copyright – Mick Canning

It’s a fight to the death!

Well, okay, not quite that, but bear with me for a bit longer.

The other week I gave a short talk to my writing group on reasons a writer should be on social media and, more importantly, why they needed a blog. I’m not going to go into this in any detail now, but I promised I’d summarise what I said in bullet points, and then thought it might be worth putting up here to see if anyone felt like adding anything to it.

So…

Why?

As a writer, you need to have a social media presence to sell books, to get known. Even if you are a published author.
On a social media platform, you are aiming to get shares for your posts. The more shares, the more people will see them.
It’s all about engaging with customers, fans and critics.
There are a huge number of platforms, but just a few examples that I have experience of:
Facebook is the biggest, and the most active, with a high rate of engagement. Having an Author Page is a good way to engage through backstories, questions, surveys and daily updates (yours or your work), ‘Behind the scenes’ articles.
Linkedin has many users, but a low rate of engagement. A business page can be useful.
Twitter is short and succinct. A sort of ‘Marketing Lite’. Posts appear fleetingly and then are essentially gone, though, unless they generate lots of likes and retweets.
Goodreads is like ‘background’ media – people need to seek you out to find you.
But the number one way to be found is through blog posts.
Like all good social media, blogs encourage visitors to return. Unlike ordinary websites, they are updated regularly and the reader can be alerted to each new post.
There are many other reasons to blog, viz:

Teaches you to write more professionally – you have an audience
Discipline
Practice
Feedback from people outside your usual circle
Networking with others
You can upload links to other social media
There is space to write more in-depth than on other social media
To review work for other writers
To explore ideas and get feedback on these

A blog is simply a website with posts being regularly replaced, although the old ones are still on the website to read.
There are many blogging platforms, but I use WordPress.
One advantage of WP is the ease by which readers can see you have a new post.
Whichever platform you choose, it should have clear instructions and / or tutorials to help you set up.
It should also allow you to block spammers, remove adverts (by upgrading), monetise your site, and change the layout. In other words, have as much control as possible over its appearance.
It can be really helpful if the platform provides diagnostics on data such as page views, visitors, likes, comments, and links to and from your site. This helps you plan and refine how you run it.

How?

Purchase your own address! It is not very expensive, but it makes your blog more personal, more professional, and the address more memorable. And the host cannot arbitrarily close it down, which might happen with a free site.
Start by going and looking at other blogs, to find what you like and might work for you. then use your Site Builder Tool to create your site.
Once you begin writing your first post make sure you are using a clear font that stands out.
Keep the post around 500 words, certainly under 1000. When you have a decent following, you may get away with more, but new readers will be put off by longer ones. (As a guide, this post has 945 words).
Add a picture or two to help it stand out and look less daunting, but not too many. And not just dozens of selfies, unless you are an established celebrity. It’s a real turn off.
Make the post interesting! Put some good stuff in first, to get the readers’ attention. And don’t save all the good stuff until the end, as readers might not otherwise get there.
Use categories and tabs on each post to help new readers find them.

Issues

Don’t feel under pressure to post to a fixed schedule.
Don’t be afraid to change the subjects you post about – it’s all under your control and there are no rules on it. Let it develop organically.
Don’t be afraid to take a break if you need to. It’s very easy to get into a mindset where you think you need to do all these things to a rigid schedule.
Don’t obsess about the number of followers you have or likes / comments you get. Chasing them is counter-productive.
Find some blogs YOU like, and follow them, commenting when you have something to say. That way you will begin to get visits in return and then, hopefully, follows back. It is pointless following a blog that doesn’t interest you, just hoping to get a follow back. You want followers who will be interested in what you have to offer.
And on that subject, if a new follower has a site that doesn’t interest you, there is no obligation for you to follow them back.
And don’t feel obliged to comment on / like / or even read every post on blogs you follow.
Do remember that copyright law applies exactly the same on the internet as it does in the real world. If you copy a photo or article from the internet without permission and post it on your blog be prepared for possible legal unpleasantness. I always use my own, just to be safe. I think it looks better, too.

Boy, are you in trouble!

005

But first, a disclaimer. I am not a legal expert, and if you are in any doubt about the subjects I’m talking about, you should consult an authoritative source.

In general, as most writers are aware, the maker of an artistic work (e.g. painting, novel, photograph, concerto) automatically owns the copyright to said work. Selling the work does not constitute selling the copyright. This is an issue that occasionally confuses writers, for example, but it is worth remembering that even if a publisher agrees to publish your new novel, you retain the ownership and copyright to that novel, unless you specifically sign them away.

This means that the painter of a picture may sell the picture, but the new owner has no right to make any copy of this work for any purpose, and the artist retains the right to do so. Again, if the new owner is to have the right to make a copy of the picture and publish it, the artist must specifically assign the new owner the right to do so. After all, purchasing a novel or a music CD does not confer the right to copy and sell either of those.

But it’s not all as straightforward as that, and it’s more complicated if an artist has been specifically paid to create it for a purpose, or creates it as part of their duties for an employer. In this case, the employer / commissioner may hold the copyright.

As an example of this, my novel Making Friends with the Crocodile features an image from one of my paintings on the cover (see picture on the right). I sold the painting many years ago, but the image still belongs to me as I did not sign it away.

Therefore if you wish to use an image on the cover of your book that does not belong to you, you must obtain written permission from the copyright holder to do so. If so, then what you will almost certainly get / buy are reproduction rights and NOT the copyright. That would give you the right to use the image for certain purposes (e.g. book cover) but the artist retains the right to sell the reproduction rights to others, too.

Unless they are exclusive reproduction rights. See? I told you this could get complicated.

It is possible to take (another) artist’s work and sufficiently transform it so that it becomes a new work, but again the devil is in the detail (quite literally). There have been a number of cases where artists have taken others to court to argue the point – and the point is whether the new work is sufficient transformative to be considered a new work. As an example, a photograph downloaded from the internet and then either just being subject to colour changes, or having another image added to it, was considered to be infringing the original copyright.

But there have been other cases where the original image has been altered sufficiently to be considered a new work. If you are intending to go down this route, you would be wise to acquaint yourself with the ins and outs of this. To get a more detailed analysis, you might find this link useful: February 13th Creative

And if you have paid someone for an image for your cover? It might be someone you know, or it might be over the internet (perhaps one of these ‘get a service for five dollars’ sites), but the law doesn’t change. Ensure you have the appropriate permission, preferably signed, before pressing the ‘publish’ button with their image on your cover.

It could save you an awful lot of hassle.