Ms. Leah Hultenschmidt is seeking projects for Sourcebooks Fire with a fresh premise, a lively pace and a solid marketing hook. YA should appeal to the older teen market with crossover adult potential.  The romance can be any subgenre: contemporary, paranormal, historical, romantic suspense, fantasy, time travel, or any combination thereof.

 

Contemporary

Upper YA/New Adult (17-22 yo protags) that will appeal to crossover audiences

Historical

Romantic Thrillers

Science Fiction

Paranormal and Urban Fantasy

Fantasy

 

 

  

This is an invitation-only group for members with an annual Tier 2 level paid membership. Members enjoy twelve or more monthly events designed to enhance their member experience, including but not limited to events focused on Craft, Finance, Editorial Process, Acquisitions, Publishing Business, Agent Pitch Session, Live Critique Sessions, Agent Relationships, Self-Publishing, eBook Marketing and more!

  

To date, events we have planned for our Tier 2 members are as follows:

IT'S MINE all MINE: Thoughts on Copyright by Iona McAvoy, MLS, MS, JD  © Sept 2011

 

 

Where did it come from?  Copyright and Patent law originated in the U.S. Constitution, Article I, §8 authorized Congress to enact laws in these two areas. These are exclusively federal rights, not state, and  any legal action is governed by federal law, with all actions such as litigation in federal court.

 

What are the basics and do I care?   After all, doesn't someone else take care of that pesky copyrighting for you? Or is it the other extreme, do YOU copyright every word that you as a writer or author pen? 

 

I would urge you to make sure you take responsibility for this yourself.  Protection is key these days,  particularly with it being so easy to abscond with material. (I am writing an article on this, including security in the Cloud, with the world moving away from pc's and servers).  But initially you need to know if you even have something to protect, i.e. is it even copyrightable?

 

 So yes, you want to make sure you mark your original works as copyrighted to you, with the date created.  (you want to identify yourself and also the date so that if anyone ever says they created it before you, there is proof you were first to create, something I'll talk about in a bit with infringement).

 

How is it copyrightable?  We need it to be "original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression...".  Sometimes it is easier to think of what is not copyrightable: facts, procedures, ideas, principles, processes, and systems.  So we must consider basically two parts of what can be copyrighted: originality and fixation.

           

Is it Original?  Only original works can be copyrighted, which means it has to be ours, and not someone else's. Then it has to be somehow fixated in a material form.  The courts have thankfully liberally interpreted the term "fixated" growing with the times, although it is interesting in some cases how they've viewed the permanency of fixated.

 

For writers originality may seem to be the easy part, but is it really?  We all read young adult don't we? In fact we are encouraged to read our genre, but wait, do we find themes, lines, phrases from someone else's work creeping into ours?  And, just because you are an author, not everything you write is copyrightable.  Section 102 of the copyright statute provides 8 types of works that are in a tangible medium.  For us, the first, Literary Works is the one that fits us the most often.  For those artistic you out there, that add art to your works. Or maybe there is an additional copyright, along with say perhaps a trademark that you might use as part of your marketing platform.

 

Fixed in Tangible Form? So let's say we've checked ourselves, and yes, we are original.  And yes, we are literary works right?  And we are tangible, in a digital format, can be printed out. But what about my web page, or my blog, or wait, how about that brilliant email I sent out to the group here?  I get a lot of questions about what you can copyright, maybe after someone's post has been repeated unfavorable.  What do you think, is your email post copyrighted?  Not really, and not usually, go back to the definitions and you can easily see why. Blogs, websites, different but again, depends on what you put and how it falls into the definitions, case law and interpretations.  It gets iffy, just what we IP lawyers love don't you know!

 

How do you copyright it? You've determined you have a copyrightable work.  Do you want to copyright it with the U.S. Copyright Office? Most of you have probably heard that you are instantly copyrighted once you create the work and of course, if it fits the criteria, etcetera.  Yes, that is true. You can put the information I spoke about initially and be protected.  And what are those protections? The benefits granted under the constitution are really those of exclusion, i.e. they give you the owner a right to exclude others from using your works for a limited period of time (exclusive rights to the owner for the life of the author plus 70 years (17 USC §302(a).)

 

Is it mine all mine? The right to this exclusivity exists whether you register the work or not with the U.S. Copyright office.  However the burden of proof that the material was created on a certain date, prior to any other creation by someone else, is an additional expense that is more costly than the fairly modest fee required to officially register your work.   That old adage about a stitch in time?   If you elect to not do a formal application be sure to have someplace the original date to include the month and day as well as the year.  This gives additional protection if ever challenged. I used to counsel clients to mail themselves the document and just leave it sealed in their file as proof with the date stamp.  This is still an inexpensive proof way, and while we have digital documentation, given the malleability of digital data, perhaps the mail stamp might prove less vulnerable yet.

 

But I blog and talk and sheesh!?  Do you need to do this for your blogs and web pages as well?  This depends on the nature of the content on those pages and how much you want them protected.  If you have an article or more critical, a story or portion of a story, on your web page, definitely copyright it.  You can use the © character for your entire blog or web page and its contents as well but a separate notation for anything you are particularly concerned with never hurts.

 

If you don't mind others quoting you, put that on the item, and allow use but only if they give acknowledgment and link to your web page.  That way you get the traffic and the publicity from their use, which they'd do anyway.  Leading to my next comment.

           

Infringement is common and has been for years, increasing as web use increases.  Respect for the ownership of a copyrighted work rests with creating that yourself, from your work to your web page or blog.  I've had clients who have had huge portions of their books lifted by others and some just in piecemeal.  With the advent of self-publishing one question is whether infringement will be on the rise, after all, who is policing? There is software available (professors use it to catch plagiarizing students) but in general it is difficult to catch.  Fortunately the Courts and Congress have encouraged ISPs to work with copyright owners to enforce their rights, and we are seeing much more cooperation in this area than in past years. 

 

Question for YOU to ponder!  One place authors will see this is in fan-fiction.  What would you do if this happened to you?  For example, if you write PG. type young adult, with no hard core language, drug use or sex and then suddenly find a part of your book in a storyline that has all of the above, would you want to purse the author as it takes your characters and your work in a direction that is not intended?  But what would you do if someone uses a few lines to then write a sweet story about a different branch of the family completely, with the same style and flavor?  Your adoring fans love the story because it is a tribute to YOU?  Yikes, this is never easy is it? 

 

Who has to enforce all of this?  Does your contract say anything about this? Even when the publisher is 'on' for enforcement I've been hired to handle it for the author because the publishing house was not interested in pursuing the matter.  They allowed the author to do so, but at his own expense. For small publishing houses and self-publishing authors, there is little option in who will go after an infringer.  Litigation is expensive, so should there be some other route encouraged by the industry?  There are options, seek out attorneys that might let you to do some leg work to avoid some costs.

 

Is there an End?  If you have a literary work that is original and in a tangible form you can copyright it, and have rights to it exclusively for your lifetime and 70 years.   Make sure you put a notice that it is copyrighted when and by whom.  You can use a pen name although real names are preferable. If you need to use a pen name, file an aka with your local courthouse so you have legal proof of the pen name.  Think about formally copyrighting the work through the U.S. Copyright office (http://www.copyright.gov/eco/)  It is so cool to see that © after your name, and  it is enough to give you protection against  someone stealing your work,  even if you don't do a formal registration. 

 

Happy writing. Make it YOURS all YOURS.