Rights Management & Royalties

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies author Seth Grahame-Smith is being sued by his publisher for delivering a manuscript that Hachette claims is “an appropriation of a 120-year-old public-domain work”. Grahame-Smith, who unleashed the zombie mashup on the world with the surprise 2009 hit Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and went on to write the bestseller…

Of late, much of my time (and that of others) has been spent thinking through the evolution of ebooks. Yesterday, a colleague I work with, Peter Krautzberger — who heads up the MathJax initiative — pointed me to an informative, if poorly written, post by Robin Good. It was entitled Textbooks Show Aging Signs: Curated…

Marshall McLuhan, the famous social scientist, told us more than 50 years ago that newer and more powerful means of communication have turned the world into a "global village," something that brings people together at one level, but at another level, complicates social relationships. A bigger, worldwide, audience increases the number of people who might…

It happened in a moment of weakness — even though I knew better — but late one night earlier this month, I read the Amazon reviews for my book. Alternatively inflating and torturing my ego, I went through negative and the positive reviews. Amid the praise (and intense dislike), I caught a strange comment: Someone…

It’s not always easy talking to publishers about copyright. Why? It’s not as if they don’t understand its significance. The days are long past when senior executives in our industry thought about copyright—when they thought about it at all—as an arcane topic suitable only for attorneys and…

The bill seeks to help copyright owners who do not have the resources to pursue federal copyright claims.

On the high seas, you can see a pirate approaching for miles. This gives the captain and crew time to prepare themselves against the onslaught, warn other ships, and call the naval authorities for help. On the Internet, pirates act with stealth. Often, you don’t even know that you’ve been boarded until the pirates have left with the booty.…

Attorneys for the publishers argue that a recent Supreme Court decision in another high profile copyright case—Kirtsaeng v. Wiley—should take them off the hook for paying GSU's legal fees.

Writing Copyright-free material edging out Canadian educational texts for CBC News, Nigel Hunt asks, “Are Canadian students being forced to learn from foreign textbooks?” John Degen, executive director of the Writer’s Union of Canada has expressed his concern on that topic: “I hear again and again,” he tells CBC News, “from professors and from teachers…

Are Canadian students being forced to learn from foreign textbooks? That's the concern of John Degen, executive director of the Writers' Union of Canada. "I hear again and again from professors and from teachers saying that they simply don't feel they have access to enough Canadian works right now," he told CBC News. "And they…