Well, an author has to shop for a publisher. He may never find one and thus end of the story. There is no difference with the Anarchy in this regards.
Suppose he did find a publisher. He may conduct preliminary negotiations before letting his work go. There are no differences so far.
Suppose he got some result, like: in case the work is accepted, then the author will be paid such and such. Happy ending in the very beginning. No differences as of yet.
If publisher wants exclusive rights for the printing monopoly of the legal term - here is the first difference with the Anarchy model (1) - he may pay more.
If the publisher does not want exclusive rights, or the author does not want to relinquish all of his rights, he can bring the work to another publisher and get paid by both.
What happens after publishing? This depends on acceptance of the work by public. Author gets exposure depending on his (one!) publisher's marketing efforts and abilities (2) - this is the second difference with the Anarchy model. The next work may be sold for a greater price, if the first one got famous. In latter the case, publishers will compete for the ability to get the next one first. On the other hand, the publisher, having exclusive rights is interested to promote the work, no matter how talented it is (3).
However, there is one new circumstance brought in by legally extended printing monopoly: having secured portfolio for some prolonged time (initially for 14 + 14 years, about 100 years today) a publisher may not be interested in buying another book (4). Or he may buy it not for publishing, but to prevent competitors from doing this (5). In any case, this is exactly what publishers fought for: to make their life easier at the expense of public and this is how the printing monopoly turns around and strips authors of an income instead of providing it. The latter phenomenon fires back on an author: condemned to sell a work to a single publisher, whoever he is, the author has to take this fact in consideration and make adjustments to the work, which, generally speaking, undermines creativity (6). The last feature of copyright driven environment is of specific interest, because it directly contradicts proclaimed goal of exclusive printing rights.
What if the very first publisher robs the author: does not give any written promise, takes the work and publishes it under some other name? This does change situation, because having exclusive rights the publisher can provide that no one ever learn who the real author is (7).
However this variant can bring bad reputation to the publisher-thief, so he must take it into account.
The author may turn to a court and sue the publisher under the copyright law (8). But again, if stealing is not proven, the author lost his work forever, while within the Anarchy he may just compete with the publisher-thief. Anyway, a law suit is always a matter of proof and money, and in this respect there is no difference between models.
Another new feature is the following. Remember, by the very nature of art we, the audience, develop personal relations with a work of art. We noted earlier these relations are, in fact, very similar in nature to those with real people. The differences are only in the consequences of the relations. When it comes to the access to some wanted work of art, generally speaking, there is no substitute available: if you want to read the Bible, then you want to read the Bible, if you want The Lord of the Rings, then you want The Lord of the Rings. It is a personal matter. Yes, in practice, if you cannot get the artistic work that you want, you may find some ``substitute,'' but this would hurt like losing and finding substitute for a friend. That means a publishing monopoly on a single book is, in fact, a monopoly that is as effective as if this book were the only one on the market. Thus, copyright allows the raising of the prices to the maximum level possible (9). Like with a casual monopoly, this feature stays in the way for public access to distributed works in terms of price and thus badly affects markets.
A quite unexpected development within the copyright-driven environment, is promotion of actual plagiarism (10). Plagiarism cannot survive within the Anarchy, because the public is very sensitive to it and no publisher would like to risk his brand, while all original works are at his disposal. This is not the case within the copyright-driven environment. It is very tempting here to get and sell something similar to a well-selling work. In order to do so, one only needs to provide some measured formal differences with the example to follow. What is it, if not a plagiarism? Interestingly enough, another publisher would prefer to buy described plagiarism instead of something really new with an uncertain projection for sales. Hence, we have one more blow to creativity caused by publishing monopolies.
Yet another lovely consequence of copyrights is that publishers try to influence audiences in order to conserve a current level of perception of arts(11). Having secured a portfolio for years, a publisher wants to make sure all of it would be salable as long as the monopoly lasts. Thus, publishers must try to retard the promotion of new ideas, new aesthetic approaches to arts, new kinds of arts, new genres, you name it. They need to restrain the development of public tastes. This trend must bear some inertia in it: while investing money in the retardation and conservation of public development, publishers are driven to get new works to fit the picture, thus contributing again, for the third time in the suppression of creativity.
Now, let's get back to the author. Suppose the first work does not bring money, which means the author hasn't got any popularity. The entire story starts over with the next work. However this would be harder for the author to start over in the environment poisoned by publishing monopolies: publishers having backed by their portfolios would not want to risk for the author, which had not succeed already. It wouldn't matter if he was misunderstood genius or one which just failed to convince a powerful publisher to market his work.
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