Indie/Self-Publishing and Copyrights

I'm a day late on my post, but I have a genuinely good excuse... I thought today was the 15th! ;) Whoops.

A few months ago, I did a post at Operation Awesome regarding copyright issues for authors. We all know what copyright means, but how does it specifically apply to books and covers? BookWorks explains it pretty well on Publishers Weekly (see BookWorks: Understanding Copyright: What Every Indie Author Needs to Know below for the full article): 

...it is important to understand how copyright works, and what can be copyrighted and what can’t. Copyright protects “original works of authorship” that are fixed in a tangible form. This includes literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works, motion pictures, sound recordings, and architectural works. As you probably know a copyright notice looks like this: Copyright © (year of creation) (your name).

Here are a few posts I've come across regarding copyrights recently. (If you have come across any other informative posts, feel free to add them in the comments!)

* BookWorks: Understanding Copyright: What Every Indie Author Needs to Know 

* Copyright Is Not A Verb via Brad Frazer

* 5 Copyright Terms We Need to Stop Using Incorrectly via @plagiarismtoday

* Book Cover Copycats: Is it Flattery or Copyright Infringement? via Anglea Ackerman at Writers Helping Writers

* Highlights on Copyright & Publishing from the Indie Author Conference via Ruth Carter 

Of course, there are many other articles regarding copyrights that you can find with a bit of searching, but these were the ones I found most interesting. 

Happy Monday! 

May's tweets from Indie Ignites: #indie business advice

As some of you know, Indie Ignites also has a Twitter account. Though we do tweet a lot of our bookish news and events via Twitter, we also share quite a bit of indie and self-pub advice, articles, and statistics. Here are seven selected tweets shared in May that might be useful to fellow indie authors:


How to Make the Bestseller Lists: Why Categories and Keywords Matter
via Anne R. Allen and @writerplatform (link)


Facebook Ads: Should #Indie authors Buy Them?
by @caballofrances via @JFbookman (link)


How to Be a Good Critique Partner
via @Wiseink (link)


Publisher's Weekly to Launch New Site Focused on News and Info for Self-Published Authors
via @thDigitalReader (link)


How to Create a Google+ Community to Grow Your Business
via Social Media Examiner /@writerplatform (link)


The Vin Diesel School of Facebook
via @duolit (link)



Business Plan Basics for Authors and Bloggers
via @MollyGreene (link)


Not following @IndieIgnites yet? We'd love to connect with you! (Click here to find us individually on Twitter!)