrijwel alleen nog het drukken en distributie hoeft te betalen.Dit terwijl het toch voor een forse prijs wordt verkocht. Er kan dan best een paar centen royalties afgedragen worden en als je hiermee extra Don Rosa achtergrondinformatie bij kan voegen wordt het toch een compleet geheel. Nu mist er iets naar mijn mening!
Reason #1: The Disney comics system
How many people know how the “Disney system” of comics works? When I describe this to some fans when asked about it, they often think I’m kidding them or lying. Or they are outraged. But it’s an unfortunate fact that there have never been, and I ultimately realized there never will be, any royalties paid to the people who write or draw or otherwise create all the Disney comics you’ve ever read.
Disney comics have never been produced by the Disney company, but have always been created by freelance writers and artists working for licensed independent publishers, like Carl Barks working for Dell Comics, me working for Egmont, and hundreds of others working for numerous other Disney licensees. We are paid a flat rate per page by one publisher for whom we work directly. After that, no matter how many times that story is used by other Disney publishers around the world, no matter how many times the story is reprinted in other comics, album series, hardback books, special editions, etc., etc., no matter how well it sells, we never receive another cent for having created that work. That’s the system Carl Barks worked in and it’s the same system operating today.
How can such an archaic system still be in operation in the 21st Century when royalties have been paid in other creative publishing endeavors for literally centuries? All book authors, musicians, actors, singers, non-Disney cartoonists, even people who act in TV commercials… they all receive royalties if success warrants it. Even Disney pays normal royalties to creators and performers in its own movie and TV and book and music businesses. As near as I can tell, correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s only the creators of Disney comics who have no chance to receive a share of the profits of the success of the work they create.
Why is this? I don’t know.
But I certainly never started doing Disney comics because I expected to get rich. I was born into a successful construction company and took a huge cut in income (and a vastly bigger workload) to create comics based on Barks’ characters. I never even dreamt they were still popular outside of the USA. When I went to work for Egmont, I still never expected to make lots of money — I knew I was a relative amateur, and I was just delighted to have a way to keep creating these stories. Besides that, my stories were used in anthology comics along with many other really nicely drawn works, and my stories only appeared a few times each year. But within a few years, I started noticing the publishers were mentioning my name on the covers, as they did Barks’ name… this just made me very proud! But this was still no indication of why people were buying the comics. In fact, I was told that most readers disliked my stories because of my weird detailed art and overly complex plots. I could easily believe that. Life was good.
Then two countries started producing a series of all-Rosa albums. Other countries started producing annual all-Rosa pin-up calendars. Then several more countries started producing all-Rosa special hardback editions which became best-sellers. I was called on to do promotional tours to help sell books of my work even though I was never paid royalties on those sales. What? Huh?
And on these promotional media events when I did press conferences and appearances on national TV talk-shows, some interviewers would privately comment about how nice it must be for me to be getting so rich off something I obviously enjoyed doing so much. Eventually it hit me — all the European fans assumed that I was a millionaire. They assumed that when I sat at a book store signing the 30 Euro books the store was selling, I was getting a 5 Euro cut on each sale! Whoa! I had never minded not getting wealthy off this job I loved. But it became really annoying when I discovered that everyone assumed I was getting huge royalties. They could never imagine that such a system exists in this day and age (or that an author/artist would be so stupid as to participate in it). I started feeling like a world-class chump.
Then the publishers took the next inevitable step. A new reprint album of my Scrooge McDuck adventures was not to be titled “SCROOGE McDUCK” #1, but “DON ROSA” #1. The annual “DONALD DUCK CALENDAR” was to become the annual “DON ROSA CALENDAR”. And publishers did not even bother to notify me when they published such all-Rosa products using my name — usually I would find out about it from simply a fan in the country where the publication appeared. Also I would have to depend on that fan to buy me a copy of the Rosa book since these publishers would never even send me a complimentary copy.
This was just getting too outrageous! I knew it was time to come to my senses! Fans who have seen some of this leak out onto the Internet at the time erroneously refer to this as when I went “on strike”. This was never the true case… I have always had an excellent working relationship with my own direct employer, Egmont. But a new relationship had to be worked out.
What I did was hire a lawyer, at no small expense, and trademarked my name across Europe and South America. Disney publishers certainly had every right to use my comic stories — those were Disney property. But my name is not Disney property – it is my property. I was not so much annoyed that I was not receiving royalties on products sold using my name, but I had no quality control over the presentations. Often the wrong scripts were used at the whim of an editor or translator, often the wrong pages of art were used on continued stories, or there were coloring errors, etc. This sort of thing was fine in the weekly anthology, but if a book of all-Rosa stories is published with my name on the cover, fans assume I have some control over the product. Now I would see to it that I would.
I did not ask for royalties. I decided to ask simply for an annual fee for the use of my name to sell products. I sought advice from a European representatives of authors and artists and asked how much I should demand from Egmont each year. I was given the agent’s opinion of a fair fee. So, since my intention was mainly to show that I wanted some sort of control over the use of my name and the presentation of my work, the fee I quoted to Egmont was exactly half of the fee the agent recommended. I figured that way I was showing Egmont I was serious, but not trying to gouge them.
My publisher Egmont immediately agreed! I suppose they were simply waiting for me to say something. After all, they are a big company… in fact, a non-profit charitable organization… so why would they offer me a fee until I demanded it? Everyone I’ve ever met at Egmont, actually everyone I’ve ever met at any worldwide Disney-licensed publishing company, are all wonderfully nice folks. Many have become dear friends. I don’t hold them personally responsible for being part of that system. They didn’t create it and I know they don’t personally approve of it (how could anyone?). Oh — and it should definitely be noted that, in return for my cooperation on this superb book series, Egmont offers me a “consideration” based on sales, which is the first time I have been offered that by any Publisher.
With the non-Egmont publishers it is a different story. I let them know that they could no longer publish the all-Rosa albums and books using my name to promote them unless they had my permission. All they had to do was ask. But they would not. I guess they simply refused to actually ask permission from one of these artists or writers whose work they had used anytime they wished in any manner they wished. And they were not going to start giving that respect to anyone after 60-70 years. They never even asked me what I wanted in return, probably assuming I would demand a huge royalty off their sales… in truth, all I wanted was quality control and some free author issues. They never cared what I wanted. So, to this day, that’s why you see all-Rosa book series in France, Brazil, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece and Indonesia (and probably other countries I haven’t found out about) which are attributed to an “anonymous” author, though those publishers all know that my fans will still recognize my weird art without my name on the cover. Still, they cannot use my annotated texts or other extra materials that I wish fans could see. But as long as they don’t exploit my name to sell their products, I have no grievance against them publishing books of my work. (I’m just lucky that fans in those countries send me copies of the Rosa books, something that those publishers should be even more ashamed of!)
However, the attitude of these publishers and the whole system was still gradually taking its toll on my increasing depression. I couldn’t help but realize that I had provided these people with 20 years’ worth of work that they would reprint and rerereprint for the next century without ever offering me a cent in royalties. It was an insidious worm that worked its way into my soul. It killed my enthusiasm. And my enthusiasm for the fans who loved these Barks characters as much as I did was all that had kept me going.
http://career-end.donrosa.de/
