Who is entitled to copyright — and the money that comes with it?

At the heart of copyright law is the issue of who is entitled to the proceeds of that copyright, that is, its royalties; if copyright is shared then so too are the royalties. Anyone credited on the book’s title page is understood to own a share of a book’s copyright and is therefore entitled to a share of the book’s royalties and its library lending fees. Anyone credited on the title page is also included in the book’s cataloguing information. Anyone credited only on the copyright page is understood not Read More …

Third edition of The Global Indie Author now available in Canada

Well, after much trial and tribulation, the third edition of The Global Indie Author is out now in Canada. Readers can find it on Chapters/Indigo and Amazon.ca. By the way, that “Usually delivers in 3-5 weeks” declaration on the Amazon.ca website is nonsense; the book delivers in less than a week. The extended delivery time is just part of Amazon/CreateSpace’s strategy against competitor Lightning Source, which, incidentally, is covered in detail in the book. If you want to avoid supporting Amazon, buy from the Chapters/Indigo website, where the book is Read More …

Third Edition of The Global Indie Author is now available in U.S. and Europe

The third edition of The Global Indie Author is out now in print on Amazon U.S., UK, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. All other territories coming soon! eBooks are also on the way. As mentioned in my previous post, the third edition features a new cover, new subtitle — to reflect the truly global phenomenon that self-publishing has become — and a great deal of new content (over 80 pages). The technical chapters have been completely overhauled to deal with the complexities of image handling, the increasing frustrations of font Read More …

B&N’s new Nook Press: who owns your ebook?

Barnes and Noble’s new Nook Press platform is making headlines among bloggers, but what I haven’t seen addressed yet is what happens to your original content if you decide to leave Nook Press. The Terms and Conditions state that: You hereby grant to Barnes & Noble, its distributors, licensees and partners a non-exclusive, worldwide, irrevocable right and license to make your eBooks available for sale, marketing, display, distribution and promotion in any commercially available electronic or digitized format or on any electronic device platform whether now existing or hereafter created Read More …

Writers under attack again

[UPDATE: the video originally posted and referenced here has been removed from YouTube.] The above video was posted on YouTube in the hope of stopping an educational exemption in the proposed new copyright bill. Whether or not the exemption is fair-dealing or the video fear-mongering (as some have suggested) isn’t, to me, the real issue; to me, this proposed exemption is just one more example of the myriad ways in which people seem to think that writers should work for free. Consider Ariana Huffington’s insistence that her contributors are happy Read More …