The New Influencers Gets Late Praise

Filed Under Books, Nonfiction, Promotion, Publishing, Writing | 1 Comment

Publishing is such a strange business. The New Influencers by Paul Gillin, a ground-breaking book on social media that we (Quill Driver Books) published nearly 4 years ago just got a terrific review on the Fast Company blog.

Why is this strange? Because, while we garnnered great reviews from dozens of other venues including the Wall Street Journal, as far as I know, we never could get Fast Company to mention it. Now, 3 plus years later….

Not that I’m complaining too much. In the review, David Capece says “There are many books that have followed in Paul Gillin’s path; however, The New Influencer remains an essential tool for marketers and non-marketers alike.” We at publishing companies like reviewers to call our books “essential.” Even years after they come out.

BTW, it is with the book The New Influencers that Gillin added the term “the new influencers” to the English lexicon, meaning the bloggers and others in social media who are replacing the old influencers such as the mavens on TV, radio, and in print and the ads companies run in those media. Now you see the term used everywhere.

Oct

11

Your Chance for a Free Book

Filed Under Books, Writing | Leave a Comment

A friend e-mailed me today amused about the title of a book he saw in a bookstore. The title has “the Sierras” in it. Why was my friend laughing?

The first one to e-mail me with the correct answer will get a free copy of my book The Fast Track Course on How to Write a Nonfiction Book Proposal.

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.)