Hello all!
This is my first post (took a while to get here!!) and I'm happy that it's on a topic that is very dear to my heart: the business of type and supporting indie foundries. There's been a seismic upheaval in royalty rates and licensing models in the past month and we (at ILT) have been asked to advise and support. We then reached out to Frank Martinez to invite him to give a seminar as part of our ILT Academy. All info is below and we highly recommend that you attend. Frank has graciously offered to make this free for all to attend given the seriousness of the topic and the necessity that such issues are discussed in our community.
cheers,
Nadine
Event sign up:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/font-distribution-know-your-rights-tickets-488806442227
Event info:
Recent changes to royalty rates and pricing models by various font distributors have left foundries with many unanswered questions with regards to their legal rights and relationships with these font distributors. The ILT Academy is proud to invite renowned lawyer Frank Martinez who has 20+ years of experience representing foundries as well as a distinguished academic career teaching at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Frank also has an MBA degree and studied art and design at Pratt Institute before law school.
Frank will present a 2-hour seminar focused on understanding contracts, presenting the dos and don’ts of font distribution agreements and will focus on these areas of particular interest:
- Understanding distribution contracts: what to look for, dos and don’ts
- Cultural and country differences and how they affect contracts
- Unilateral changes to agreements, when is that a breach and when not
- Pricing and license models of font products, who decides?
The seminar will attempt to de-mystify the legal complexities of font distribution contracts. However, please note that Frank’s presentation and any questions will not represent legal advice, they are merely his informed opinion.
Comments
- One distributor has unilaterally decided to reduce royalties to foundries from 70% to 50%, in spite of signed contracts
- Another distributor has increased pricing of web fonts by up to 10 times and changed licensing models without consultation, and restricted web font licenses to 2 million, above which that distributor will handle requests directly (with a very likely change from 50% to 25% royalty change)
So it seems there is a large grey area for interpretation with regards to what rights a foundry gives to a distributor, and there are so few resources that explain what those rights are. Hence this seminar. We've been asked for advice and we are not in a position to provide that. But, we can try to organise educational talks that help share knowledge around this very important topic.
If anyone would like to submit questions for Frank to include in the talk please get in touch and I'll pass them on.
I think this is a nice thing to offer, Nadine & ILT folks
To add to this, it's not clear to me what possible advantage there can be to having the 'disagree' flag remain anonymous. Is there some rationale for this that I am missing?
But... aren't all "free" events like this..? ;p
Surely you can take it from me that anything "free" has a larger purpose and is a loss-leader for some other activity
I agree XD
Sure, the argument for doing that is control. Certainly I believe in having control myself but I'd not say that it's a purely financial argument. My point is that a good reseller is definitely worth a 50% cut because in addition to shouldering that overhead they should be widening your customer base. From my research my understanding is that most foundries who were with more than one reseller got more net income from the ones that take the larger cut. To me that sounds equitable, but since I don't deal with any of them directly I can't be certain.
The most obvious conclusion from the fact that everyone is always outraged over a 50% cut is that the resellers aren't earning it. Certainly, I don't think they conduct business to my standards so I'm predisposed to think that. However, people complain but they don't leave so maybe the resellers are earning it? If they weren't earning their cut then it would be sensible to set up your own system, no? Therefore, I always wonder if it's just a bunch of self described not business savvy people having a gut reaction to a top line number.
Doing things quietly and unilaterally is an outrage but not at all surprising. Monotype has engaged in pirate business practices for as long as I've been in this industry.
Does it start to seem less than altruistic that I Love Typography, a new-ish reseller, is holding a workshop on your rights as a type designer with regards to unilateral royalty changes from other resellers?
- Cultural and country differences and how they affect contracts
- Unilateral changes to agreements, when is that a breach and when not
- Pricing and license models of font products, who decides?
But to answer your question, Joyce…
Is this a potentially business motived discussion? Sure, but demonizing Nadine and the conversation seems silly. Providing resources which help others and promoting ones business are not mutually exclusive or at odds with each other.
P.S. I have no affiliation with I Love Typography
Not much the little people can do about it, except stay up to date.
Organization might be an option, but it’s not in the “indie”, entrepreneurial headspace that type designers occupy.
There seems to be cultural differences as to how "to the letter" a contract needs to be read, and this is something that would be good to expand on. My understanding is very much a German one as I have spent my formative career years there, and I was very surprised to hear that a US one is rather different. Frank will talk more about that in the seminar.
Joyce, we reached out to you twice and it was only after I checked in with a common friend if we had the right email address that you responded. You had every right to refuse to sign an NDA, but not the pile of abuse you sent my way alongside. I would appreciate if we could stick to the topic of this post.
There is a woeful lack of information about the legal rights that foundries have, and this is directly resulting in significant loss of income. The seminar is a way to offer support, and we've kept it free due to the importance of the issues being discussed.
which is the case for most type designers who never achieve a ‘bestseller’,
I've been fortunate to have had several "Bestsellers" and thus have been able to go it alone all these years. I've been approached by almost all of the "players" with offers to take over my library, but have been able to politely decline. Perhaps my heirs will be more inclined to sell off the library.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/font-distribution-know-your-rights-tickets-488806442227
On the last point, the default pricing on Fontspring and the new pricing on Myfonts (which foundries can't change) have resulted in stunning differences in pricing as you can see in this example (part of pricing survey that we've done, pricing from a few weeks ago). This is why the question of who sets the price is so important:
I concur with others here, while free events are absolutly a business decision, I don't feel that is bad. In fact, as a usually pretty 'underfunded' person I find free events (or even free videos of the talk on YouTube after the event) essepcially helpful.
In my day job the compnay I work for does things to help their industry, sponsing events, doing a podcast, etc, and yes, these are partly marketing efforts, but they are also trying to find ways to boost the industrry at the same timeand help everyone, including our competitors.
If the objection is around the vested or possibly biased interest of the host, then I hear you, but it does not change my mind about wishing to attend. Maybe I am too jaded. But I assume all events or public talks are going to have a bias. This one seems pretty transparent in that ILT is hosting it, so people can make their own minds up about if that connection is too close for them.
- Understanding distribution contracts: what to look for, dos and don’ts
- Cultural and country differences and how they affect contracts
- Unilateral changes to agreements, when is that a breach and when not
- Pricing and license models of font products, who decides?
See you Wednesday!