Intro to Publishing Contracts
This 34 page .pdf document by Sean P. Fodera and C. E. Petit provides an overview to publishing contracts. Publishing contracts are, as a rule, neither well organized nor well written. Related, but...
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Rights and Copyright
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Copyright, literally, is “the right to copy.” It guarantees the authors of creative works–including books, artworks, films, recordings, photographs–the...
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Podcast: Google Book Settlement at WFC
At World Fantasy there was a one-hour panel on the Google Book Settlement with Russell Davis, Karen Wester Newton, Charles Petit, Jay Lake, Christopher Kastensmidt, and Dan Gamber moderating. Though...
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Sample DMCA notice for reading-kicks-ass.net
The website http://reading.kicks-ass.net/ contains a significant amount of material that is recognizably copyrighted by our members. Often sites which post material without permission are outside...
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Sample DMCA generator for authors
As an author, when you run across an unauthorized copy of your work online you might wonder what your options are. Chances are, someone will tell you to send a DMCA notice. What is that? It’s part of...
View Article5 Resources on the Public Domain
Copyright, fair use, public domain, Creative Commons—issues of intellectual property are critical for writers to understand. Determining when a work has—or will pass—into the public domain, whether...
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Alert: Website with Copyrighted works (in Spanish)
SFWA members with Spanish language editions may want to check out this Web site: http://book0dd.blogspot.com/ Which is offering quite a large number of books for download. We’ve verified that the site...
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Guest Blog Post: Fitzhenry and Whiteside–Writer Beware
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Today's guest post by multi-published author Doranna Durgin is about a publisher behaving badly. More than that, however, it highlights something that every...
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The Benefits of Copyright Registration
by Ken Liu Writers are sometimes confused by the “registration” requirement under the US copyright laws. In this post, I hope to clear up the concept and help you decide whether copyright registration...
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The DMCA Takedown Notice Demystified
by Ken Liu Many writers have heard of the “DMCA takedown notice” but not everyone understands what it is. In this post, I’ll try to explain the basics and give you some ideas about how to use the tool...
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A Second Bite at the Apple: Termination Rights for Writers Introduction
by Ken Liu Early in their careers, writers sometimes sign away valuable rights under less than favorable terms. This article discusses the important right of termination under US copyright law, which...
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SFWA to Attend U.S. Copyright Office Roundtables on Orphan Works
On March 10-11, 2014, the U.S. Copyright Office will host another round of discussions in Washington, D.C., concerning legislative solutions for orphan works and mass digitization under U.S. copyright...
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Webcast: Copyright in the Digital Age: Creators in a landscape of Google...
Webcast! When: April 24th, 12:30 p.m.–2:00 p.m. EDT Where: AFL-CIO, 815 16th St NW, Washington, DC 20005 Webcast: Instructions at the end of this post. Hosts: The National Writers Union, DC Chapter and...
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SFWA Releases a New Model Magazine Contract
As part of its mission to serve professional genre writers, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America is pleased to announce that their Contracts Committee has released an updated Model...
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Contract Safeguards Under Siege
There is a recent tendency of some publishers to change their contracts in manners that are decidedly unfavorable to authors. We have had and are having particular issues with indemnity clauses....
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Ten Thoughts About the Business Side of Writing
by Russell Galen 1. As soon as you can put your hands on $3,000, go to Vanguard.com and put that money in the Vanguard 500 Index Fund. Until you’re 65, take 20% of every check you receive for your...
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Infringement Alert
From the SFWA Legal Affairs Committee: The Internet Archive (Archive.org) is carrying out a very large and growing program of scanning entire books and posting them on the public Internet. It is...
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Contracts Committee Alert –“All Derivative Rights” Clauses
April 7, 2018 SFWA’s Contracts Committee has recently been seeing a proliferation of contracts from small magazines, and a very few established markets, that license all derivative rights in...
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Contracts Committee Alert!
Contracts Committee Alert – Copyright Class Action suit payments May 2, 2018 A class action suit for violation of copyright, first filed in 2001, has finally brought checks to writers. The initial...
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Life Plus 70
by Ethan Ellenberg I’m sure you recognize the provenance of that title—current Copyright law grants authors a term of the author’s life plus seventy years. It’s an extraordinary grant by any measure,...
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