Copyright. I’ve had several questions lately about basic copyright, so first let’s define it.
Copyright is a form of protection grounded in the U.S. Constitution and granted by law for original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Copyright covers both published and unpublished works. (www.copyright.gov)
This means, as I said yesterday, that as soon as you put your ideas into a fixed form—write on paper, typed into a computer, recorded on a tape—your work is protected by copyright. You, as the creator of that work, own the copyright.
When you go through a publisher to have that work published, you are essentially selling or licensing to a third party the right to publish (copy) and distribute (sell) that work in various formats. Payment for those rights come back to you in the form of royalties and/or advances against expected royalties.
The term, or length of time, that those rights are available to that publisher is defined in your contract, as are the various formats that the publisher can sell.
Current U.S. copyright law states that the “full term of copyright” lasts for the life of the author, plus 70 years. Therefore, according to your contract, the publisher will have the right to publish and sell your book for your entire lifetime, plus 50 years.
However, before you panic, usually there is an out-of-print clause or a minimum sales clause in there somewhere that states that if the publisher lets your book go out of print, or if sales of the book drop below a certain point for a given amount of time, the rights will revert back to the author. If you don’t have a clause like that, try to get one added.
