2/2

My control of my copyright meant that, when the publisher with whom I had a contract DIED and left no access to his accounts to heirs, I was able to get retailers to pull my books from sale.

My control of my copyright meant that, when an anthology that included one of my stories was republished by a new publisher a decade after the first one went bankrupt, I was able to point out that there was no contract (license) to my story and they could either pay me for its inclusion or remove my story from the book. (They were sorry. They paid me. The edition is awesome so I'm happy it worked out that way.)

My control of my copyright meant that when an anthology suddenly appeared as an audiobook edition, despite the publisher never having purchased audio rights to the story - same thing. (Also, if they'd spoken to me in advance of releasing this edition, we even could have told the narrator how to pronounce my name. I bet the narrator would have appreciated that. I would have, too.)

And my control of my copyright means that, in many cases, I get to decide how I respond to specific situations. Someone on Reddit retyped and posted one of my stories with attribution? Didn't bother me. (If it were every story, or certain particular stories I'd prefer to leave OOP, it might bother me.) Someone uploads my out-of-print books to torrents? I'm not completely sure - I'd probably stay unbothered UNTIL/UNLESS I decide to put them back into print, which I'd be doing to earn money.

I even considered uploading my OOP books to torrents myself - before LLMs started freely devouring whatever they could find. NOW I would be MORE displeased than before if some of my work were being passed around, because it would almost certainly land in the LLM feeding trough - and they do not give any fucks about what is mine to give, and what is fair.