What's it like to be a copyright heir? In the Financial Times, Rachel Keeler writes about the descendants of James Joyce (image), Roald Dahl, Ian Flemming and others. Excerpt: For lovers and scholars of the 20th-century novel, Stephen Joyce has become something of a literary villain. The grandson and sole living heir of James Joyce, the Irish author and poet, has spent the past 17 years fiercely guarding his family’s estate through a series of court battles with those brave enough to try to use copyrighted Joyce documents. Stephen’s notoriously acerbic dealings...

I was sitting in one of the waiting areas at Toronto's Union Station, waiting for the train to Montreal, when he approached me. “Hello there,” he said with a pleasant nod. He sat down beside me, and I looked up from my Reader, noticing his eyes---blue, piercing---and his hair---black ringlets wafting adorably across well-chiseled cheeks and a sleek lantern jaw. He was wearing an outfit that looked almost like a uniform, but I couldn't place from where it might be. I snapped shut the cover of my Reader and smiled back at him. “Hello,” I said....

Want to spend more time writing and less time dealing with Books in Print, Google Book Search and other services? Or uploading your works to Amazon? Or perhaps setting up a blog to promote yourself? Laura J. Dawson, a 20-year veteran of the publishing industry, is launching AuthorWeb to help writers cope with the above, and more. Best of luck, Laura! In a sense Laura is reflecting a major trend---the shrinking of some large publishers and the rise of self-published writers, as well as the growing expectations of publishing houses that authors will promote themselves online....

From the Inside Google Book Search Blog In 2004, Google began a partnership with Oxford University Library to scan mostly 19th century public domain books from its Bodleian library. Five years on, we're delighted to announce the end of this phase of our scanning with Oxford, our first European partner. Together, we have digitized and made available on Google Book Search many hundreds of thousands of public domain books from the Bodleian and other Oxford libraries, representing the bulk of their available public domain content. From English to German, to Spanish and...

From their site: Founded in 2004 we're a not-for-profit organization promoting open knowledge: that's any kind of information – sonnets to statistics, genes to geodata – that can be freely used, reused, and redistributed. Find out more » We organize events like OKCon, run projects like Open Shakespeare, and develop tools like CKAN and KnowledgeForge to help people create, find and share open material. See our full list of events » and projects ». The Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) will take place in London on March 28.  For details check the link....

EurActiv’s LinksDossier has a nice summary of Copyright protection of online content, as it relates to Europe.  It includes a timeline, policy summary, issues summary, position summary and a large compilation of links.  An excellent resource....

I have had a day to think about what I saw at the FTC’s town hall meeting on Digital Rights Management yesterday, and what it might mean for the future of DRM. The conference fell into the classic “good news, bad news” scenario. Unrealistic Expectations The good news is that the FTC is now more aware than ever of the difficulties to consumers implicit in Digital Rights Management (especially since they received over 800 public comments, which they admitted during the meeting they had not managed to work all the way through yet). The bad news...

This is being reported today in E-Reads : In October 2008 Random House circulated a letter among literary agents announcing a shift in e-book royalties from one based on list price to one based on actual net moneys received. Five months later, Simon & Schuster has followed Random's example. "Beginning March 1, 2009," writes Judith Curr, Executive Vice President and Publishers of S&S's Atria Books division, in a Dear Agent letter, "all Simon & Schuster contracts worldwide will offer a royalty of 25% of net receipts for all sales of all electronic editions including eBooks and...

We’ve previously reported on Flatworld, and it looks as if they are doing well.  This is from a just-released press bulletin: Greenhill SAVP announced today it has invested in Flat World Knowledge (“Flat World”).  Greenhill SAVP partnered with Valhalla Partners and High Peaks Venture Partners on an $8m Series A financing. Based in Nyack, New York, Flat World (www.flatworldknowledge.com) is the world’s first publisher of open source commercial textbooks.  Flat World’s textbooks are written by world-class authors.  The company makes its books available as free web-hosted textbooks.  It earns revenue and pays...

Yen at the Book Publicity Blog has embarked on an admirable crusade to get people to use e-galleys these days---digital advance reading copies or ARCs, in current parlance. I love the idea. She works for Viking Penguin, and if you qualify as a reviewer and want a title to write up, you'll score points with her if you ask for E. Alas, she can't deliver it now but hopes to, in the future. Yen's idea isn't to force everyone to use e-galleys; rather, those who want to, and who can afford the right readers. Meanwhile TeleRead's Kat Meyer, another expert...

I received the following email and I thought it was interesting enough to publish. I must admit that I don't know anything about this, and so am taking a chance that the author is, indeed, correct. If she is, and the email has credibility in my eyes, then it is an important issue that should be brought to light. The email begins: Dear Sir, I am a patron of U.S. Library of Congress talking book program. Since I have a background in computer science I have anticipated the introduction of digital talking books for decades. The thought...

The FTC was not the only three-letter acronym to address its fellow three-letter acronym, DRM, today. NPR’s All Things Considered weighed in with a four-minute audio report and accompanying text news story on e-book DRM. Laura Sydell interviewed Naomi Novik, author of the Temeraire books, on her travails buying a DRM’d Isaac Asimov novel, and her concerns that her fans might not be able to make full fair use of her own novels because of DRM. Sydell also spoke to Evan Schnittman of Oxford University Press and Ian Freed, the vice president of Amazon Kindle, both of...