By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 18/08/2026To bargain successfully, it's not only necessary for you to have something valuable to trade: you also need to have *leverage*. You need to have *options*. The other side has to believe that if they lowball you, you will go do a deal elsewhere. 15/ 1261
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 18/08/2026This is where copyright fails to serve creative workers. Even at the best of times, the world naturally produces an oversupply of would-be professional artists, and a sufficiency of the talented to fill most of the workaday niches in our field. 16/ 1241
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 18/08/2026Even exceptional artists - and exceptional works - are often commercial flops, for reasons that aren't always well understood (though sometimes it's self-fulfilling prophecy, where a media company buy rights and loses confidence in the work and doesn't exert itself in marketing the work). 17/ 1220
