It’s payback time.
Raymond Biesinger says he wrote his new book, “9 Times My Work Has Been Ripped Off: An Informal Self-Defence Guide for Independent Creatives,” for a very simple reason.
“Spite, quite honestly,” he laughs, before adding another purpose. “And tactics. It was a tactical move.
“My goal with the book is to open up the window of possibilities for what people think they can do [to protect their work and their rights],” says the artist, whose images have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Monocle and many other outlets.
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Biesinger, who lives with his family in Quebec, says the initial concept came to him while he was negotiating with an unnamed organization that had used one of his images without his knowledge or consent (or payment).
“I realized that after 20 years in the business, I have a whole lot of these stories,” says Biesinger. “So what originally was going to be about one rip-off turned into something that was more like a career survey, stealth memoir and business self-help book all rolled into one.”
The situations he writes about in the book range from one as straightforward as tracking down a music promoter to collect a $50 fee to an arcane dispute with an agency over the usage rights to one of his images.
“It takes a lot to push me into being aggressive, but some of these situations, as you can see, were very warranted,” he says. “I don’t want to step on toes unless they really, really need to be stepped on.
“The main thesis of the book is that the legal system is kind of uselessly expensive and uselessly time-consuming for people who are involved in creative work,” he says. “There are totally exceptions to that, but for the most part, in any given conflict regarding someone taking your image and using it, or thinking of not paying you, the moment a lawyer gets involved, the lawyer is the only person who’s going to be able to get paid.”
And that’s where being tactically clever comes in.
“We’re creative people. We should be able to think creatively about the assets we have and how we can bring those to bear on people who have wronged us in a commercial sense,” he says. “I think the No. 1 tip is just realizing that you have more power than you think.”
Upbeat and quick to laugh during our conversation, Biesinger doesn’t spare himself from criticism, either. In the book, he recalls a furious email he sent to an illustrator who had been producing work that Biesinger thought looked much too much like his own. (Adding to the sting, Biesinger writes that this same illustrator had previously asked him for tips on how to develop his own style.)
“I was angry about the stylistic rip-off but also angry that I felt some of the work was good,” writes Biesinger.
But time passes, anger cools. And so, Biesinger reached out to the artist 15 years later with an apology and a request to hear the other side of the story, which is included in the book. Although initially “devastated,” the other illustrator writes that not only did Biesinger’s criticism help him to find his own style, but he now uses what he learned when he teaches his own art students. Things worked out.
“We’re buddies now,” says Biesinger.
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The book acknowledges that there will always be challenges to working in the industry, such as AI. But Biesinger, who studied history and once considered becoming a journalist, cautions that AI isn’t the only problem that creative workers face, just the latest.
“Whenever I talk to people about the book, they’re always like, ‘Oh, so you’re writing about AI?’ There’s this automatic connection between ‘rip-off’ and AI,” he says. “There’s a lot of resentment.
“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about AI lately,” he says. “AI isn’t munching all the entry-level jobs; the seven other things we’ve had to deal with as creatives for the last 20 years – or just as human beings for the past 20 years – are destroying all the entry-level jobs.
“AI is just like the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, and right now it’s louder than all the other ones, but it’s not necessarily more deadly than the cost of living increasing or creeping authoritarianism and all that.”
Biesinger says working on his own projects, spending time with his family and taking up hobbies like metal detection offer ways to relieve stress and reconnect with his creativity. (Yes, I asked about the metal detector: He bought it for $15 at a garage sale after hearing how the seller’s dad had used it to recover her retainer from a restaurant dumpster. “That story alone’s worth $15 bucks,” he laughs.)
“I started out wanting to be a historian and a writer, so what I’m finding as time goes on is that I’m able to dedicate more time to my own muses,” he says, referring to projects that focus in on the history of things like buses, trains, and even bookmobiles, the latter of which he especially enjoyed.
“The research was tremendous fun,” he says, noting some unusual examples he found, such as a 1930s-era Italian socialist bookmobile. “It’s also one of those things that AI can’t do – something that’s so not documented online.”
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His point is simple: Creative people should be able to get paid fairly for their work. It’s not easy, but he says it’s worth the effort.
“It is tough, but it’s also mandatory. Unless you have some sort of outside funding in terms of intergenerational wealth or a lottery or something like that, we are still human beings that, unfortunately, need to function in capitalism.
“I realized a big part of me being able to do that is that I was very careful about the working conditions in which I function and making sure, from a labor perspective, that I’m not getting screwed. I knew early on that that was important, or else I would not be able to do this.
“And this is really what I wanted to do.”
For more, go to Raymond Biesinger’s website or Drawn & Quarterly.
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