Writers and Editors

Have you spelled out who inherits your intellectual property? Here are some helpful explanations.This is an update of an earlier blog post (Authors' wills, trusts, and estates), with much new material added.

by Pat McNees
• Estate Planning for Authors (Edward M. McBoyd, YouTube video of Authors Guild webinar, 11-6-19, 1.4 hrs) Pretty thorough legal overview to help you plan for your author's estate.
• Estate Planning For Writers (Matt Knight, Sidebar Saturdays, 12-2-17) The advantages and disadvantages of wills and trusts, whether you need both an executor and a literary trustee, how to structure a literary estate.
• What Happens When An Author Dies. Estate Planning With Kathryn Goldman (Joanna Penn, Creative Penn, 11-23-15) Podcast and text.
• The Death of a Writer (Allison K Williams, Brevity's nonfiction blog, 6-4-19) Who is going to deal with your literary legacy, and what do you want done with your journals, family photos, genealogical research, story notes, complete and unfinished manuscripts, published works (who inherits the copyright?), treasured mementos, social media (wipes? or legacy status?), passwords and account numbers for whoever wraps up your estate? And do you want any old letters or evidence of love affairs preserved or destroyed?
• Death is not the end: the lucrative world of literary estates (Financial Times, 7-25-19) The growth of streaming services, demand for audio books and the globalisation of publishing are a boon for a writer’s descendants.
• Your Literary Estate, Part One: Assigning a Literary Executor (Christopher Klim, The US Review of Books, 2-1-17) "Your heirs will have varying degrees of concern for your legacy, ranging from not-at-all through avarice to sincere compassion for your work. Get control of the process now....Your literary executor would optimally be someone who is both involved in the business of publishing and is familiar with you and your heirs. It could be an editor, agent, or fellow writer. He/She should understand both your work and intentions....Gover knew that his heirs would trust me and my eventual decisions, but I was powerless in managing his literary estate unless it was official. However, I learned that almost no one had information on this topic."
• Your Literary Estate, Part Two: Managing Your Work (Christopher Klim, The US Review of Books, 3-1-17) "Assigning a literary executor is not all about contract negotiation and oversight. It also involves handling your literary papers and letters....For the Eric Hoffer estate, his papers had already been stored at the Hoover Institute, but with regular rights inquiries, it was important to have access to existing contracts in order to help avoid copyright conflicts....In my experience, publishers will be intentionally unhelpful. They have a long history of hiding royalties from authors, as well as assuming rights that they had never obtained. Make sure your literary executor knows everything you do, so he/she can make the best decisions. Slapping a firm letter on a publisher with the power of an informed literary executor is better on any day than filing a lawsuit. The big publishers will out-wait and out-lawyer you every time."
• How to Fund a Living Trust With Royalties (John Stevens, LegalBeagle) A royalty is the right to receive financial compensation for a body of work that is used by a third party (e.g., for songs played on the radio, for books sold). A living trust is a common way to pass those rights at death. The main reason to create a living trust is to avoid probate
• My Life, Their Archive (Tim Parks, New York Review of Books, 5-21-14) 'For the author, needless to say, the lure is money. Large sums can be involved. The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas reputedly paid $1.5 million for J. M. Coetzee’s papers. The British Library more modestly gave £110,000 for the manuscripts of novelist Graham Swift, announcing as a special attraction “a tape recording of the answer phone messages he received on the night he won the Booker Prize.” ...But not only money. Any organization that spends a considerable sum on you will also have an interest in promoting your reputation. They don’t want to be accused of having thrown cash at a lemon. So there will be exhibitions, seminars, features of archived material.'
• Final Drafts: Selecting a Literary Executor (Lloyd Jassin and Ronald Finkelstein, CopyLaw.com, 2002) 'A General Executor will often be a spouse or other family member that does not have experience with literary matters. Therefore, you should consider entrusting the care of your papers, existing contracts and unpublished manuscripts to a Literary Executor. Keep in mind that being a Literary Executor can be a lot of work. By taking the time to carefully select a Literary Executor, you lessen the likelihood of intra-family disputes that could result in family members refusing to negotiate for the further exploitation of your works -- preferring instead to retire your copyrighted works from publication....While a family member may agree to work for free, attorneys and literary agents will most likely seek a fee of between 10% and 15% for new contracts they negotiate on behalf of the estate....In some instances, an author may create a lifetime (“inter-vivos”) trust and transfer literary assets to the trust. In this case, a trustee will be appointed to carry out responsibilities similar to an Executor. In such instances, the author appoints a "Literary Trustee" who acts in much the same manner as a "Literary Executor" would under a decedent's will....Authors with significant estates should meet with their attorney or accountant now to determine whether any lifetime planning can be employed to reduce the value of their estates at their death so that more assets can pass to their heirs.'
• The Works of Merton (letter from Robert E. Daggy and reply by J.M. Cameron, New York Review of Books, 11-22-79) In 1967, on the advice of friends and with the concurrence of his abbot, Merton decided to name Bellarmine College repository for his literary estate.
• Do You Need a Literary Executor? (Susan Spann, Writers in the Storm, 7-15-13) When do you need a literary executor (or trustee) to administer the copyright in your estate? "Copyrights aren’t like houses, or cars, or jewelry—assets which can be readily converted into cash and which require no ongoing business skills. Copyright management requires specialized skills which many heirs do not possess....The copyright management process can be confusing even for one heir and confrontational when many heirs are involved... The literary executor can be one of the heirs, or can be a professional hired (and often paid) to manage the copyrights on your heirs’ behalf....While the general executor’s job may be finished in about a year, the literary executor may continue to manage creative works on behalf of the author’s estate until the end of the copyright term."
• Estate Planning for Your Indie Author Business (Karen Myers, 1-4-19) Estate planning advice for indie authors and micropublishers. "We don't think in terms of key employees, since we haven't got any, but we are ourselves the key employee, and we need to make plans for what will happen when we are no longer able to run our business. And if we've managed to grow large enough to have actual employees, we have the same issues as any other small business. We need a business succession plan."
• Orphan Row Update: Another Living Author, Two Books in Print, Literary Estates Held by Charities, Etc. (Authors Guild, 9-15-11) "Here’s what we can tell you about authors of some of the books that HathiTrust is scheduled to release for downloading by hundreds of thousands of students."
• Bitter feuds, buried scandal: the contested world of literary estates (Leo Robson, New Statesman, 1-2-19) When an author dies, literary estates take over – bringing disputes, fraud and conflagrations.
• The great estate: those global literary brands roll on (Robert McCrum, The Guardian, 3-15-12) The recently deceased Dmitri Nabokov made a fortune from his father's estate, while the houses of Fleming, Tolkien et al are equally at home in the digital age.
• Important. And pass it on... (Neil Gaiman, A Simple Will,10-30-06) Download "A Simple Will" and fill it in for yourself.
• Neil Gaiman on why writers tend to put off writing wills, particularly wills that spell out how their intellectual property should be handled. You can download a template (PDF) of a generic will for U.S. authors but maybe run it by a lawyer, as laws vary by state.
• Writers' wills: a rich legacy for readers (Claire Armitstead, The Guardian, 1-8-14) As a stock of famous authors' final testaments are posted online, we can be glad of the insights they leave to us.
• An end to bad heir days: The posthumous power of the literary estate (Gordon Bowker, Independent UK, 1-6-12) ""On the last day of 2011, the 70th anniversary year of his death, James Joyce's work finally passed out of copyright. It was the dawn of a new age for Joyce scholars, publishers and biographers who are now free to quote or publish him without the permission of the ferociously prohibitive Joyce estate."
• Wills of the Rich and Famous (aka "celebrity wills," posted on Living Trust Network, an estate planning portal). Featured: Warren Burger, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), Princess Diana. Walt Disney, Doris Duke, Elizabeth Edwards, Henry Fonda, Benjamin Franklin, Clark Gable, James Gandolfini, Katherine Hepburn, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, "Shoeless Joe" Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, President John F. Kennedy, John Kennedy, Jr. and more.
• Famous wills 1552-1854 In 2014, the National Archives (UK) brought online this collection of documents that will delight biographers and historians. Among them, the wills of William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Admiral Lord Nelson, Dr. Samuel Johnson, John Donne, Sir Francis Drake, William Congreve, Samuel Pepys, William Penn, George Frederic Handel, and William Wordsworth.
• Guest-blogging on Writers in the storm, Susan Spann (author of the popular Shinobi Mystery series, published a series of pieces advising on authors' estate planning and authors' trusts, under the Publaw theme (where you can find more of these). I link to some of them here:
--- WHO WILL YOU TRUST? Wills in Author Estate Planning Susan Spann, guest blog on Writers in the Storm, 5-10-13).
---Who Inherits Your Copyrights? (4-22-13)
---Do You Own Your Copyrights? (Susan Spann, 1-10-14)
---Do You Know Your (Copy) Rights? (Susan Spann, 12-13-13)
---Who Can an Author Trust? Trusts in the Author Estate Plan (6-14-13).
---Do You Need a Literary Executor? (Susan Spann, 7-15-13)
--- How to Choose a Literary Executor (Susan Spann, 8-9-13)
---But What Does a Literary Trustee DO? (Part 1) (Susan Spann)
---Trust The Process: Literary Executors, Part 2 (Susan Spann)

• Rights and Royalties Management, Licensing,

issues about and problems with authors' and artists' estates. What happens to works after authors die. (Writers and Editors, Copyright, work for hire, and other rights issues)

• SFWA runs two helpful lists (which cover more than genre fiction writers):
---Estates Contact Information
---Estates we’re looking for
• Literary estates administered by The Society of Authors (UK)
• Wills, Probate and Trusts For Writers (H.S. Stavropoulos, author of crime fiction with a Greek-American flavor)

Now some stunning photographs:
• 15 Famous Authors’ Beautiful Estates (Emily Temple, Flavorwire, 1-24-12) Photos of the beautiful homes of Anaïs Nin, Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, Evelyn Waugh, Gore Vidal, J. K. Rowling, Kurt Vonnegut,Vladimir Nabokov, Mark Twain, Stephen King, Robert Graves, Victor Hugo, Eudora Welty, William Shakespeare, Frederick Douglass.'
• 18 Famous Authors’ Houses Worth Seeing (Nick Mafi, Architectural Digest, 10-4-19)

What other resources are helpful? Tell me about experiences you've had or know about that it might be helpful for others to know about -- particularly problems to avoid or minimize.

by Kitty O'Meara

And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still.
And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced.
Some met their shadows.
And the people began to think differently.

And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.

And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.

And no, the poem wasn't written in 1869, during the Irish famine, or in 1918, during the Spanish flu epidemic. It was written during the 2020 coronavirus epidemic. 

Kitty O'Meara, Author of "And the People Stayed Home," Opens Up About Writing That Viral Poem ~ Elena Nicolaou, Oprah, 3-19-2020

Statement on Legislative Threats to Freelance Writers
From the American Society of Journalists and Authors, Inc.

For more than 70 years, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, Inc., has recognized and endorsed the guarantees of free speech and an unfettered press established in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and the promise of equal protection under the laws set out in the Fourteenth Amendment. Our dedication to these basic principles of writing with a free hand is part of the organization's Constitution, which includes the improvement of "professional conditions for the independent writer" as one of ASJA's principal purposes. Our mission statement reflects our on-going intention to "represent freelancers' interests, serving as spokesperson for their right to control and profit from the uses of their work wherever it appears."

In this context, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, Inc., opposes legislative efforts to restrict the ability of independent writers to work as they choose without governmental interference. The organization stands in solidarity with our members and with all freelancers facing threats to their livelihoods as a result of laws and legislation aimed at either prohibiting or restricting their work as independent entrepreneurs.

The American Society of Journalists and Authors, Inc., recognizes that misclassification of workers as independent contractors when they deserve treatment as employees is a serious problem in many—but certainly not all—sectors of the labor market. We in no way condone the exploitation of workers by their employers. Trying to solve the problem by painting all independent workers with the same overly broad brush, however, ignores a robust community of freelance writers who choose independent career paths. Such legislation is both short-sighted and ultimately counterproductive. We urge the country's lawmakers to respect the constitutional rights and personal preferences of freelancers when considering legislation that redefines the status of independent contractors. Legislation that includes freelance writers in the general class of allegedly exploited workers is an attempt to solve a problem that does not exist and will cause immeasurable harm.

Milton C. Toby JD
President
American Society of Journalists and Authors, Inc.

 

Reprinted by permission. (I am a member of ASJA)

 

RELATED STORIES
• California Bill Makes App-Based Companies Treat Workers as Employees (Kate Conger and Noam Scheiber, NY Times, 11-9-19) ("California legislators approved a landmark bill on Tuesday that requires companies like Uber and Lyft to treat contract workers as employees, a move that could reshape the gig economy and that adds fuel to a yearslong debate over whether the nature of work has become too insecure....A coalition of labor groups is pushing similar legislation in New York, and bills in Washington State and Oregon that were similar to California’s but failed to advance could see renewed momentum. New York City passed a minimum wage for ride-hailing drivers last year but did not try to classify them as employees."
• AB5 gig work bill: All your questions answered (Carolyn Said, SF Chronicle, 9-16-19)
• Top Dems change ‘gig worker’ bill after freelancers said it would force them to leave N.J. (Sophie Nieto-Munoz | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)
• Just a Platform? Instacart Workers Strike at the Gig Economy’s Favorite Lie (Jacob Rosenberg, Mother Jones, 11-21-19) “Their argument is that they’re a marketplace. They’re a software company. They’re just connecting—that’s just not true.” Instacart is a grocery-shopping service valued at nearly $8 billion that doesn’t pay the people who buy and deliver the groceries enough to live, those workers say.

Experienced Wikipedia writers and editors: Let me know which important pages I should add here, for the benefit of people new to contributing to Wikipedia.

• Who writes Wikipedia?
• Contributing to Wikipedia (describes the Wikipedia editing community's established practice on some aspect or aspects of Wikipedia's norms and customs)
• Frequently Asked Questions About Wikipedia
• FAQs about editing for Wikipedia
• Wikipedia Guidelines
• How do I create a new page?
• Article size
• Featured content Featured content represents the best of Wikipedia, including articles, pictures, and other contributions that showcase excellent results of the collaborative efforts of Wikipedia. All featured content undergoes a thorough review process to ensure that it meets the highest standards in order to serve as the best example of our end goals. A small bronze star (The featured content star) in the top right corner of a desktop page indicates that the content is featured.
• Citing sources Wikipedia's verifiability policy requires inline citations for any material challenged or likely to be challenged, and for all quotations, anywhere in article space.
• Navigation Wikipedia is so vast that the features that usually facilitate navigating, like hypertext and a search box, are supplemented by portals and a page theme that features a toolbox, a search box, and the category of the page, on every page.
• Neutral point of view "Articles must not take sides, but should explain the sides, fairly and without editorial bias. This applies to both what you say and how you say it."
• "Notability" guidelines
• Researching and Writing Wikipedia Articles (How Wikipedia Works/Chapter 6, Wikibooks)
• What Wikipedia is not
• Wikipedia: Teahouse (a friendly forum in which to learn about editing Wikipedia)
• Are There Rules Against Paying Someone To Write A Wikipedia Article? (Michael Wood, Social Media Today, 11-24-14) Read the full article.

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Updated 5-16-23.  Let me know if any wonderful publications and other resources are left out of this informally assembled list. Scroll down for links to forums.

• Aeon ("a sanctuary online for serious thinking")
• Ars Technica
• Cosmos (the science of everything)
• Ag Insider (Food and Environment Reporting Network)
• Cosmos
• Council for the Advancement of Science (CASW) See Resources and Stories.
• Discover
• Environmental Health News (EHN, publisher of several newsletters: (Above the Fold, The Daily Climate, Good News, Plastic Pollution, Children’s Health, Energy & Health, Science Saturday, The Weekend Reader, Population Weekly, Pittsburgh Weekly)
• Food and Environment Reporting Network (FERN, publishes Ag Insider)
• Food Dive (See also BioPharma Dive, Construction Dive, Education Dive, Healthcare Dive, MedTech Dive, Restaurant Dive, Smart Cities Dive, Social Media Today, Utility Dive, Waste Dive)
• GreenBiz Featured columns. See also webcasts and Video
• JSTOR
• Massive Science (New science stories every week, written by scientists themselves)
• Mosaic Longform stories about science and health. (Closed 12-10-19). No longer publishing but archive still available under Creative Commons license.
• National Geographic Magazine
• Nature (an esteemed and heavily cited science journal)
• Nautilus (each issue on a special topic, backed by Howard Hughes Medical Institute)
• New Scientist (realistic news reporting, from UK)
• Newswise
• The Open Notebook provides tools and resources to help science, environmental, and health journalists at all experience levels sharpen their skills. For example, Kathryn Schulz Paints a Chilling Picture of “The Really Big One” and Science Journalism Master Classes
• Politico
• Pro Publica (Journalism in the Public Interest) Read More 

by Melinda Clayton

If you want to use both KDP Print and IngramSpark for paperbacks, explained novelist Melinda Clayton recently on the Authors Guild forum, you must be careful to "un-check" Expanded Distribution through KDP Print. These are the steps you need to take:

1. Own your own ISBN (purchase at Bowker if you're in the U.S.)
2. Un-check Expanded Distribution on KDP Print, but don't un-publish your book. You want to leave it on KDP Print for distribution through Amazon; you just have to remove it from Expanded Distribution. This is because Expanded Distribution makes your book available in the Ingram catalog, and Ingram won't list the exact same book twice.
3. Send KDP Print an email asking them to remove your paperback from Expanded Distribution while leaving it with KDP for distribution on Amazon. Although you've unchecked it, emailing KDP Print speeds the process along.
4. Set up your account on IngramSpark .
5. Email IngramSpark a Title Transfer Addendum request. The link will take you to a page on Ingram that explains the process, and at the very bottom of that page is a link to click that will allow you to download and print the Title Transfer Addendum.
6. Once KDP Print and Ingram have transferred your titles from the KDP Print Ingram account to your own, you'll get an email from IngramSpark letting you know the transfer has taken place and asking you to approve your proofs. If you approve, you're all set. Your books will still be available through KDP Print for distribution to Amazon, and they'll also be available through Ingram for other stores and libraries.

 

Here are links to Melinda's novels and if you are thinking about self-publishing, check out her explanations on Indies Unlimited, See, for example, Do I Need Different ISBNs for CreateSpace and Ingram? (read the whole thing).

"Thirty-five countries—including the United Kingdom, every country in Europe, Canada, Israel, and Australia—support their authors with cash payments from the national government in compensation for the free library lending of their books. Over the past half-century, all these nations have established systems of Public Lending Right....PLR recognizes two fundamental principles: the need for society to provide free access to books, and the right of authors to be remunerated for their work. These principles should not be in conflict. The Authors Guild believes in both. We plan to work with the nation’s libraries to create a system that will benefit authors and libraries alike." -- James Gleick, Support of a Public Lending Right in the United States (PLR) (Authors Guild Bulletin, Winter 2018/Spring 2019)

 

"Paying authors for library loans is not a charity,” he said, “it’s a right: a payment for the service of borrowing an author’s work.” Robert Caro, Barbara Tuchman, and Anne Edwards were among the well-known authors who championed the cause. Preliminary bills were introduced in both houses of Congress. Eventually, in the Reagan era, the effort died.

 

"But overseas the evident justice and utility of PLR systems has persuaded country after country. Last year our counterparts in the U.K., the Society of Authors, led a successful effort to extend their program to include e-lending. Beginning July 1, authors became eligible for payments for library lending of their ebooks and audiobooks....

"The maximum payment to any one author would be capped: the idea is not to reward J. K. Rowling (no offense, Joanne) but to provide some much-needed help for midlist authors....

 

We never want to tell a library not to lend our books—love of libraries is at the core of who we are. At the same time, librarians themselves are recognizing that they need the professional author to survive... author income that once came from the use of books in classrooms has been evaporating. Expensive high-speed scanners are now standard equipment in university department offices, and university libraries increasingly believe it is their right to distribute digital copies of chapters and whole books throughout their communities. This turns authors into forced unpaid donors. A robust PLR system would restore some fairness."

• The Authors Guild Calls for a “Public Lending Right” (Nate Hoffelder, The Digital Reader, 1-16-19) "The Authors Guild was somewhat correct when they said 22,000 authors in the UK were paid up to 6,600 pounds, but what they forgot to tell you was that almost as many authors were paid zilch.

"According to UK data from 2017 (the most recent I can find), a total of 41,750 authors were listed in the PLR system when the payments went out in February. Of that number, 19,548 received nothing at all because their share was less than one pound. Another 16.654 received under 100 pounds, while 3,232 received under 500 pounds (PDF).

"The numbers are almost as bad in Canada, where 59% of all registered authors were paid less than $253.80 CAD in June 2018 (this includes the authors who were paid nothing)."

 

COMMENTS?

THE LEGAL SIDE OF PUBLISHING AN ANTHOLOGY:
• Understanding Copyrights for Anthologies (Susan Spann, Writers in the Storm, 11-13-15) Anthology contracts should contain at least two clear statements of copyright:
A declaration that copyright in the author's work remains the sole property of the contributing author; and
A declaration that the copyright in the anthology "as a collective work" belongs to the anthology publisher.
• NEVER grant or transfer your copyright in your work to an anthology publisher. Authors of individual works should always retain copyright on their own original Read More 

compiled by Joan Detz and Pat McNees
(originally posted by Washington Speechwriters Roundtable)

Let us know of resources you found helpful that aren't listed here.

• General anthologies of quotations

• Guides to pronunciation

• Special-occasion resources 

• Business and corporate life

• Politics and government
• Religious and inspirational quotations

• Humor and irreverence

• Proverbs, aphorisms, and regional quotation

• Great speeches collections

• How to give a speech

GENERAL COLLECTIONS OF QUOTATIONS

• The New Beacon Book of Quotations by Women, ed. Rosalie Maggio.
• The Speaker’s Sourcebook: Quotes, Stories, and Anecdotes for Every Occasion, ed. Glenn Van Ekeren
• Bartlett's Familiar Quotations : A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature, ed. by John Bartlett
• The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes
• Simpson's Contemporary Quotations: Most Notable Quotes From 1950 to the Present (ed. by James S. Simpson) boo
• Webster’s New World Dictionary of Quotable Definitions, ed. Eugene E. Brussell.
• New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources, ed. H.L. Mencken.
• Random House Webster’s Quotationary, ed. Leonard Roy Frank.
• The International Thesaurus of Quotations, ed. Rhoda Thomas
• Statistically Speaking, ed. C.C. Gaither and A.E. Cavozov-Gaither.
• Speaker’s Treasury of Sports Anecdotes, Stories, and Humor, ed. Gerald Tomlinson.
• The Military Quotation Book, ed. James Charlton (no index).

GUIDES TO PRONUNCIATION

• NBC Handbook of Pronunciation by Eugene Ehrlich and Raymond Hand, Jr.
• Is There a Cow in Moscow? by Charles Harrington Elster
• There is no zoo in zoology: And other beastly mispronounciations : an opinionated guide for the well-spoken by Charles H. Elster <!--more-->
• The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations by Charles H. Elster

SPECIAL-OCCASION RESOURCES

• Farewell, Godspeed: The Greatest Eulogies of Our Time, ed. Cyrus M. Copeland
• Toasts: Over 1,500 of the Best Toasts, Sentiments, Blessings, and Graces by Paul Dickson
• Irish Blessings, Toasts & Curses, ed. Padraic O’Farrell
• The Book of Ages ed. Desmond Morris
• The Oxford Book of Ages chosen by Allan and Sally Sampson (clever quotes for special birthdays.
• The Wisdom of Christmas, ed. Criswell Freeman (quotations and verses)
• Witty Words: A Hilarious Collection of Outrageous Quotations for Every Day of the Year, ed. Eileen Mason
• Timelines of Everything (Smithsonian) An illustrated history of the world through timelines for kids
• Dying: A Book of Comfort, ed. Pat McNees (or buy the book directly from Pat and get an autographed version)
• Can You Say a Few Words? by Joan Detz (How to Prepare and Deliver a Speech for Any Special Occasion--that is, how to make award presentations, dedications, eulogies, etc.)

BUSINESS AND CORPORATE LIFE

• Quotable Business: Over 2,800 Funny, Irreverent, and Insightful Quotations About Corporate Life, ed. Louis E. Boone.
• The Manager’s Book of Quotations, ed. Lewis Eigen and Jonathan Siegel.
• Gene Perret's Funny Business: Speaker's Treasury of Business Humor for All Occasions

POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT

• The Bully Pulpit: Quotations from America's Presidents ed. Elizabeth Frost
• Congressional Anecdotes by Paul Boller, Jr. (Oxford)
• Speaker’s Treasury of Political Stories, Anecdotes, & Humor , ed. Gerald Tomlinson.
• Power Quotes, ed. Daniel B. Baker.
• The Wit & Wisdom of Politics, ed. Charles Henning.
• Presidential Wit and Wisdom ed. by Charlotte Lee Gross

RELIGIOUS AND INSPIRATIONAL QUOTATIONS

• Treasury of Religious Quotations, ed. Gerald Tomlinson
Speakers Sourcebook ed. Eleanor Doan.
• Pocket Positive--Faith & Belief, ed. John Cook.
• C. S. Lewis' Little Book of Wisdom: Meditations on Faith, Life, Love, and Literature, ed. by Andrea Kirk Assaf and Kelly Anne Leahy
• 12,000 Inspirational Quotations, ed. Frank S. Mead.
• The Routledge Dictionary of Religious and Spiritual Quotations, ed. Geoffrey Parringer
• Book of Positive Quotations, ed. John Cook

HUMOR AND IRREVERENCE

• The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations ed. Fred Metcalf
• The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, ed Ned Sherrin.
• Cassell's Humorous Quotations, ed. Nigel Rees.
• The Complete Book of Zingers, ed. Croft M. Pentz
• Dictionary of Outrageous Quotations, ed. C.R.S. Marsden.

PROVERBS, APHORISMS, AND REGIONAL QUOTATIONS

• The Viking Book of Aphorisms, ed. W.H. Auden and Louis Kronenberger.
• The Oxford Book of Aphorisms, ed. John Gross
• The Penguin Dictionary of Proverbs, ed. Rosalind Fergusson

GREAT SPEECHES COLLECTIONS

• Great Speeches of the Twentieth Century, collected by George Skene (four audio CDs or audiocassettes)
• Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History, ed. by William Safire
• The World's Great Speeches, ed. Lewis Copeland, Lawrence Lamm, and Stephen McKenna
• Farewell, Godspeed: The Greatest Eulogies of Our Time, ed. Cyrus M. Copeland

HOW TO GIVE A SPEECH

• How to Write and Give a Speech: A Practical Guide for Anyone Who Has to Make Every Word Count. by Joan Detz. A how-to classic.
• I Can See You Naked: A Fearless Guide to Making Great Presentations by Ron Hoff (Andrews & McMeel)
• Is There a Speech Inside You? by Don Aslett. Practical tips, lighthearted style.
• The Power of Eloquence by Thomas Montalbo (Prentice-Hall). What makes a speech like “I Have a Dream” eloquent.
• The Smile Connection: How to Use Humor in Dealing with People, by Esther Blumenfeld and Lynne Alpern.

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bull

That your feet grow longer because the fat on the soles disappears.
That your body grows shorter, as the bones in your spine get thinner.
That older people call other people "darling" because they can't remember their names.
That remembering may be harder, but in many ways you're a lot smarter.
That your ears keep growing. ("My mom in her old age complained she looked like Lyndon Johnson.")
That you need more  Read More