May
24
Books Can’t Be Free
Filed Under Books, E-books, Free Speech, Publishing, Writing | Leave a Comment
Amazon.com has plans to split their bestseller list into two, one for free titles and one for paid books. This will likely please authors and publishers and add a tenth of a basis point or so to Amazon’s bottom line.
It also points out that “free” isn’t the price point for delivery of content. Authors, publishers, and retailers need to make money if readers are going to have a robust selection of informational and entertainment material available to us at any price.
Just a write thought.
Dec
25
Eleven-Year Prison Sentence is Christmas Present for Writer
Filed Under Free Speech, Publishing, Writing | Leave a Comment
In a three-hour trial two days ago, Chinese professor, literary critic, writer, and political activist Liu Xiaobo was convicted of “inciting subversion of state power” by a Beijing court. Today, Christmas Day, the court sentenced him to 11 years in prison.
Liu had coauthored a declaration which called for an end to one party rule and for increased human rights. The declaration was signed by hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens.
Liu was a professor at Beijing Normal University and had served as a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York City. He was president of the Independent Chinese PEN Center for four years. According to the PEN website Liu was not permitted to present evidence at his trial.
While the United States is far from becoming the authoritarian state that China is, as the American public accepts the government’s increasing role in each of our daily lives, it behooves all of us—especially authors and publishers—to be watchful for limitations, no matter how subtle, imposed on our right to say or write anything we please.
Just a Write Thought.
Oct
5
Fair Use Abuse?
Filed Under Fiction, Free Speech, Nonfiction, Writing | Leave a Comment
Here’s a twist. A copyright holder ends up as the one paying in a Fair Use dispute.
With the Fair Use doctrine—a part of the U.S. copyright law—an author is allowed to quote another’s copyrighted material for criticism, commenting, teaching, and other narrow uses. The actual limit on how much can be quoted isn’t defined by the law.
Disagreements are usually settled out of court, but, when a dispute goes to trial, the court generally looks at four things: the purpose of the use, the nature of the copyrighted material, the portion of the work used, and the effect of the use upon the market for the copyrighted material.
In this case, the Estate of James Joyce objected to Stanford University professor Carol Schloss’ use of copyrighted material in a book she was writing. Schloss claimed the material she wished to use fell under the doctrine of Fair Use but took the material out of her book when, she claimed, she was threatened with a copyright infringement lawsuit.
Subsequently she wished to use some of the material in a website and she enlisted the Stanford Fair Use Project to go on the offensive to establish her right to use the Joyce material.
In the end the Estate agreed to pay her $240,000 to settle the case.
This is a reversal of what normally happens when copyright holders attempt to protect their copyrights, and is being hailed by some as better establishing the rights of authors to use copyrighted material in critical works without fear of being sued. In many cases simply the threat of a lawsuit is enough to stop an author from using copyrighted material in any manner, including what may actually constitute fair use.
How does this apply to us?
All of this is interesting, but may lack practical application to the average writer. If you wish to use a large portion of another’s copyrighted material it is still best to ask permission.
To read more on this check out the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society blog or this Publishers Weekly article.
For a good, simple explanation of United States copyright laws see the chapter on copyright by John Zelezny in The Portable Writer’s Conference. (Full disclosure: QDB is the publisher and I’m the editor of the Portable Writer’s Conference.)
Sep
3
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. —Often misattributed to Thomas Jefferson (See here)
This editorial isn’t perfectly unbiased, but if you are interested in free speech—and as a writer or publisher you’d better be—you likely should read this: “Diversity Czar Threatens Free Speech.”
Aug
4
Abusing the First Amendment? Senator Boxer’s Blind Trust
Filed Under Books, Fiction, Free Speech, Writing | Leave a Comment
I don’t like it when someone denigrates a book they haven’t read, or a movie they haven’t seen, but at the peril of doing so, I’m moved to say a few things about a book I haven’t read, Senator Barbara Boxer’s second attempt at writing a novel, Blind Trust.
Off the bat, I wonder if Boxer weren’t a Senator from California, would California-based Chronicle Books, not especially known for their fiction, have agreed to publish it? (Zen-like, one can also ask, What better novel—likely written by an unknown—failed to see the light of day because this one took up its bookstore shelf space?)
Another question that occurs to me is, Do senators have the time to write novels? Writing a novel takes a huge commitment of time and energy. (Full disclosure: Boxer had a coauthor, novelist Mary-Rose Hayes, who may have done most of the heavy lifting.) And, while I’m sure even Senators should be allowed their hobbies, how much time should a member of the world’s most exclusive and powerful club—as the Senate has been called—devote to fiction while our country struggles with the deepest recession since World War II and is galloping, willy-nilly, toward the biggest spending programs ever conceived?
But, maybe Boxer didn’t write the book as an avocational pursuit. According to Kimberly A. Strassel who reviewed the novel in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, the ultraliberal Boxer’s book is more an “attempt to score real-life political points in fictional form” than the thriller it purports to be.
Deep, Well-Rounded Characters
The heroine is a liberal Democratic Senator from California who is “honest, tough and energetic.” The chief antagonist is a Dick Cheney look-alike, Republican vice president who “trampled on individual liberties and jeopardized the Bill of Rights.”
But wait, it gets worse: There is also a Rush Limbaugh look-alike named Sam Slaughter (a.k.a. “Slaughterman”) who is “abusing the First Amendment.”
Well-rounded, compelling characters, wouldn’t you say?
And, while I’m not particularly a Rush Limbaugh fan, I support his right to say whatever he wants—whether Barbara Boxer or anyone else approves.
And I support her right to write whatever books she wants. But the question begs to be asked: Isn’t Senator Boxer herself jeopardizing individual liberties by accusing a radio host of abusing the First Amendment by exercising his First Amendment rights?
Or is freedom of speech just for those whom we agree with?
Jan
1
Inaugural Post
Filed Under Books, Fiction, Free Speech, Nonfiction, Publishing, Writing | 1 Comment
Ahhh, just what the world needs, a new blog. Especially one dealing with writing and publishing. Heaven knows there aren’t enough of those yet.
My back ground is mostly in journalism and nonfiction book publishing so I suppose nonfiction and books are likely to have an edge in the posts I make. But I love to read fiction—someday I’ll write the Great American Novel—and am passionate about freedom of speech so let’s throw those into the mix as well.
Comments are always welcome.
Well, since it this is my first post and it is also the first day of a new year, I’m going to go out on a limb and make a few predictions about the next five or10 years:
1.) Printed books will not become obsolete. There will still be bookstores in 10 years. You’ll just buy some of your books in other ways.
For instance, sometime in the next five to 10 years, you’ll be buying many of your books from in-store machines that print and bind your selection as you shop—just like the 1-hour photo developing now found nearly everywhere.
This technology—downloading a digital file from a repository of such files and printing one book at a time—will be used by online bookstores to fill their orders too.
All of this will result in fewer books that don’t sell being printed and shipped (today as much as 30 percent of books sold to brick and mortar stores are returned to the publisher where they are pulped or sold off as cheap remainders.) This is good for the publisher’s bottom line and the environment.
2.) Reading devices such as Amazon.com’s Kindle will become as popular as Ipods. We’ll all have one.
3.) Blogging will continue to grow as a news media. From wars in the Middle East to collecting wristwatches, more and more people will get quick updates from bloggers who focus on the same slim slice of the cosmos in which their readers are interested. This isn’t bad. It’s journalism at its most democratic.
4.) Large print newspapers will continue to consolidate or die off, although I think there is room for small, community newspapers funded by local advertisers to thrive.
5.) Writing will still be a tough way to earn a living, but the good will thrive.
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