DRM is an acronym that readers may not associate with good experiences – you’ll encounter it a lot in articles about the woman who had her digital library remotely wiped from her Kindle by Amazon  or ones about the poetic deletion of George Orwell’s 1984 from hundreds of e-reader devices. DRM is a topic that gets people in flames – and as a future author, you may find yourself engulfed in the controversy. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management.  DRM is a general term to describe any technology that is meant to limit piracy and lessen copyright infractions. For music, that might mean CDs that can’t play on computers. For business, that might be software that prevents you from forwarding emails. For books, that might mean digital editions that can only be used by one device. DRM is one of those hot-button issues that has only become an issue in the past 10 or so years – and perhaps only the last two years in association with books. Publishing doesn’t have a long history with piracy – there wasn’t a crackdown on photocopying books during the Kazaa and Napster years that wracked the music industry. Copyright issues on the user-end just didn’t exist until Kindles, tablet computers, and cellphones became portable libraries. But with the rise of the e-reader, suddenly it is feasible to share (or steal, depending on who you ask) books online in the same way as movies or music.   DRM in publishing can cover a variety…

If you seek traditional publication for your book manuscript, then it is incumbent upon you to obtain copyright permissions for any text or images which are not original. The book will not go to print until every written permission has been secured. Because publishing is a for-profit venture, an author cannot include the copyrighted work of others without permission and it is not covered under the “Fair Use” provisions given to non-profits under the U.S. Copyright Law. Using a two or three sentence quote and providing proper attribution to the published source does not require copyright permission. If, however, you use two or three lines from a poem then you must get written authorization to include the words. More than a paragraph or two from a scholarly text, or an instrument or diagram or table or whatever it is you want to include, be sure you check copyright. To find out who the copyright holder of a piece of textual intellectual property, look to the original source of publication. Find the publisher and go their website and search for their site for Copyright Permissions. For example, if the quote you want to use comes from a book published by Penguin Random House, you would enter the search terms “copyright permissions Penguin Random House” to find the link to permissions.penguinrandomhouse.com. Most major publishers have online request forms. If there is no online request form, ask your publisher if they have a form letter to submit to gain copyright permissions. If they…

Ann Marie Ackermann, author of Death of an Assassin: The True Story of the German Murderer Who Died Defending Robert E. Lee, will be at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, on April 9. She will give a book talk with the Tippecanoe Civil War Roundtable. This is her third trip from Germany to the U.S. to promote her book since it was released by Kent State University Press in September 2017. This September, the German edition will be released by Silberburg Verlag. Ann Marie Ackermann agreed to write a guest post on the method she used to adhere to copyright laws in the U.S., and for the new edition, in Germany. Welcome Ann Marie Ackermann. You can’t control where lightning will strike. Your best protection is a lightning rod, so that when it does strike, the shock will be deflected. Copyright law is no different. You can’t control whether someone sues you, but advance preparation can help keep liability from sticking. Physicians ask for informed consent agreements, family lawyers ask for prenuptial agreements, and insurance contracts restrict the type and amount of damages. Each example is nothing more than a liability lightening rod. As an author, you need a lightning rod too. If you plan to reproduce images or quote other authors, you need to secure written permission unless the material is in the public domain. Good records of your permissions will help you and your publisher in the long run. Not only will it speed up the book’s…