Advanced Magic Bakery… Introduction

ADVANCED MAGIC BAKERY

Copyright, Trademark, and Branding in the Modern World

Dean Wesley Smith

(Author Note: I am going to write this book here one chapter at a time… At some point it will also be a class on Teachable and the book will be for sale in my store.)

INTRODUCTION

You are a magician.

You are. Trust me. And not just an illusionist. You are a real, honest-to-god magician with real magic. Although often you use the techniques of an illusionist as well.

But your magic is very, very real. You create from nothing entire people, entire worlds, entire galaxies. You help people understand the feelings of loss and love and so much more. By using your magic, you can transport a person to another place, another time, and let them be something or someone they could never be in their own world.

You help those who can’t walk in their own world stride through magical places, people who don’t have love experience the wonders of falling in love, and you give the young trapped in bad homes a pathway to escape.

Your stage is your computer, your audience is the entire world.

You are a fiction writer.

You create on a daily basis enjoyment, entertainment, and illusion to transport your readers into your worlds. When done well, that is flat magical.

But when the writer returns from the worlds, the lands, the people they have created, they have to live in the hard, real world of business to get their words and magic out to readers.

Most writers think the magic they have stops when they finish a story. That there is no magic in the business of publishing. And most writers are flat wrong. Sorry.

Magic runs through the entire process. But the writer must understand how the magic in the business works to fully get the most from their creations.

That is what this book is about.

I have been a fiction writer for fifty years. Along the way I was also an editor, a publisher, and the co-owner of two publishing companies. I have three years of law school which helps me really understand the magic of copyright, branding, and trademark.

And trust me, it is magic.

Back in 2017, I wrote a book called THE MAGIC BAKERY attempting to help writers understand how copyright works. Now, in eight years, indie publishing of fiction has drastically changed and I would love to bring the ideas in THE MAGIC BAKERY forward.

I am not going to update or even look at that original book. Or the original workshop that went along with it. I am going to write this fresh here in 2025, talking not only about copyright, but branding and trademark and how they all go together.

And to make the idea on all of this clear, I am going to use the metaphor of a bakery that specializes in pies.

It will be a small business just like you can find on any street corner. But it will be magic because a writer runs it and is the baker. And the metaphor is that every story the writer creates brings about a magic pie for the writer’s shop.

So I hope you step inside the magic bakery, into the fantastic smells of pumpkin and apple and cherry, all warm, all fresh. Because magic bakery pies are always warm and fresh and never spoil. And while you are in the bakery, I will give you a tour behind the scenes and into how the bakery stays alive and makes money.

And with luck, when you leave the magic bakery and step out onto the dull, gray concrete of the sidewalk, you will have an understanding of how copyright and branding and trademark work in this modern world of 2025.

(Coming soon… Chapter One… A Magic Pie)