Bankrupt Publishers – What’s an author to do?
Crazy times. Crazy situations. Hopefully you and your family are COVID-19 free, and your sanity is still intact. One blessing from a forced hunker-in-the-bunker reality is that I’m writing a ton. On the flip-side, the COVID-19...
When Free Speech Meets Social Media
The intersection of free speech and social media has created a firestorm of controversy in 2019. Internet platforms, like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, what some have called the modern-day version of the public square, have...
CockyGate Update: One Writer’s Adjective, Another Writer’s Short-Lived Trademark
Last spring (2018), romance writers lit up social media over a trademark for the adjective cocky. As you can expect, the descriptive word can be found in countless numbers of romance novels, whether on the page, in the title, or...
Merchandising Rights – Do you have control?
People who love books also love book-related merchandise. Tie-in products, also known as swag, have long-term promotional benefits, whether you are giving product away or selling it. If the book is popular, so will the related...
Using Orphan Works – When A Copyright Owner Is Impossible To Identify Or Locate
Two weeks ago, a reader contacted me about copyright permissions after reading my Derivative Works article. The writer intended to use copyright-protected letters she thought would make a shocking exposé. After attempting to...