Julie Broad explains when nonfiction authors need permission to reprint others' work and how to get it. Public domain material published before 1926 is free to use. Fair use covers limited reprinting if the purpose and amount matter. To request permission, find the rights holder on the copyright page or through the publisher, then send a written request and expect to pay a fee.
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Unless you went to law school. Trying to figure out what you're allowed to use in your book and what you're not allowed to reproduce is a complicated aspect of copyright law. If you're wondering when you need permission to reprint something in your book and how to get it, then this video is for you. Hey, I'm Julie the Book broad of Book Launchers, your professional self publishing services team. Now, the first thing I need to cover is a serious disclaimer. I did not go to law school, nor am I a copyright expert per se. If you really need copyright advice, please consult with a copyright attorney for general guidance. This video should do the trick. Nonfiction books usually rely on other people's work for reference or research. But you can't just directly copy or quote anything you want in your book. If you've written a high school research paper, this probably isn't breaking news to you. You probably already found out that doesn't go over very well. Citing a source is an important first step, but depending on what you're reprinting in your book, you you might need to seek explicit legal permission from the creator. Citing the source may not be enough to make it okay. Let's start with what you don't need permission to reprint. That includes anything within the public domain. And this doesn't just include text. Public domain includes images, artwork, music, and film. For the most part, material published before 1926 now has a new home in the public domain. But it's not just older content up for grabs. It if a content creator waives their copyright, that content can then become part of the public domain under Creative Commons, like stock photos, for instance. You can access the public domain online to browse or check to make sure what you can reprint is included. Now, there can be limitations on some of that, so make sure you're reading the fine print wherever you are. You're I got a little floaty in my eye and it's making it hard to see. You're also not infringing on anyone's copyright. When you state widely agreed upon facts that like how many countries are in Europe or how many nickels in $7 50 countries and 140 nickels, in case you were curious. You can also freely mention a place, event, title, or name of someone else without needing a permission to do so. But if you're going to directly quote or use content from a title or author, the rules start to get a little murky. A confusing copyright caveat decides whether citation or permission is the way to go, called fair use. The fair use of of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. To put it simply, and a little bit less dryly, you're allowed to legally reprint a portion of a work in your book so long as you're doing more with it than copying and calling it a day, exploring a phrase to deepen your own point, countering a statement to defend your own opinion, or including another creator's thoughts to teach your readers that all falls under fair use. Now, you still need to include citations to credit others for their work. You'll be part of the Uncool Authors Club if you fail to cite your references. No one wants to be part of that Uncool Authors Club, right? Not you. Alright, you know who else is part of the Uncool Authors Club? Anyone who watches this video but doesn't hit the like button. Again, you don't want to be part of that uncool Author club, right? So smash that like button. Now. There's no number of words or characters set in stone when it comes to quoting another published work. Everywhere you look, you're likely to find a different quantity given for how much of someone's work you can quote with a simple citation rather than legal permission. Even in actual case law, there's no definition. Some publishers make their own rule for this, but when you're self publishing, it's this is your own judgment call to make. The important factor in fair use law to consider is the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the work as a whole. The amount of content you pull or quote from the original work needs to make sense when compared with your overall purpose. You can't simply quote an entire speech or somebody's entire chapter without having a pretty darn good reason to do so. It's safer to stick with the least amount of content you need to to get your point across. So what should you do if your use of content isn't covered under fair use or you're just not sure? Your first step is to identify the copyright or licensing to the work. Sometimes that's pretty obvious, but not always. A good starting point is the source of the material. Don't just find a quote on the Buzzfeed top 10 list and think it's attributed to the correct person, because a lot of times it's not. When it comes to attributions, the Internet is pretty much the wild wild west. So do your research and discover the actual source to find a path to to get to your permission. If you're quoting a book, this is pretty simple. Just check the copyright page to find the rights holder. It might be trickier to get in contact with them, but a good jumping off point is the publisher listed or the literary agent. For smaller publications, academic journals or other self published authors, the path might be a little bit more complex. You might need to reach out to multiple people and follow up on different inquiries to get an answer. This goes for photos as well. Do your research to track down where that photo first appeared, newspaper, magazine, online publication, and especially bigger companies like New York Times or the Hearst. They might have a licensing department that you can contact through phone or email, or send in an application in order to gain permission to reprint one of those photos. Again, small companies or publications such as nonprofits or university presses might require multiple calls or inquiries to different people. Also, keep in mind that if a photo features a model or a trademarked product, you might have to seek a release from that person or that trademark owner or along with permission from the copyright owner of the photo itself. Starts to sound a lot easier to use a different photo, doesn't it? But if you really need it, that's what you need to do. After you identify the source, you'll want to ask for the permission in writing. Make sure to note the name and creator of the work, along with any other helpful identifiers you might know, such as ISBN format or release date, and include how much of the work you plan to reprint and copy of it. And it's also helpful to explain where the content will be reprinted so so include details about your book that you have at that point, including title, your own ISBN and your impending or ideal release date. Ask for the non exclusive rights to reprint the mentioned amount of work in whatever format it will appear print, electronic, audiobook, so forth. Be aware that obtaining permissions for your book can often come with a price. The amount ultimately is up to the copyright holder and it varies, but if you're heavily quoting multiple works in your book and doing so at length, expect to pay a pretty penny. If the price tag is too much or this is just too much work, I suggest you scrap the content, completely paraphrase and settle on a citation, or create your own graphic instead of reprinting a picture. There's also the option of finding a skilled fact checker who can run down the firsthand information and maybe even get the approval process started for you. If the whole process seems a little daunting to take on a loan, that's why we have a fabulous fact checker and researcher on our team to help our clients with that. Now I give you permission to to hit subscribe and turn those notifications on. And since you're sticking around, YouTube thinks you'll like this video. And if YouTube is wrong, then this one on using graphs, tables and images in your book is definitely a good one to watch after this. Either way, I'll be there hanging out with my YouTube besties like, you know, the people in the cool Author Club like Brian Krieger, Rachel Robertson, Poetry from the Heart, andy W, Kevin McGuire, Brian K. Morris, and so many other great folks that comment on every video. You guys are awesome. Awesome. See you when I see you on the next video.
