Your Words, Your Copyright: Know Your Rights
Avoid One of the Most Expensive Mistakes a Business Owner Can Make
Publishing in the United States is an unregulated industry, which can cause significant confusion if you want to publish your book.
AUTHOR BE AWARE: Hybrid Publishing
What it is (at its core): A shared-investment model where the author contributes financially and the publisher provides selected professional publishing services.
Most first-time authors don’t realize they’re making a decision that can cost them for decades.
Take Alison’s story. Alison spent her entire life creating and teaching college-level courses to ministerial students. Her PhD did not prepare her to navigate this new world of publishing, and when someone responded to her publisher’s query letter, stating, “We’d love to publish your book!” she squealed with delight.
They offered to reduce their cost by 50% and let her pay off the remaining balance. In her rush to sign the contract, she may have failed to read each word therein and missed the section stating that THIS HYBRID publisher retains ownership of her ISBN, her copyright, and her royalties until she pays the publisher the remaining balance in full.
Don’t let YOUR WORDS be held hostage. The additional caveat she missed was that once she paid off her balance (by them selling her book ONLY from their website), she only had to pay them an additional $1500 to regain ownership of her book and take back her copyright. They did not even list her book on Amazon.com to help boost sales.
When you give up your copyright, you’re not just handing over a book — you’re handing over:
- Control of content and creative
- Future income
- How your work is used, licensed, or repurposed
- Your Brain Trust
Business owners, especially, need to BE AWARE of how this might impact their long-term goals.
Your book isn’t just a book. The future of your book could easily include:
- Online courses
- Keynote speaker invitations
- Lead generation excerpts
- Your family legacy
- Long-term intellectual asset
When someone else owns the rights to your book, you’re renting access to your own work.
After more than 20 years in publishing, I’ve seen incredibly smart people sign contracts they didn’t fully understand — simply because they were excited to be “picked.”
The worst bait-and-switch we’ve seen involves a hybrid publisher who claimed ownership of your manuscript if they deemed it might make a great movie script. AND actually stating that you would not receive any share of the profits!
Here’s the truth: You don’t need permission to publish your wisdom.
READ YOUR CONTRACTS, or hire a professional attorney to read them for you.
You deserve both:
- expert support
- ownership of your creative genius
Our Author-As-Publisher program allows business owners to retain 100% of their rights and royalties while our professional team handles the heavy lifting.
At Davis Creative Publishing, we help you build your platform, publish your book, and create additional streams of revenue.
If you’re going to put your name on the cover, your name should also be on the copyright page.
We do all the work.
You get all the accolades.
If this resonates with you and you’d like to learn more, schedule time on my calendar for a conversation.
I’d love to hear more about you and your book idea.
PS: Cathy Davis is not an attorney, but would be happy to introduce you to one of several experienced publishing attorneys who can help if you find yourself in a difficult contract situation.
