8 Useful Facts about Copyrighting Your Short Story

Sure, I know, you’re an author and you don’t want to have to bother with all that legal stuff like copyrighting.  You just want to write.  You don’t understand that funny little symbol (©), and you hate that your word processor comes up with it when you type (c).  You’ve landed at the right blog post.  I’ll make this easy.

CopyrightFirst the necessary disclaimer.  I’m no lawyer, let alone a copyright attorney.  For the best legal advice, hire or befriend one of them.

Definition time.  What’s a copyright?  It’s a granting to you by the government of exclusive legal rights to the distribution and use of the story you wrote, for a set period of time.  The rationale for copyrights is to forge a compromise between two desirable goals: (1) writers should get paid for their creative effort, and (2) eventually, all creative works should be shared without restriction for the betterment of humanity.

This blog post covers copyrights of short stories in the United States only.  For other intellectual property and for the laws in other countries, you’ll have to search elsewhere.

Here’s the stuff you need to know:

  1. If you wrote the story yourself and didn’t copy someone else’s, and if you have finished it in some fixed form, it’s already copyrighted.  Automatically.  (The only known case where lawyers and the government made things easy for you.)
  2. Your copyright gives you the following rights and denies them to others.  You can copy it, distribute it, perform it, display it, and create derivative works like sequels or adaptations in other forms.
  3. Your copyright is effective immediately and will expire seventy (70) years after your death, at the end of that calendar year.  That’s according to current law, but they change it every now and then.
  4. Since you wrote your story after 1989, you don’t need to add the copyright symbol, though you may do so if it makes you feel better.  The format is: Symbol (©), year, your name.  (Example:  © 2014 Steven R. Southard)
  5. You also don’t need to register your copyright.  If you decide to do so, (with the U.S. Electronic Copyright Office), then things are a bit easier for you if someone steals your story.  You won’t have to prove it’s yours, and I understand you can sue for greater amounts.  But there are fees for registration.
  6. If you’ve heard about mailing your story to yourself and using the postmark as an official way to establish the date of your story, forget it.  That so-called “poor man’s copyright” doesn’t give you any more protection than you had before mailing, and it isn’t a substitute for registering a copyright.
  7. When you sign a contract with a publisher, you’re selling some of your story rights to that publishing company in exchange for payment.  If you’re just starting out, these contracts are pretty standard.  Once you become more experienced, you can negotiate which rights you want to retain.
  8. If you post your story on the internet, you may be giving up some or all of your copyright protections.  (If that’s your intent, good!)  The site on which you post the story will have user agreements that specify the rights you’re granting them by posting there.

That’s it.  If you’re feeling more like a lawyer than a writer now, I suggest you burn any briefcases or suits you might have, and take a warm shower with vigorous application of soap and water to get the lawyerly residue off.  That’s what’s next in store for—

                                                      Poseidon’s Scribe

March 30, 2014Permalink

Interview with the Adjective Expert

Recently I had the honor of interviewing Amber Wise Savage, President of the English Language Adjective Council (ELAC).* Following is the entire text of that interview:

Poseidon’s Scribe: First of all, Amber, welcome to the world of Poseidon’s Scribe and thank you for consenting to this exclusive interview.

Adjective Expert

Amber Wise Savage: You’re most welcome, and many thanks for the superb opportunity.

PS: Let’s start with the basics. Please tell us about adjectives.

AWS: I’d be happy to. Adjectives are describing words. They modify or qualify nouns and noun phrases. They make up about a solid quarter of all English words. That’s only half the number of those over-plentiful nouns, so we have some catching up to do.

PS: Catching up? Do you think the language needs more adjectives?

AWS: Of course. The current number is meager, scanty, and insufficient.

PS: But don’t you think fiction writers should be sparing in their use of adjectives? Not every noun needs an adjective, after all.

AWS: I disagree. I’ve never seen a noun that couldn’t benefit from two or three choice adjectives.

PS: That used to be true, certainly, when authors used long and flowery descriptions, but don’t today’s readers prefer prose with unadorned nouns and powerful verbs? Don’t adjectives slow down the pace?

AWS: What a dreadful thought, and quite false. Fiction would be bland, barren, and dull without adjectives.

PS: But you’d agree that most adjectives tend to tell, not show, and writers are always being told to show, not tell.

AWS: Again, indisputably false. Writers whose fiction tells too much should not blame innocent adjectives. In like manner, in fiction that shows, you’ll always find well-placed adjectives there, shouldering their share of the burden.

PS: I can see why you’re President of the ELAC. You must acknowledge, though, that some adjectives are used in a redundant way, pleonasms such as closed fist, exact same, and new invention. Also, there are some worthless adjectives that do nothing to modify a noun, weak and ineffectual words like comely, foolish, lovely, pleasant, pretty, stupid, and wonderful.

AWS: For every poor use of adjectives you could cite, I could give you a myriad examples of excellent adjectives that give crisp, focused meaning to their nouns.

PS: I’m sure that’s true. On that note of agreement, I’d like to thank you, Amber Wise Savage, for joining me today. You’re an effective advocate for adjectives everywhere.

AWS: You’re welcome. It’s been…interesting.

Well, that was something. You readers of my blog will have to form your own opinion. Other good blog posts about the use of adjectives in fiction are here, here, here, and here.   Amber and I disagree about the extent to which fiction writers should use adjectives. But you’ll have to decide who you’re going to believe, a paid proponent of adjectives, or—

Poseidon’s Scribe

* Not a real person. Not a real council. No interview took place. Some of the facts are true, however.

March 23, 2014Permalink

Cliché Okay, or So Passé?

Every writer tells you to purge clichés from your prose (and I will too), but then those same writers go ahead and use clichés in their own books.  Sadly, I have too.  That’s not due to intentional hypocrisy; it’s just that the nasty critters are so darn hard to eradicate.

ClicheWhat’s a cliché?  It’s an overused expression or phrase.  Before becoming a cliché, the short collection of words started out being clever.  The original author discovered a compact, understandable, shorthand way of stating an idea.  The trouble began when others liked the phrase and repeated it.  Over and over.  Eventually readers got sick of it.  The expression lost its freshness and became annoying.

Apologies up front—I have used some clichés in this very blog post.  Again, it’s just because the infernal vermin can be difficult to spot and exterminate.

You can understand why it’s unwise to use too many clichés in your writing.  They mark the work of an unimaginative and lazy amateur.  Such writers just go for the easy, readily-available, (and perfectly apt) phrase instead of thinking deeper about fresh, new ways to express the same thought.  The prose comes across as tired, hackneyed, trite, and stale.

Your first draft may contain clichés by the bushel-full.  That’s because you were writing at full speed to get the basic thoughts down, knowing you would come back later.  At that fast pace, you’re more likely to grab the convenient phrase that comes to mind, the combination of words you’ve heard a hundred times—the cliché.  Make a point of hunting for them as you edit and proofread your later drafts.

The best place for spotting clichés is in descriptive passages, where you tried making a comparison between some object or situation in your story to a more real-world example familiar to the reader.  Many, many clichés are of that type, handy for relating one ‘thing’ to another in a few, image-enhancing words.

How do you know if you’ve written a cliché?  There are lists of clichés online, but by definition clichés are always being created and a few get forgotten through lack of use, so the real list is dynamic.

If you find one in your prose, what do you do?  Probably the easiest thing is to delete it and substitute some non-cliché that conveys the same meaning.  A more creative alternative is to give the cliché a clever twist, especially one that delivers your message even more exactly than the cliché would have.  Consider the twist imparted to the cliché ‘passing the buck’ by President Truman when he posted a sign on his desk reading, ‘The buck stops here.’  Of course, that saying became famous enough and repeated enough to become a cliché itself.

When is it okay to use a cliché?  I’d say it’s more acceptable in dialogue, since that’s the way people speak.  You can also use them in book or chapter titles, but make sure they fit and are appropriate to the book or chapter text.

At the end of the day (cliché), when all is said and done (cliché), you’ve got the gist (cliché) of clichés and been put in the know (cliché) by—

                                                Poseidon’s Scribe

 

March 16, 2014Permalink

FAQs About My Latest Book

RallyingCry72dpiEver since I’ve been dropping hint after hint about my upcoming book (Rallying Cry and Last Vessel of Atlantis), questions have been pouring in.  Flooding in.  Give me a break, I’m drowning here!  More questions came in than I could answer individually.

So I paid for some time on a supercomputer that compiled all the questions, sorted them, combined similar ones, performed complex statistical analyses, and spit out a list of the most frequently asked questions.

Below are those FAQs, complete with answers.

1.  What is the book about?  In “Rallying Cry,” an aimless youth meets two old geezers who spin bizarre war stories. They tell of a secret World War I regiment in France with ship-sized helicopters and mechanized walking tanks. Just as an inspiring shout can move soldiers to action, perhaps all Kane really needs to turn his life around is a rallying cry. In “Last Vessel of Atlantis,” a ship captain and his crew of explorers return to find Atlantis gone. While facing violent savages, braving fierce storms, and solving internal disputes, they must somehow ensure their advanced Atlantean civilization is not lost forever.

2.  Why two stories in one book?  I was in a generous mood.

3.  Why are these two particular stories combined?  They seem so different.  Actually, they’re both perfect fits for the What Man Hath Wrought series, which contains stories of alternate history involving people grappling with new technology.  The tales are quite different, though, but that means any reader would be bound to like one of them, at least.  That makes the book a pretty good purchase, I’d say. 

4.  What inspired you to write these stories?  I’ve written about that before…here and here.

5.  That’s a great cover.  Who designed it?  It is a wonderful cover.  Charlotte Holley of Gypsy Shadow Publishing designed it.  The bearded soldier gazes at something while a huge steampunk airship glides overhead and a big explosion goes off in the background. 

6.  Where can I buy the book?  Right now you can get it at Smashwords and Amazon.  Soon it will be available elsewhere, too. 

7.  You wrote an Atlantis story before, didn’t you?  What a memory you have!  My Atlantis-based story, “The Vessel” was published several years ago in an Atlantis anthology.  “Last Vessel of Atlantis” is that same story, with a title change and a few other alterations.  Definitely worth enjoying again.

8.  When will you have a print version rather than an e-book?   When the What Man Hath Wrought series is complete, I’m thinking about having a print version of the series.  It won’t be for a little while yet, since I have more stories I’d like to add to  WMHW. 

9.  What’s the next story in your What Hath Man Wrought series?  But that would spoil the surprise! 

Thanks for submitting your questions.  I’d invite more, but the deluge nearly crashed the supercomputer last time and almost tripped a wide sector of our national electrical power grid.  Let’s avoid tempting that fate, shall we?  I suggest you read the book, post a review, and before long there will be another book by—

                                                    Poseidon’s Scribe

March 8, 2014Permalink

Technical Difficulties

I know I said my latest book, the two-story compendium of “Rallying Cry” and “Last Vessel of Atlantis,” would be released today, March 1st.  I’ve just been informed that due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, the book launch will be delayed a few days, perhaps as much as a week.

Please Stand ByMy many fans around the world, and on other planets, and those in alternate universes (I know you’re out there and that you read my stuff) must be disappointed.  I assure you, no one is more distressed about this than I am.

Why the delay?  The fact is, publishing an e-book is a complicated business, so I’ve been told.  There’s the virtual ink to pour in, the imaginary rollers to align, the invisible type to set.  There are gears that turn, levers that snap, boots that kick buckets over, marbles that roll down inclines into chutes, balls that fall into bathtubs, cages that catch mice.  It’s very involved.

With all that bewildering complexity, it’s amazing that e-books get published at all, let alone on any kind of schedule.

Meanwhile, you were surfing to the various bookseller websites all day since midnight, searching for my book, ready to put it in your shopping cart and to hit ‘place order.’  And now you have to wait.  I know what a frustration this must be.

But think how much worse things are for me.  I’ve had to postpone the lavish book launch party, reschedule the reservations on the yacht, tell all the celebrity guests to come back in six days, delay the skywriter service and the fireworks team.

Still, I feel pretty bad about the whole thing.  As a service to you, I’ll make some suggestions for fun things to do while you wait, things to take your mind off the anticipation.

1.  You could buy and read any of my earlier books.

2.  Read them all already?  You could read one or more again.  They are all good for re-reading since you can pick up subtle and enjoyable nuances you missed on first reading them.

3.  You could peruse my earlier blog entries.  You’ll find some real gems there.

It’s sad this has happened, but we’ll get through this challenge together, you and me.  Think of it as just another of life’s little trials.  Are you going to mope around, wallowing in misery?  Or are you going to pick yourself up, shake off those blues, rise above your gloom and despair, and manage to make it through the day?  Be brave, be resolute, and be patient.

I’ll tell you just as soon as the book is available, believe me.  Soon enough your persistence and suffering will be rewarded and you’ll be the happy owner of the latest book by—

                                                                       Poseidon’s Scribe

March 1, 2014Permalink

But I Didn’t Order Spam

When I started this blog three years ago, I imagined people would view it, and comments would start pouring in.  I’m pleased to report the comments are pouring in, at a total of more than 37,000 so far.  The bad news is, all but 73 are spam.  Of the 73, only 42 are comments from other people, the remainder being my responses.

SpamWhat is this spam that constitutes 99.8% of the comments I receive?  It’s a comment not intended to respond to my blog post at all, but rather to create a link back to the spammer’s website that increases the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ranking of that website.

At first I puzzled over these.  I’d get comments from someone named Daewrnad Ylkernkc, or Prostate Cancer, or Ugg Boots—vague comments like “Great blog post. I enjoyed it.” or “I was surfing the web, found your site, and the information here is great.  Keep it up!”  Often the comments contained spelling and grammatical errors.  Some went on and on about topics unrelated to my post. Some comments were in foreign languages, and some consisted of nothing but question marks.

I considered replying “Thanks, Ms. Ylkernkc, (or Mr. Cancer, etc.), I’m glad you enjoyed my blog post.  Visit any time.”  But a friend explained the concept of spam to me.

Now I use a WordPress plugin called Akismet to screen all the comments I receive and it sorts out which ones it thinks are spam and which are legitimate.  That Akismet software is pretty good, I must say.

Still, I do review every comment I get, whether Akismet considers it spam or not.  Often the spam is entertaining.  Sometimes I see a comment that comes quite close to a legitimate response to my specific blog post, but then I see that it’s from Ugg Boots and that there are seven more comments just like it from people with equally unlikely names.

I should state at this point that I do not mean to disparage the food product known as Spam® in any way.  My blog post refers solely to a different meaning of that word.  I’m sure Hormel Foods has considered renaming it, considering the negative connotations.

Akismet is not the only defense against spam. One day I might have to shift to Captcha, which makes would-be commenters have to pass a test to see if they’re human before they’re allowed to comment.

If you blog, are you inundated with spam, too?  How do you deal with it?  Leave a comment and let me know.  If you’re a spammer, feel free to leave a comment, but I’ll warn you right now that it won’t get approved by—

                                               Poseidon’s Scribe

February 23, 2014Permalink

What Everyone’s Waiting For

Everybody’s talking about it.  It’s all over the internet, crashing servers with the added traffic.  Social media sites are abuzz about it.  You can feel the pervasive air of excitement and anticipation.

RallyingCry72dpiCalm down, world.  It’s just my next book.  You’re going to have to wait until the release date of March 1 to buy it.

Actually, it’s two stories in one e-book release, a two-fer.  “Rallying Cry” and “Last Vessel of Atlantis” are paired together.  What are these stories about?  Thought you’d never ask.

In “Rallying Cry,” an aimless youth named Kane Jones meets two old geezers who spin bizarre war stories.  They tell about having served in a secret World War I outfit in France—the Jules Verne Regiment—with ship-sized helicopters and mechanized walking tanks.   Just as an inspiring shout can move soldiers to action, perhaps all Kane really needs to turn his life around is a rallying cry.

Ever since reading John Biggins’ novel A Sailor of Austria, I’d longed to write a story set in a nursing home with an older character (two, in my story) imparting the memories of a bygone time to a younger character.  I finally did.  “Rallying Cry” takes off in different directions than Biggins’ book, of course, and I recommend you read both.

In “Last Vessel of Atlantis, a ship captain and his crew of explorers return to find Atlantis gone.  While facing violent savages, braving fierce storms, and solving internal disputes, they must somehow ensure their advanced Atlantean civilization is not lost forever.  Fans with long memories will realize this is a slightly revised version of another story of mine published as “The Vessel.”  The new title is better, don’t you think?

I explained the origin of this story in a previous blog post.  It was fun for me to imagine the difficulties faced by a small crew of sailors who find themselves the sole survivors of their advanced civilization, with all other continents populated by primitive savages.

If you can just hang on a couple of weeks until March 1, the book will be available here.  Deep breaths might help you cope with the anxiety until then, along with taking time to think about other, less exciting, things.  Your patience will be rewarded, and that’s a promise from—

                                                      Poseidon’s Scribe

February 16, 2014Permalink

It’s All You, Dave

Remember ‘Dave’ from the Staples™ TV commercial from a Dave - Staplesfew years ago?  The guy walked into an office where everyone looked suspiciously like him, and they all greeted each other by saying, “Dave.”  The commercial closed with the voiceover saying, “In a small business, it’s all you.”

If you’re a writer these days, you’re much like Dave.  After all, in your corporation of one, you fill the following positions:

  • President.  Congratulations! You made it to the top, the big cheese, the high muckety-muck.  The company bears your name.  You’re praised when it succeeds, and blamed when…well, let’s not focus on that.
  • Vice President of Purchasing.  In days gone by, this job entailed keeping your business furnished with a functional typewriter, paper, pens, a nice desk, and a comfortable chair.  Now the job responsibilities have shrunk to ensuring a functional computer and a solid Internet connection.
  • V.P. of Research & Development.  This is one of the best jobs in the company, the department doing all the research for your stories.  If you write historical fiction, this is particularly important.  It’s so much fun, however, that this job will take over your company if left unchecked.
  • V.P. of Contracting.  You may not be a lawyer, but you’re going to have to know some basics about contracts.  Just reading the darn things can be tedious—nothing at all like reading fiction.  Once you sign, you’re bound by that agreement.
  • V.P. of Production.  Finally, a fun job.  This is the one you signed up for.  You manage the mental machinery that takes ideas from the R&D department, plus some coffee, and produces polished prose.
  • V.P. of Marketing and Sales.  Your company won’t promote itself, that’s for sure.  If you contract with a big publishing firm, they’ll take care of this, but with smaller publishers or with self-publishing, you’ve got to get your name out there by yourself.  You’ve got to work the social media, speak at conferences, arrange book signings, etc.
  • Chief Financial Officer (CFO).  Unless you’ve got someone else handling the books, the ledgers, the taxes for you, it’s up to you.  Skill in accounting doesn’t always go hand in hand with skill in writing, so your on-the-job training better not take too long.
  • V. P. of Customer Service.  When your customers (readers) complain about the product, to whom do they turn?  You.  Although there’s no need to respond to negative reviews, you should respond to comments on your blog posts, and e-mails from readers.

All those fancy job titles lose some luster when they’re combined in one person, and that’s you.  However, look at the bright side:  decisions get made quickly in your company of one.  All those departments see eye-to-eye; they’re on the same page, so to speak.  No in-fighting, no hidden agendas, no stabbing in the back.

Unlike the conclusion of the commercial, there is no Easy button to push.  Purchasing is the only department Staples™ can help.

However, there are Help buttons, many sources of information to help writers figure out all these specialized jobs.  In fact my blog is dedicated to providing that information.

So, ‘Dave,’ get back to work.  It’s all you.  And I’ll return to my work, too.  At my company, it’s all—

                                                          Poseidon’s Scribe

February 9, 2014Permalink

Your Baby’s Ugly

How should you, as an author, deal with negative reviews?  You’re going to get them, so you might as well prepare now.

Bad ReviewsNobody calls actual babies ugly, not to the Mom’s face anyway, but people will describe your novel or short story with some pretty ugly words.  Those words sure can sting, too.  After all, just as with real babies, writing is an act of creating something new from almost nothing, something that takes considerable effort and time, and you’re putting your creation out there for the world to see, unsure of what people will think.

Well, you soon find out that some people think your ‘baby’ is ugly. What to do?  Options include:

1.  Giving up this writing thing, and slink away to a hole where no one can see you or hurt you ever again.

2.  Lashing out at the reviewer, and maybe starting an online flame war to prove to the world your novel was prose perfection while the reviewer was an ignorant, unsophisticated numbskull.

3.  Ignoring the reviewer so you can keep on writing as you have been, since the reviewer obviously didn’t ‘get it’ and you can’t waste your time on idiots.

I’m not going to recommend you do any of those things, however much you will want to.  My advice is to move as quickly as you can through the first four of Kübler-Ross’ Five Stages of Grief—denial, anger, bargaining, and depression.  Get to the last stage, acceptance, as soon as possible.

No matter how poorly written the review, no matter how uninformed the reviewer seems, it’s just possible there’s a kernel of truth in the review.  No matter how you try to deny it, that reviewer has a point.

But it’s a point you can use to improve future stories. Whatever flaw the reviewer noted, you should strive to avoid repeating that problem again.  In the long run, you might even find that reviewer did you a favor.

Authors Joanna Penn and Rainy Kaye have posted some excellent advice on contending with unfavorable reviews.

The writer’s version of having your baby called ugly isn’t nearly as bad as having an ugly real baby.  Then again, sometimes ugly babies grow into good looking adults, whereas stories always stay the same.  Unless you revise your story.  Who picked this stupid ‘baby’ analogy anyway? Oh, yeah, it was—

                                                        Poseidon’s Scribe

February 2, 2014Permalink

What Should Your E-Book Cost?

Most authors (including me) are not experts in economics.  Many of them might have a vague idea that if their book was priced high, they’d make more money.  But this ignores the relationship between price and quantity sold.  The author should be seeking to maximize income over all, not income per book sold.

Caveat:  I’m no economist, so this is my best guess at the economics of e-book pricing. The thousands of economists who read my blog should comment and correct any errors I make.

Supply-and-demandThe relationship between price and quantity, from the consumer’s (or reader’s) view, is what economists call the demand curve.  Price something high and few people will buy it, and vice versa.  In classic economic theory, the demand curve gets paired with a supply curve and the intersection of the curves yields the equilibrium price.  The theory behind the supply curve is that high prices compel suppliers to produce more, and vice versa.

How does this apply to your electronic book?  The demand curve indicates you’ll sell more books at a lower price and fewer at a higher price.

But you can throw the supply curve out the window when it comes to e-books.  Why?  The supply curve is based on some assumptions, which are true for most products:

1.  If you’ve produced x  items so far, there is some measureable effort expended and resources used to produce the x + 1 item.

2.  Since resources are needed to produce the x + 1 item, it is possible to have shortages or surpluses of the item.

3.  The market is competitive.

None of those assumptions is true for e-books.  After the first book is produced, there is zero effort and zero resources expended for all the books that follow.  Therefore there can be no shortages or surpluses.  Also, the market is not competitive; there is only one source for your book.  Whoever publishes it has exclusive rights, though they may license competitive distributors to get the book to readers.

So it’s impossible to draw a supply curve for an e-book.  Quantity is irrelevant, so no supply curve, and no equilibrium price.

If you’re an author wondering whether your e-book is priced right, the lack of a supply curve and equilibrium price doesn’t leave you any more lost than you would be otherwise, though.  That’s because those curves represent a reasonable theory of how most markets work.  In practice, things get difficult.

Here’s a thought experiment:  Say you want to plot the demand curve for your just-published e-book using real data.  You set the price at $10,000 and nobody buys it.  You gradually lower the price each week and plot the sales data.  Eventually your book is priced at $0.01, demand is very high, and you’ve got your complete curve drawn.

The problems are: (1) many decades have elapsed, and (2) you haven’t ended up with the real demand curve after all, but pieces of many curves.  That’s because the curve changes with time too.  Economists say demand curves shift right or left depending on consumer tastes and preferences, the prices of related goods, and other factors which change with time.  What you really wanted at the launch of your e-book was the complete curve at that time, but there’s no practical way to determine it.

Sadly, e-book pricing involves guesswork.  If you’re self-publishing, you can set the price near that of similar books, and alter that price as circumstances warrant.  If you engaged a publisher, you have to trust their guesswork.

They call economics the dismal science, and we’ve arrived at a dismal conclusion.  Don’t blame me.  I’m no economist; I’m—

                                                                  Poseidon’s Scribe

January 26, 2014Permalink