STATUS: Two years and two months after initial publication, HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET cracks the top 10 again on the NYT list. Time to celebrate.
What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? YOU NEEDED ME by Anne Murray
I can tell by the overwhelming number of comments on my last post that discussing copyright is definitely whipping my blog readers into a verbal frenzy.
How many of you used the copyright act as a sleep aid on Monday?
But I do think it’s worth continuing the discussion. As I mentioned Monday, I could see how derivative works could be created for nonfiction work.
For example, and this is just off the top of my head and probably not the best example out there but I think it will give you a sense, is to think of a nonfiction work on decorating for the holidays. In this work, let’s say there is one chapter on table place settings. The publisher than decides to take one aspect of holiday place settings from this chapter and create a whole new gift book on holiday place settings.
That would be a derivative work, created by the publisher and they would own the copyright (at least according to this clause 6.b. in the Macmillan contract.)
In talking to my lawyer, we discussed at length how a derivative work could be a book trailer. Definition of derivative work is based on one or more pre-existing works, such as translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgement, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted.
In talking with Macmillan, this is an example they gave as something they could create that would be covered under this clause 6.b.
More on fiction tomorrow. Hopefully I won’t run out of time.