Tag Archives: copyright

Second Quarter Goals

by Jennette,
Things are getting green again
Things are getting green around here, but not much else has changed – and that’s fine with me!

It’s been another quiet week here, and I made good progress on figuring out my WIP. I don’t have a word count this time, since a lot of what I did included deleting and changing. But that doesn’t really matter since it’s just notes. I have not yet figured out the ending, but that usually comes to me as I get closer to it, so at this point, I should have enough to break into a list of scenes (i.e., outline) and get back to the writing.

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It’s now the start of ROW80 Round 2 and the second quarter, so time to review my goals. Last quarter, my writing goal was to add 16,000 words to the WIP. I ended up with about 13,000, which is a lot more than I thought I did, so I’ll consider that “failing to success.” I also met my learning goal of completing two online workshops. I ran a little behind on my goal of learning something about copyright once a month, but I did that this past week, and summarized what I learned below.

This quarter/Round, I’m going to stick to the same goals:

  • 16,000 words on the WIP
  • Two online workshops
  • Learn about copyright once a month, or three times
  • I also want to choose a theme for my website revamp, which was a bonus goal last quarter (obviously not done)

More on Copyright

Most of this month’s reading on copyright had to do with registering collections of items, such as newspapers or magazines. Items published within a single calendar year can be registered as a group, but how many and how often depends on how often the periodical is published. A daily newspaper should be registered once a month, after the last day’s articles are published. A magazine that only publishes once a month may wait until the year is up, but it’s recommended to register every three months, so that the registration is “timely” and provides all the protections in case of infringement.

The part of this that’s more likely to apply to fiction writers is the fact that we can register multiple short works together–for example, short stories that appeared in different anthologies, magazines, etc., for a single registration fee. Like periodicals themselves, these stories/articles could be copyrighted as a single group that’s been published within a calendar year. And the same caveat applies where the author may want to register few items every three months to ensure that they are all registered in a timely manner to provide maximum protection.

Something else to note about group copyright registration is that the claimant (author or rights-holder) must be the same person(s) or entity.

What I’ve Been Reading

I still haven’t finished the novel I started last week, so nothing to report here.

What I’ve Been Writing

As noted above, more notes. This week, I want to break down my notes into a list of scenes (outline), and start back into writing. For learning, I want to do Week 2 of the WMG Workshop I started last week on studying fiction.

What about you–how are things going where you are? I hope you’re staying healthy! Has the pandemic made it more difficult to work on your goals, or has it given you more time–or like me, not affected things so far? How are you doing on whatever goals you might have, whether writing or otherwise? Please share in the comments–I love to hear from you!

Jennette Marie Powell writes stories about ordinary people in ordinary places, who do extraordinary things and learn that those ordinary places are anything but. In her Saturn Society novels, unwilling time travelers do what they must to make things right... and change more than they expect. You can find her books at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, iTunes, and more.

Changing Goals, and Copyright

by Jennette,

It’s now March 1st, and I’m nowhere near where I’d hoped to be with my WIP.

I actually had a good week, a nice, relatively-uneventful one. Even better, my migraines have backed off a bit, and I only had a headache two days this week, and just regular headaches at that. Still unpleasant, but not migraine-unpleasant. Yet I can’t seem to figure out what happens next in the WIP, and am even drawing a blank with my lists of 20 things. So I started back into learning, this time with WMG Publishing’s Secondary Plotlines online workshop. Just watching a few of the videos knocked some ideas loose, so I did start back into the WIP for 650 words, most of which were on one night, so yay! However, it’s a long way from what I set out to do this month. More on that below.

What I’ve Been Reading

The novel I’ve been reading is a long one, so I’m still not finished with it. I’m enjoying it, so I’ll definitely discuss here when I’m done. In nonfiction, I read 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam. This book was published ten years ago, but is every bit as relevant now as it was when it came out, and very well could become a time management classic. One of the basic exercises the author suggests is to track how you spend your time for a week (Dean Wesley Smith suggests this too, in his Carving Out Time for Your Writing video lecture). It’s really eye-opening to see how we really spend our time. I spend more on Facebook and playing games than I thought. I know I need a lot of downtime, so overall, it wasn’t a surprise. The rest of 168 Hours is also good, and it deals with both work and home. Recommended if you want to see how you can find more time to do the things you want to do, and less on things you have to do.

Copyright Learning

I also spent some time reading The Copyright Handbook this week, meeting my goal to learn something about copyright each month. Chapter Three deals with registering copyright. As I mentioned last month, registration is not necessary to have copyright–as soon as you commit your work to a tangible form (that includes computer data), it’s considered copyrighted. However, if someone infringes your copyright, you can’t take them to court unless the work is registered. And if you register after the infringement occurs, you can only go after actual damages, which can be hard to prove. The exception is with a newly-published work: you have up to three months after publication to register, even if the infringement occurs prior to the registration. The catch here is that some courts consider registration to happen upon submittal, others consider it to happen when you receive the certificate, and still others (including the federal court for my area) are unspecified. So bottom line, if you’re an author, register your work ASAP after publication for the most protection!

Registering a work where the same entity owns the rights to all components–the text, front matter, cover design, and back cover copy for a book, for example–is a simple matter. But when those components’ rights are owned by different people, each owner’s portion should be registered separately to get the maximum benefit in case of infringement. Same goes for an anthology, where the works within are copyrighted by different authors.

What I’ve Been Writing

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As noted above, my WIP is slow-going. My goal for February was to write 12,000 words. I barely got 3,000–and that was more than I thought I’d written. So it’s time to revise those goals. For March, I’m going to shoot for 5000 words total, starting with 1,000 this week. If I hit the March goal, that will bring my quarterly total to 16,000–about half of my original goal but still something.

I did meet my learning goal this week, which was to go through the Week 2 videos and do the assignment for another online workshop on Secondary Plotlines. I’d already done the first week a while back, so I reviewed my notes for that first.

What about you–have you had any goal changes lately? Have you ever tracked how you spend your time? If so, what surprised you? If not, what do you think you’d find? And how are you doing on whatever goals you have, whether writing-related or otherwise? Please share in the comments–I’d love to hear from you!

Jennette Marie Powell writes stories about ordinary people in ordinary places, who do extraordinary things and learn that those ordinary places are anything but. In her Saturn Society novels, unwilling time travelers do what they must to make things right... and change more than they expect. You can find her books at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, iTunes, and more.

Unpacking Copyright

by Jennette,

This week around the house, I finally got around to unpacking some lingering boxes. Three of these were in the master closet, along with a garbage bag full of my husband’s clothes (that he obviously hasn’t really missed, but oh well…). DH installed the final closet organizer and shelves, so I did the unpacking.

What’s surprising is the amount of empty shelf space, along with half of a clothing rail. The rail will be filled when we bring up our extra coats from the basement, but the shelves? I guess I did a better job of decluttering before the move than I thought!

The other thing DH did was to tidy up and hang pictures in this little nook off of the great room. On the right is the door into our bedroom. I finally unpacked the several boxes of books there, and filled the bookshelf, and DH hung his family memorial items. I’m happy with how it turned out! There are still plenty of projects, but getting these done is a good feeling.

Learning about Copyright

This year, I set a goal to learn something about copyright once a month. Copyright is so important to writers, as it’s what gives our work value and enables us to make money from it, by preventing others from doing so without our permission (legally, at least). But there is so much nuance to it, and so many details.

A couple years ago for Christmas, I received The Copyright Handbook, by Stephen Fishman. I already knew the basics, like the fact that we have a copyright in our work as soon as it’s committed to paper, hard drive, or whatever other fixed form, and that holding a copyright does not require registration. I re-read Chapter One, which is a good reinforcement of the basics. On one level, I knew that it’s not required to put a copyright notice on the material for it to be copyrighted, but what I wasn’t clear on was that this isn’t even required by a publisher. The notice is more to reinforce the fact that it’s copyrighted to anyone who might be thinking of infringing, and deter those who might otherwise not realize the material is copyrighted. I also learned that the disclaimers that are inserted by publishers are mostly a tradition (and reinforcement to those who might unwittingly use the material otherwise), but not a requirement, though they were historically. The words “all rights reserved” were never a requirement except in Brazil and Honduras.

If infringement does occur, the author is likely to get a better settlement if the material bears a copyright notice. Without the notice, the infringer might owe a lesser settlement due to the possibility that they could have thought the material was in the public domain (i.e., not copyrighted).

What I’ve Been Reading

I’m still reading the final book in that fantasy box set, which is actually six short novels. That box set has been quite the deal, at $ .99, and has given me many hours of entertainment! I’m really enjoying the current book.

In nonfiction, I read Playing with Fire by Scott Rieckens. One thing I love about reading personal finance blogs is reading about the author’s journey out of debt and/or to being financially independent. Playing with Fire is such a story, about when the author realized he and his wife wouldn’t be able to retire until they were over 70, due to their paycheck-to-paycheck, luxurious lifestyle, and goes over the changes they made to get out of that cycle and work toward the life the really wanted. Recommended!

What I’ve Been Writing

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I met my writing goal this week of 450 words/day for five days, and a total of 2250 words. Actually, I exceeded it a little, and got over 2400 words, so that tells me I’m good to bump up my goal again! So this week, I’m going to shoot for 500 words/day, for five days, and a total of 2500 words.

I met my learning goals this time too, by learning something about copyright as noted above, and I also completed Week 4’s videos and assignment for the WMG Publishing “Teams in Fiction” workshop. This week, I want to complete the videos and assignment for Week 5.

What about you–have you unpacked anything interesting lately? What have you read recently? And how are you doing on whatever goals you might have, whether writing-related or otherwise? I’d love to hear from you–please share in the comments!

Jennette Marie Powell writes stories about ordinary people in ordinary places, who do extraordinary things and learn that those ordinary places are anything but. In her Saturn Society novels, unwilling time travelers do what they must to make things right... and change more than they expect. You can find her books at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, iTunes, and more.