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<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Graham:

Giving somebody the right to sit on your song, and you losing the right to pedal it for ten years...
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This is not really true. You have the right to peddle it as much as you want. But, if you should get a cut on it, and it earns royalties, the publisher would get the publishing share of the royalty. You would get the writer's royalty but none of the publishing share.

This has been an interesting thread, and I think it indicates that some folks have a basic misunderstanding about the role and value of a publisher.

The relationship of a publisher to a writer is not too different from the relationship between C. F. Martin and music store owners. Martin makes really nice guitars that sell for $2000 (let's keep the numbers really simple here just for the sake of the example). But Martin does not get the $2000. If they sold it to the end user, they would get to keep all the money and make a much bigger profit. But the guys at Martin understand that they are not in a very good position to get their guitars in the hands of the public. Music stores, on the other hand, are perfectly positioned to do this. So, Martin is willing to "give up" a big chunk of value in order to be able to get their guitars to more people.

In a nutshell, that is what a publisher does for a songwriter. He is in a position to get songs in the hands of producers, A&R guys, and artists. Most songwriters are simply not in that position and never will be. So they "pay" to have someone with the necessary expertise to do that for them. What's kind of nice about the arrangement is that the writers don't have to "pay" the publisher in the traditional sense by writing monthly checks to him. The publisher works "on spec" by working the song in exchange for the possibility that it will earn royalties later on...if he does his job well enough. In a lot of cases, the pub will even pay the writer a living wage out of his pocket. Of course the salary is an advance against earnings and not a real salary. BUT--and this is big--if the writer never has a hit and never earns back the advance, it is a total loss for the publisher. Remember, a publisher--just like a writer--earns NOTHING until a song gets cut and earns royalties.

I know what I have added here is old hat and very well understood by many, but it seemed to me that there are some who seem to think of publishers as guys to take moeny from writers without giving value in return. I think that notion is incorrect.