July Workshops and Copyright

Still Time to Jump In…

Kris and I have been working some on the two new regular workshops, Information Flow and The Magic Bakery, and they are turning out really nifty so far, in my opinion.

The Magic Bakery will help put this business in complete perspective. And Information Flow is going to be tough, but an eye-opener.

And I had a question yesterday that made me realize that writers just don’t know much about the aspects of Public Domain, and thus Copyright.

So if I asked the question… “Can your heirs still sell your work 71 years after your death, when your work has dropped into the public domain?” Would you know the answer? If you don’t instantly know the answer, you need to learn copyright.

We don’t sell anything, folks. And if every traditional writer understood what they were actually signing their contracts when it came to copyright. I don’t mean pretend to know, but really, really understood what it meant, very few would ever sign a traditional contract.

Last week I walked into a Barnes & Noble and after ten minutes I had to leave. I couldn’t stand the overwhelming feeling of being sorry for the authors who had books in there. Not kidding. Incredible sadness.

And I even found three of my old media books, books I have not seen royalty statements on for 15 years. New editions.

But it wasn’t my books that caused me to leave, it was all those new authors who had signed away the rights to their own art for long past their own death. All for the flash of having a book published by a traditional imprint, giving copies to their families, and then getting dropped by their publishers for not enough sales on their second book.

I understand copyright and so walking into that store, knowing exactly the contracts those authors signed, just depressed me more than I wanted to say.

The Magic Bakery workshop will help you fully understand why walking into a store like Barnes & Noble made me so sad.

So anyhow, less than a week until the July Regular Workshops start up.

Monthly Regular Workshops…

You can find them under Online Workshops to the right of this post. Sign up for July on Teachable.com. For credits or workshops beyond July, write me.

Each regular workshop is 6 weeks long.

Again, it will take you about three hours per week on your own pace to do each of these if you do the assignments. These are the starting dates of upcoming regular workshops.

All have openings at the moment.

Class #1… July 10th … Depth #3: Research
Class #2… July 10th … Author Voice
Class #3… July 10th … Dialog
Class #4… July 10th … Writing into the Dark
Class #5… July 10th … Writing Fiction Sales Copy
Class #6… July 10th … Writing and Selling Short Stories
Class #7… July 11th … Depth in Writing
Class #8… July 11th … Business
Class #9… July 11th … Writing Fantasy
Class #10… July 11th … Information Flow
Class #11… July 11th … Magic Bakery
Class #12… July 11th … Advanced Depth

Again, if you don’t have credits, sign up direction at Teachable.