Copyright and Permissions for Author-Entrepreneurs

As an author, you are expected to obey copyright law and obtain permissions as needed for your book. What does that mean, exactly? Just as you hold the copyright to your work, others hold their copyright. The exception to this is when a work is in the public domain, meaning most likely that the author of the work has died and copyright has expired. The term of copyright is defined as the life of the author plus 70 years. What do you need to know to keep yourself on the right side of copyright law?

Before we dive into specifics, a quick disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, so this post does not constitute legal advice. I don’t pretend to know everything about copyright law. I do, however, know some basics that every book author should know.

Fair Use

Copyright law cases tend to boil down to fair use. In other words, is this person’s work being used fairly? Fair use does allow a limited use of copyrighted material, depending on how it’s being used. Here’s an easy way to look at the four factors of fair use:

• Purpose
  Why are you including someone else’s work within your own? As evidence to support your own text/theory? To disprove a point? 

• Nature
  What type of work are you quoting from? Something published? Unpublished?

• Amount and Substantiality
  Using 50 words from a 50,000-word book is far, far different from quoting 50 words from a 100-word poem.

• Effect of Use
  Are you making money (or will you be) from your work? Is the quoted material contributing to that? And if so, how?

What about Permissions?

If and when someone contacts you to quote from your book, it’s up to you whether to allow them to use your words (and, if so, how much to charge them for said use). The same is true if you want to use someone else’s work. Typically, if you’re using a quote from a book or article to strengthen your point, for example, the copyright owner wouldn’t take issue with you using the material. They may, however, want to be compensated. Permissions requests generally give the following information to the copyright holder so they can make a decision:

• Exact material to be used

• Publication information for your book (publisher, page or word count, price point)

• Description of use

Attribution as a Best Practice

Is permission required? Publishing companies have their own rules, but a general rule of thumb is that you can quote 50 words out of an article, blog post, or work of that length, and 250 words out of a book, without obtaining formal permission. That said, use without permission is a risk, so keep that in mind. Regardless of whether you seek and have permission, you should always provide attribution for any material, whether you’re quoting directly or not. 

If you wanted to use a sentence from this blog post, for example, you might write, “As Jodi Brandon wrote on her website (www.jodibrandoneditorial.com), ‘Is permission required?’” If your work is more formal, this would be an endnote rather than an in-text citation. (That’s a blog for another day.)