Talk:Draft Contract 1

Nick: I doubt that MIT Press would agree to splitting royalties among 11 authors and a nonprofit foundation. It would lead to a huge amount of accounting work, maintaining current addresses for many people, etc. The total royalty amount we are talking about is probably going to be no more than $2000 in our best year. That is a significant amount for a nonprofit, as I can tell you - I would love for the ELO to have a donation like this. But how much would it be for one of us, under a 50% for charity scheme? Well, first of all, we'd have to figure out how to divide royalties between us. It does not immediately seem fair to me to split the amount evenly 11 ways, given the work I've put into developing the proposal and organizing the project. (This is another discussion and hassle that we avoid if we determine a charity, agreeable to everyone, to which we can donate the royalties.) For now, though, let's assume we were to split the royalties evenly. 50% (the author's share) of $2000 is $1000. Divided 11 ways, that's $91. So, in our best year, we'll expect less than $100 per author in this scheme. As a source of annual income, that does not seem very significant whatever else one is doing to make money. If all of it were donated to a new nonprofit, however, it would not only allow us and MIT Press to avoid accounting work and figuring out how to divide the royalties amongst ourselves, it would be of substantial benefit to a cause that (I think) we all believe in.