Tuesday 21 December 2010

Copyright Challenges 21st December 2010.

I had an interesting weekend with a retailer this last week, when they decided to challenge our right to publish some of our books.

We were finally able to sign an agreement with this particular prime e-book retailer when they lifted their restriction on dealing with small publishers who didn’t have a US bank account. Since they’ve now changed this policy and will pay us by cheque I was setting up the agreement within 30 seconds of finding out they’d relaxed the restriction. That’s not to say they told us they were relaxing it, it was when I found out.

Obviously, to ensure the process is working properly (as much from our end as from theirs), in the first instance, I only loaded one book to them planning to check it on their site before going any further.

I was quite surprised when they challenged our “copyright” on this book, but that wasn’t that unreasonable when you consider their reason was the author’s name didn’t match the account name. Clearly this was an automated response, the word “Publishing” in the account name would have been a clue to a human operator (Ed - there again, perhaps not!).

Answering this question brought another automated response - it takes 2 working days to process e-mails. I waited for a day and then checked again – lo and behold the book was up on the site and I downloaded and checked a copy. I never did get an answer to my e-mail. Since the book was okay I continued with the upload process, and have currently uploaded 48 books.
Of these 48 books so far uploaded, some 15 (including some of mine and Paulette’s) had been published previously by an American publisher whose unlamented demise in mid 2009 is documented elsewhere.

Over the weekend this retailer challenged our “copyright” on two of these books since they had already been published by said publisher before. One of those books was mine, and one was Paulette’s. Interestingly the other 13 or so weren’t challenged and have been loaded onto their web site.

Of course, I have responded to the e-mail again, asserting our right to publish, and enclosed copy contracts, but again the response I received is the same “it takes 2 working days...”

Seeing as how, like all reputable publishers we only contract the “publishing rights” to a book and NEVER EVER infringe on the author’s copyright to the original material, it’s a little upsetting that this retailer throws the word “copyright” around with such abandon.

Mildly irritated would be the correct description of my current frame of mind...

3 comments:

  1. Ugh, I wondered if that was going to crop up to haunt us.

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  2. Didn't challenge yours hon, just those two.

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  3. All resolved, the books in question are now fully uploading to them.

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