I am more than a little sad to find that after writing Free range, eco-friendly, fair trade knitting teachers this February, it’s time for another followup. Annie Modesitt has just posted about the new digital pattern contract information sent out by Soho (aka Vogue Knitting, knit.1, Knit Simple etc). Her title says it all: here we go again.
I really do recommend you read Annie’s post in full, because she’s pretty much one of the only people talking about this out loud. (Behind closed doors is another thing altogether — you should hear designers at TNNA or anywhere else we congregate in large numbers).
And I’ll repeat what I said in the comments there. As you all know, I recently took the editor job at UK-based print knitmag Yarn Forward. We are planning digital pattern sales, and we will be paying designers a full 50% when we do, not 10%.
In addition, ANY time Yarn Forward asks a designer’s permission to reuse their pattern (in a collection, book, whatever), he or she gets paid again. A percentage (50%), but it’s something. And on top of that, 6 months after the pattern appears in the magazine, you can start to sell it on your own site, on Ravelry, or whatever. We’re up to 10 issues per year now (from 4), so clearly it’s working as a business model. Any adjustments in terms we may make in future, though, will always be designer-friendly. As a result, magazines such as Yarn Forward who do offer designer-friendly terms will benefit in better designs, better readership, and more. I don’t know if I could live with myself otherwise.
This isn’t 1980 anymore. There’s more than one way to get patterns, and I know many of you are concerned about fair compensation…hence my February post’s title “Free range, eco-friendly, fair trade knitting teachers,” and the comparisons made there. Teaching conditions at the bigger shows continue to deteriorate, yet it’s easier than ever to coordinate a teaching engagement with a “name” designer. You know. The ones who are shying away from those shows because — go figure — it’s hard to pay the mortgage when you aren’t getting compensated fairly.
When I found out Annie was coming to town, we put together class offerings, did a little online publicity and pow! filled her classes rather nicely…all in about 2 weeks’ time, so you can imagine what more lead time would have given us. And yes, it’s true I have access to my own venue, but even if not, there’s any number of places we could have done it for cheap or free.
I don’t know what else I can say. It’s Thanksgiving tomorrow. I am thankful I have a job I love, working with wonderful, creative people all the time. Any amount of frustration is almost immediately fixed by other good stuff happening. But forgetting that designers are the cornerstone of this business seems at best counterproductive, and at worst, a severe lack of respect for what they do. This translates, in my opinion, to a lack of respect for the end user, too. It benefits everyone to have skilled designers submitting to the magazines.
Of course, everyone needs to start somewhere, and I have nothing but respect for the people who have the ideas, but maybe not the technical know-how (that’s where editors come in). If you’re willing to learn, fantastic. But if you want to see more complex knitting and interesting pieces on a regular basis — you’re going to have to have designers with existing skills on board. You can’t hand-hold an entire magazine’s worth of designs, not on these kinds of timetables.
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