"I never expected a money success," said Tolkien, pacing the room, as he does constantly when he speaks. "In fact, I never even thought of commercial publication when I wrote The Hobbit back in the Thirties.
"It all began when I was reading exam papers to earn a bit of extra money. That was agony. One of the tragedies of the underpaid professor is that he has to do menial jobs. He is expected to maintain a certain position and to send his children to good schools. Well, one day I came to a blank page in an exam book and I scribbled on it. 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
The piece is a pleasant read about the greatest fantasy writer of all time.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by davester666 on Thursday October 29 2015, @04:20AM
So, if he had copyright protection for, say, 20 years, and made enough money to live on by publishing The Hobbit, you think he would have just packed it in or continued on with TLOTR?
Oh, wait, he DID write it, with the knowledge that he had 20 years copyright protection. Actually, it was 14 years, and you could apply for a further 14 years.
There is LITERALLY no writer who started out with "ok, now that I know that this will be copyright for 50 years after I die, I can write this masterpiece. otherwise, I would never bother"
Or musician. Or movie script writer. Hell, movie executives giving the OK to creating a movie don't even do it. EVERYTHING after the first couple of years is entirely gravey, a complete fluke that none of them count on.