After bragging about our cool summer weather, we had a real humdinger of a weekend! It was around 90 degrees…on the day we attended the Folk Festival. Oh, it was beastly! However, the hot weather only hung around for two days. It’s supposed to be 49 tonight. What a swing, huh?!
After running last week’s article, Who REALLY Controls That ISBN You Bought? Probably Not You!, I received the following email from Andy Weissberg at R.R. Bowker…
This Week:
The big day finally arrived when the book I’ve been writing is finished. It’s been re-read and edited a half dozen times. Now it’s time to submit.
In (my book), I have quoted lyrics from different songs, specifically from “Wake Me Up When September Ends” by Green Day. Do I have to get permission from Green Day to put this in there?
I knew I’d be a writer after Mom made a huge fuss about a short story I wrote when I was ten. By 13, classmates wrote in my junior high yearbook: “U will B a grate riter.” I’d penned stories, poems, a novel and won a couple of writing contests by 16.
At 19, I quit.
August is always our slowest month of the year. I guess everybody is on vacation or lounging around the pool. Slow author sign-ups mean more time for me to enjoy spending time sitting outside by the river, playing in my garden with Max, watching Mason dig in the dirt with his bulldozer, and listening to the teenagers’ chatter.
Last week, I received an email from a guy claiming to be the head of Bowker, the ISBN agency. Whoa! Why was the “head” of Bowker contacting me? The email implied we were doing something wrong…
Hi Angela,
I’ve said it before, and I will say it again. You and Richard and everyone else at BookLocker and Writers Weekly are THE BEST.
Every now and then someone will ask me about a POD company (Publish America and Lulu to name two). I always tell them not to go anywhere else but Booklocker. I point out that you have a selection process and that you do not publish everything that comes along. I tell them that if their book is selected for publication, they will be extremely happy with Booklocker.
When people ask why I like Booklocker so much, I say, “They do what they say they are going to do when they say they are going to do it. They don’t try to sell you something you don’t need. There are no ‘hidden costs.’They help you with formatting. They make sure everything is in order before they send the book file for printing.”
I wish other companies (not just book publishing companies, but ALL companies) would take a lesson from BookLocker’s business model. The world would be a much better place.
LeAnn Ralph
Preserve Your Family History (A Step-by-Step Guide for Writing Oral Histories)
https://www.booklocker.com/books/1545.html
Christmas In Dairyland
https://booklocker.com/books/1272.html
Cream of the Crop
https://booklocker.com/books/2156.html
Give Me a Home Where the Dairy Cows Roam
https://booklocker.com/books/1734.html
Where the Green Grass Grows (True Spring and Summer Stories from a Wisconsin Farm)
https://booklocker.com/books/2722.html
I recently started writing a quarterly feature article for a (company’s) newsletter, which is in an email and online. Now the coordinator of that newsletter and website is asking if (another division), which is over their department, can edit and use my article within their website, too.
Before I answer her, please help me understand about electronic rights.
+ Is it standard to charge for reuse? I know that in print, you can often charge for reuse.
+ Is there a guideline for how much that might be?
+ And since the rights she was purchasing weren’t spelled out at the onset, any recommendations to how we should proceed?
I want to preserve both of these relationships (I write for the other dept publication as well), but don’t want to leave hundreds of dollars on the table when it could add up if they reuse my articles in the future.
