I have a question about copyright law and have been unable to find out the answer. Twice now professors have photocopied an entire book I wrote, to use as a class textbook. Each made 30 to 40 copies, which they gave to their students. Because copyright law mentions “educational institutions”, I’m not sure if this is considered “fair use” or not…
Kelly James-Enger coined a phrase in which I recognize myself: “an extrovert in an introvert’s job.” Sure, I love the concentrated effort of writing, but I equally enjoy social situations. I especially like asking a lot of questions without people thinking I’m nosey or rude. In fact, interviewing is how I first got my name in a national magazine.
Since last week, Frank has been injured, we’ve seen a UFO (or maybe it was UFL?), we were unsuccessful at touring a winery, stayed at a really bad and very crowded campground, watched two rabbits fight, and visited the Henry Ford Museum!
I receive several hundred spams each week. Most want to show me how to make my male anatomy bigger (even though I’m a woman) while others want to dump a bunch of money into my account from some foreign dignitary who’s on the run from his or her government. The only spam that I usually forgive is spam from non-fiction authors. You see, I’m running an ezine for writers and authors. If they send me a marketing message about their book, I’ll usually overlook it. They could very well want me to review their book (even though we never publish book reviews). But, they may not know that, so I give them the benefit of the doubt.
This Week:
While watching the evening news with my husband, there was a segment on NASA’s mission to collide with a comet. I turned to my husband and said, “Oh, I’m interviewing one of the NASA experts on this subject next week”.
He gave me the strangest look, and replied, “How’d you get that?”
“I just asked.”
About a year after I started freelancing, I was getting pretty good at accepting rejections. Instead of letting it ruin my day, I would view a “No, thank you” response (as I prefer to call them), as part of the game. Usually, I would take the query, give it another good look, tweak it if needed, and send it out to someone else.
Since last week, we’ve traveled through four states, toured a quarry, stuffed ourselves as an ice cream factory and visited the boyhood home of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s husband.
This week, I’m sharing snippets of some of the worst book proposals we’ve ever received. I hope you get a giggle from them like we did. Yes, these are real!
Letters will return next week.
