Reference Week
I love sharing great references. This week, here are two worth checking out. 1. The Model Book Contract Fellow writer and lawyer, Jennifer Klepper, recently posted an excellent link on the Women’s Fiction Writers...
Legal Protection For Fictional Characters – What can writers protect and what can others use?
The Short Answer Copyright laws protect fictional characters provided the characters are sufficiently unique and distinctive. Legal protection for fictional characters is separate from the legal protection extended to the...
The Curious Copyright Infringement Case of Sherlock Holmes in Enola Holmes
The Netflix movie Enola Holmes is based on a series of young adult novels by Nancy Springer, The Enola Holmes Mysteries, published between 2006-2010 by Penguin Random House. The series centers on Sherlock’s teenage sister Enola,...
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...
Trademarks For Book Titles – Can You Get One?
We often are told not to judge a book by its cover. But we do. And that includes the title. Both title and cover are a reader’s first impression of our story. Both set the tone, suggest the genre, create subtext, and make...
Seven Steps To Your Own Self-Publishing Imprint
What do Broad Reach Publishing and Waterhouse Press have in common? Both are self-publishing imprints owned by authors Hugh Howey and Meredith Wild respectively. While these authors could have used their names as publishers of...