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- Herausgeber: Font Publications
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Campaign Guides
- Sprache: Englisch
Copyright law, policy, and practice underwrites the publication and sale of books. The income that every author and publisher receives derives from copyright law. Independent authors, who are both writers and publishers, and who actively manage their own publishing rights, need to understand the importance of copyright and how to assert their rights in the digital age.
As a global nonprofit organization promoting ethics and excellence in self-publishing, ALLi advocates for the fair treatment and empowerment of the individual (“indie”) author in the publishing and self-publishing sectors. It is our responsibility, and our honor, to put forward the issues that independent authors face in the course of doing their work and running their businesses. No issue is more fundamental than copyright.
How can we ensure that copyright law remains robust and flexible enough to offer the incentive, protection and reward it promises for those authors who produce and distribute their books on self-publishing platforms, and license only some of their publishing rights to trade publishers and other rights buyers?
How can we ensure that authors understand and avail of their economic and moral rights in the rapidly changing, technologized and entrepreneurial environment within which they do their work?
We present our answers to these important questions in the form of a Copyright Bill of Rights that builds on the work of previous authors and copyright activists to take into account the experience of self-publishing writers over the past decade.
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Seitenzahl: 81
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Copyright © Alliance of Independent Authors 2023, 2nd edition
First Edition, 2019.
The author’s moral rights have been asserted.
All rights reserved.
Font Publications is the publishing imprint for Orna Ross’s fiction and poetry, the Go Creative! books and planners, and the Alliance of Independent Authors publishing guides.
All Enquiries: [email protected]
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COPYRIGHT BILL OF RIGHTS
Eight Fundamental Rights for the Global Author in a Digital World
Ebook: 978-1-909888-92-0
Paperback: 978-1-909888-91-3
COPYRIGHT BILL OF RIGHTS
EIGHT FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS FOR THE GLOBAL AUTHOR IN A DIGITAL WORLD
ALLIANCE OF INDEPENDENT AUTHORS
A book is the author’s property, it is the child of his invention, the brat of his brain.
DANIEL DEFOE.
’Tis the good reader that makes the good book.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
CONTENTS
I. Introduction
Copyright and the Indie Author
Copyright and Author Income
Copyright Controversies
II. Copyright Bill of Rights
Right 1: The Right To Operate
Right 2: The Right To Link, License and Collaborate
Right 3: The Right to Fair Remuneration
Right 4: The Right to Fairness in Fair Dealing/Fair Use Frameworks
Right 5: The Right to Defend Copyright
Right 6: The Right to Coherence and Transparency
Right 7: The Right to Recognition in Machine Generated Works
Right 8: The Right to Copyright Education
The Future
Appendix I: A Short History of Copyright
Appendix II: Copyright FAQs
Appendix III: Business Models for Authors
Appendix IV: Copyright Organizations & Treaties
Author’s Note
Other Guides
About ALLi
INTRODUCTION
COPYRIGHT AND THE INDIE AUTHOR
In the vast expanse that is today’s literary world, independent authors have emerged as powerful voices, often pushing boundaries and reshaping the narrative landscape. 78% of authors responding to an ALLi survey on copyright in 2019 sell their work globally, in as many countries as possible. However, like all pioneers, they face unique challenges, and copyright is undeniably at the forefront.
The "Copyright Bill of Rights" campaign, initiated by the Alliance of Independent Authors, seeks to address these challenges head-on.
As the digital age accelerates and the world becomes increasingly interconnected, indie authors find themselves at the crossroads of creativity and commerce, striving to protect their creations while ensuring their works reach an ever-growing audience. Yet, the maze of copyright laws, originally designed in a bygone era, can hinder rather than help.
This campaign book from ALLi isn't just a guide; it's a manifesto. It champions the rights of indie authors, and offers tools and thoughts with which to navigate the intricate world of copyright today.
By outlining core principles to be upheld in the age of digital publishing and artificial intelligence, this campaign aspires to level the playing field, ensuring that indie authors are both protected and empowered. This isn't just about legalities; it's about fostering a culture that celebrates, supports, and sustains independent creativity.
How can we ensure that copyright law remains robust and flexible enough to offer the incentive, protection, and reward it promises for those authors who produce and distribute their books on self-publishing platforms, and license only some of their publishing rights to trade-publishers and other rights buyers? How can we ensure that authors understand and avail of their economic and moral rights in the rapidly changing, technologized, and entrepreneurial environment within which they do their work? And how do we achieve a balance between motivating creators through exclusive rights and upholding the public's interest by providing access to knowledge, information, and inspiration.
We present our answers to these important questions in the form of a Bill of Rights that builds on the work of previous authors and copyright activists to take into account the experience of self-publishing writers over the past decade, as digital publishing has increased in influenced.
About Copyright Law
The income that every author and publisher receives from the sale of books derives from copyright law. Independent authors, who are both writers and publishers, and who actively manage their own publishing rights, need to understand the importance of copyright, how to assert their rights in the digital age, and how those rights balance with the rights of others.
Copyright law is fundamental to an author’s ability to publish and trade in books, create successful author-businesses, and to earn an income from their work.
Copyright has been recognized for centuries and is currently governed by the Copyright Act of 1976 in the US, the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 in the UK, and equivalent legislation in other countries. Copyright law protects “works of the mind,” namely original work of literature, music, film, art, photography, sculpture, architecture, computer programs, databases, and more.
The law does not protect ideas, only their expression, or "fixation" as it is called in some jurisdictions. It recognizes that a creator owns the text, images, video, audio, information, and data created, and arising from that ownership, the creator has:
the right to reproduce the workthe right to prepare derivative works based upon the workthe right to distribute copies of the work to the publicthe right to perform the copyrighted work publiclythe right to display the copyrighted work publicly.Copyright law gives authors the right to control the publication and other exploitation of the work. The author can decide whether to sell those rights, who to sell them to, and on what terms. Typically, rights are sold in the form of licenses, and the compensation is in the form of a flat fee or royalties.
Most of the problems and shortfalls for authors arise not in the law itself, but in its execution, with many rights buyers failing to observe it in letter or in spirit. Another problem is the polarization of authors’ and readers’ rights in copyright debates.
The law, publishing houses, and self-publishing services cannot offer authors full protection against plagiarism and piracy.
ALLi’s Copyright Bill of Rights aims to inform and educate authors, industry practitioners, stakeholders, and policy-makers on the contemporary copyright environment for independent authors. It also offers ALLi’s interpretation and recommendations of what authors and readers most need from copyright law, policy, and practice today.
The Bill is a work in progress, exploring with members, advisors, and like-minded authors’ associations how copyright law, its related policies, and practical interpretations might provide better protection, incentive, and reward to authors who self-publish through online publishing platforms, as well as through licensing their publishing rights to other publishing entities.
The Independent Author
The independent author movement was born out of the digital technologies that emerged in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Authors have always self-published, but for the first time, technology provided authors the tools to inexpensively and directly attract and sell to a global readership, in ways that did not require an institutional publisher.
Using digital tools and technology, and supporting each other closely, independent authors currently conduct business in ways that render traditional discourse around rights and literary activity irrelevant.
ALLi members, located on all seven continents, represent the full spectrum of independent authorship, including literary and genre fiction and non-fiction, young adult and children’s books, and poetry. All our members write and publish, or are preparing to publish, their own work.
Independent authors thus, being the creative directors of their books and also of their author enterprises, have the freedom and responsibility of full creative control. This is in contrast to those authors who are creative professionals following the traditional model of exclusively licensing publishing rights to a primary trade-publisher, usually with the help of a literary agent.
Independent authors work or collaborate with a team of professionals—other creatives like editors and designers, virtual assistants, agents, sub-agents, author services—to publish their own books and license their own rights. They are creative entrepreneurs (authorpreneurs), running highly scalable, nimble digital businesses that operate one of a number of possible business models (see Appendix III).
ALLi’s Authorpreneur Membership category is for the most successful of these authors: author businesses that have sold more than 50,000 books, or the business equivalent, in the past two years. Such authors currently comprise almost 10 per cent of our membership.
Compared to authors who publish only through trade (traditional) publishing processes—who license their rights, are bound by exclusive, often needlessly circumscribed contracts, and have little or no control over their metadata or positioning in the marketplace—those who self-publish, or combine self-publishing and trade-publishing processes, are relatively autonomous. Hence “independent”.
Without control over metadata, marketing, pricing, distribution network, or rights, an author is not actually in business. Another publisher has licensed their assets. The publisher has a business; the author is a freelance content provider for that business. With too many writers and too few publishers, the economic law of supply and demand creates poor conditions for authors.
If they have just one publisher, as most authors who trade-publish currently do, they are financially very vulnerable in a bookselling system built around a tiny minority of winners, and the vast pool of losers who don’t attract an investing publisher, or who fail to sell in sufficient numbers to retain publisher investment.
The independent author, by contrast, can build a business step by step, asset by asset, over time.
To produce and sell their books and build and grow their author businesses, self-publishers hire help across some or all of the seven stages of the publishing process: editorial, design, production, distribution, marketing, promotion and rights licensing.
In pursuing their work, they encounter four kinds of publishing services:
Self-publishing Companies Favorable to Authors: Production and distribution services like Amazon KDP, Apple Books, Google Play (books), IngramSpark, Bookvault, Kobo Writing Life, aggregators like Draft2Digital, PublishDrive and StreetLib, along with freelance editorial, design, marketing and PR services (individuals or companies). ALLi provides a directory of recommended services to their members.Self-publishing Companies Exploitative of Authors: Popularly known as “vanity publishers,” these companies dominate the digital advertising space where they trap new authors who are uninformed about how publishing and self-publishing works.Technology Companies:
