Forum: Electronic Rights: Publishers Friend or Foe

I know you have answered this in your regular blog post, but I need to make sure this is cemented well in my mind (my bi-polar makes this hard to understand), so I am going to make up a few examples as to how I would use them in a story. QUESTION = Is it alright to briefly mention brand names? Examples: “I suppose you still dunk your Oreos in milk before you eat them.” “Ding! You’re right. Give the man a Budweiser.” “He’s a regular Betty Crocker in the kitchen.” “Kelley has a Lego...

This is actually an expanded version of an article that I did for the Writer’s Court entitled ‘Leggo My Writing’ Plagiarism & Piracy Online, which I posted on May 24, 2010, if you want to look at the original article. Okay since we’re talking specifically about piracy let’s look at the following scenario. Say that I’m wandering around the internet one day and find that XYZ website has put up an article entitled ‘Leggo my Writing’ and it is my article from the Writer’s Court that I...

Apologies if this is a little outside the topic. Let me preface this by saying that we're not talking about fan fic. This question concerns original settings and characters, jointly created by two or more people. There are quite a lot of cases out there of author's writing in each other's settings, ranging from shared world anthologies like Robert Asprin's Thieve's World to simple cases someone granting another author permission to play in their sandbox, as we've seen recently in the...

This was a question posted last night by Jody: Kris, can I ask you about the creative commons license? It looks like a new form of copyright for "content", with the most restrictive form being really close to what I understand an old style copyright is. I sort of know what I write is copyrighted (to an extent?) the minute I write it, but...it seems like every serious blogger (not just blogging, but "blogging") has a cc on their site. I have one, but I wish someone would explain exactly...

Is there a difference between trademarks and copyrights? Thanking you in advance

Electronic Rights: Publishers Friend or Foe? There has been much discussion over the advent of electronic rights in a ‘paper’ world for over a decade in the publishing industry. This article will cover three issues involving electronic rights: (1) What do electronic rights mean from a publisher-author contract perspective; (2) What is an e-book anyway; and (3) If I have an e-book what are my rights, if any, to that ‘book’, from a reader’s perspective. WHAT ARE...

Hello, After a contract term is over, and if you decide not to renew with the same publisher, can I sell my published e-book to another publisher? Do I have to submit the original manuscript (basically start over) or can I take the finished book and shop it around? Thank You.

I'm sorry about posting this in the wrong place. I've moved this to it's own thread b/c I think it will be an increasing problem in this digial age. I belong to several groups that are author based and fighting piracy, surprisingly, the publishers aren't that great a help. They leave it up to the authors. I loved your article, I just wish pirates and their customers understood the reality that if you still have the book, one copy, in your possession, and sell thousands, it's thief. ...

Hey Kris I HOPE this question is NOT too complicatedly worded by me. I also hope this may fall in your area of expertise. I've come across reading about this problem a time or two, and I've always wanted to know more, but didn't know who to ask without looking like a complete idiot. And forgive me for traveling around the question before zooming in on it - I wanted to make sure you had all the info needed to answer... I have several original fiction stories, under the name of Sage...

Hello and welcome to DigiCon and "Electronic Rights: Publishers Friend or Foe" Q&A. My name is Melinda, and I will be your moderator. I'm here to help on the technical and logistical end. So if you have password problems or other issues related to the forum please let us know by sending me an email at mpierce.sa@gmail.com A couple of housekeeping items: 1. Unless otherwise directed, please DO NOT post questions or responses to the Lesson threads. Start a new thread for questions and any...