Copyright - Steven R. Southard (Poseidon's Scribe)

Home » Tag Archive: Copyright

Know Your Rights

I blogged about copyrights awhile back, but this topic is a little different. Today’s discussion is about your rights to your story.

No, the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights is not where you go to find out about them. Your story rights are embodied in the laws of the country you live in, and by agreement with the country where your publisher is.

How do rights differ from copyrights? The copyright (©) to your written story is something you own and always retain. Think of the copyright as a bundle or collection of individual rights. If you want your story published or distributed by someone else (the usual case), then you’ll likely end up agreeing by contract to transfer part of that bundle of rights, usually in exchange for payment to you. But you always keep the copyright.

Rights are exclusive in nature, meaning you are granting one, and only one, publisher the right to print and distribute your work. No other publisher may do so legally. Also, since you are selling your rights to a single publisher, you are prohibited from selling those same rights to another publisher. This exclusivity is the normal case, but some contracts may specify nonexclusive rights.

There are three aspects to rights: media, term, and territory.

Media means the form of publication, for example hardcover, paperback, e-book, audiobook, podcast, serialized, etc. The contract should specify the payment type and amount for each of the different media types cited in the contract. You retain the rights to any types not cited.
Term refers to the time period for which you’re granting rights to the publisher, usually expressed in years after the date of the contract. After that time, the specified rights revert to you, and you may then sell them to someone else if you wish.
Territory is the geographic region in which the publisher may exercise these rights.

There are two categories of rights:

Primary Rights, or just Rights. When the publishing company buys your rights, they have certain media immediately in mind that they intend to exercise. Maybe they want to publish your work in hardcover now, and paperback later. These uses of your work are the subject of the primary rights.
Subsidiary (or Secondary) Rights. The publisher has no immediate intent to exercise subsidiary rights, but would like to buy them from you now to allow later use. These often include movie and TV rights, merchandizing rights, dramatic and performance rights.

You’ll encounter some other terminology with respect to story rights. These definitions assume you’ve sold the specified right to a publisher.

First Rights: The publisher can publish your story for the first time anywhere and in any format
Second (Reprint) Rights: The publisher can publish your story following a first publication elsewhere.
One-Time Rights: The publisher can publish your work once.
First Serial Rights: The publisher can publish your story for the first time, and may do so all at once or a piece at a time in a periodical publication.
Second Serial Rights: After initial publication, the publisher can publish excerpts of your story in several magazines or newspapers.

If you’re offered a publishing contract, read the Rights section with care. Look up unfamiliar legal verbiage or ask someone with contracting expertise. You can negotiate with publishers and get them to change the contract before you sign; contracts are mutual agreements between two parties.

Here, here, and here, are some very good websites with more information about story rights.

I know what you’re wondering at this point, and the answer is no. After this exploration of story rights, there will not be a companion blog post on the subject of story lefts, written by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 5, 2014Poseidon's ScribePermalink

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.

First 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:

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.)
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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, 2014Poseidon's ScribePermalink