Creative Commons expands Copyright by giving content creators the ability to license only part of their rights. This stimulates sharing but maintains control. Flexibility of this kind can maintain the economic value of works while keeping the artists in control.
Legal Issues
How Public Domain Publishing Can Grow Your Business
One way self-publishers can increase their product line without having to write more books is by finding public domain books to reprint that are complementary to their topic and appeal to the same market.
Fair Use, The Rights of Personality, and Unintended Consequences
When dealing with a rights license, be careful you don’t give away more than you bargained for. And treat other people’s rights with equal zeal. We’re in this together. Two cases of rights issues show that rights can’t be taken lightly, or given easily.
Self-Publisher’s Quick Guide to Copyright: A Report
Back when I started this blog I really didn’t know what information would prove to be most useful to today’s self-publishers, or what would be the most popular. A couple of months in, once I had paused long enough to figure out Google’s Analytics program and dig into the numbers a bit, I was pretty […]
Top 10 Myths, Lies and Misinformation about Copyright
I used to run into this kind of call a lot, years ago when I had my own little publishing company. An author would be on the phone talking about his book and why I should publish it. “And you don’t have to worry about the copyright either,” he’d say with confidence. “I mailed myself […]
What Every Writer Ought to Know about Fair Use and Copyright
I’ve been researching what the best practices are these days for copyright, and I’ll be writing about them in articles soon. But one area of copyright is really difficult to understand for most publishers, and for bloggers too for that matter. And that is: What constitutes “fair use”? To answer this question I’m very fortunate […]
6 Copyright Page Disclaimers to Copy and Paste, and Giving Credit
Last time I gave examples of long and short copyright pages that you can use in your book. Today I have two types of information you might want to add to your copyright page: disclaimers and credits. Let’s look at disclaimers first. Examples of Disclaimers The copyright page is the place publishers put disclaimers. Here’s […]
Copyright Page Requirements for Books Printed Overseas
By Joanne Bolton TheBookDesigner.com welcomes our first guest author, Joanne Bolton. She brings to this subject many years of expertise in printing books overseas for American publishers. There are many things required on the copyright page of a book, and these are well documented, but what some self publishers don’t know is that they are […]
Self-Publishing Basics: The Copyright Page
In an earlier post on how to make a book, I explained the role of the copyright page: Copyright page—Usually the verso of the title page, this page carries the copyright notice, edition information, publication information, printing history, cataloging data, legal notices, and the books ISBN or identification number. In addition, rows of numbers are […]
Self-Publishing Basics: A 5-Minute Guide to Copyright
Well, we’re all busy and who has time to research copyright? This is the province of lawyers, big publishers with legal departments, and plagiarism trackers, isn’t it? No, every self-publisher needs to have a bit of information on copyright and the way the law works in the United States. Okay, I promised this would take […]
