Writers and Editors

by Pat McNees   (Updated 2-8-23)
Who owns (or is assumed to own) the copyright in an interview seems to vary among professions (say, journalists and oral historians) and sometimes those doing the interviewing seem to be taking too much advantage of the people they are interviewing.

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In this space (updated occasionally) I'm posting links to stories about egregious violations of creators' rights (rights of writers, photographers, artists, or other original creators of original works). On this week's Bad Behavior' Roundup:
• BuzzFeed announces $19.3m  Read More 

Mike Shatzkin writes this week of changing models in book publishing, in which publishers will "offload everything except the functions that are absolutely core to publishing: editorial selection and development, rights management, and marketing." Authors, pay attention! He is writing about publishers, but  Read More 

Thanks to Robin Rowlands (The road to serfdom: Use Apple software ) for alerting us to the fact (widely discussed among techies) that deep within the license agreement for the excellent new iBook software is a clause stating that if you use the free software to create an ebook that you plan to sell (not give away) you are bound exclusively to Apple. Read Robin's  Read More 

TweetIn the UK, literary agent Ed Victor set up Bedford Square Books to publish e-book and print-on-demand versions of books that were out of print or for which rights had reverted to the author. Within days, this news (Ed Victor set up publishing imprint by Charlotte Williams, The Bookseller 5-10-11) became a trend and people in the industry began itemizing the ways in which a) it represents a major conflict of interest and b) publishing is changing radically. Read More