Dorrance's Author's Guide: The Dorrance Experience

T H E L A W, C O P Y R I G H T / F A I R U S E, P R O T E C T I O N A N D Y O U P A R T II

From the moment of creation, the author holds what are called copyright rights in the work, which consist of the rights to make copies of the work, distribute such copies to the public, and to make derivative works from the original (translations, abridgments, screenplays, dramatizations, etc.). The author can sell, rent, give away, will, or transfer them individually or as a package to whomever he or she wishes. The basic rights of printing and distributing the book are normally transferred to the publisher in the publishing agreement. When publishing with a trade publisher, the author normally transfers the entire copyright claim to the publisher for a period of time agreed upon in the contract in exchange for a fee and a certain percentage of sales, or royalties, of the book. Dorrance Publishing Co., Inc. provides subsidy publishing services to authors for a fee; copyright claims therefore remain with the author, with the author assigning the rights to Dorrance for a limited amount of time specified in the publishing agreement, and are held by Dorrance throughout the term of the agreement. Dorrance applies for the copyrights of its published works in the name of the author.

Yes. For works published in 1978 or after, the law provides that the author or certain heirs of the author (usually surviving spouse, children, or sometimes grandchildren) may demand return of the transferred rights thirty-five years from the date of publication or forty years from the date of the contract, whichever is the shorter period of time. This provision of the law is valid no matter how the publishing contract reads. If the provision is exercised, the notice of termination must be served two years before the effective date and will have to be registered in the Copyright Office.

For any published work, regardless of whether it is self-published by the author or published by a publishing house, the law requires that a notice of copyright be included in the work if a copyright is being claimed in it. The notice consists of three parts: (1) the copyright symbol (©) and the word Copyright, (2) the date of the first year of publication, and (3) the name of the copyright owner. The phrase All Rights Reserved is normally added because it affords some protection in Central and South American countries that are not signatories to the Universal Copyright convention. The copyright notice should be placed either on the title page or on the page immediately following.

Any author interested in learning more about copyrights may contact any one of Dorrance Publishing Co., Inc.'s Author Relations Representatives at 1-800-695-9599 for more information about the United States copyright laws, as they relate to a particular manuscript.