Nimbus - 2003 Proceedings and our battle with the publishing people

[heiditandy]

I've had a bad two days in the world of "trying to explain copyright 
laws, contracts and implied licenses to people who are really, 
really stupid". 

Some of you may know that the initial plan for Nimbus had been to 
have CafePress print the books on a print-to-order basis, but 
because of the length of the thing, it would've cost over $30 for 
the paperback, and we wouldn't've been able to sell it via anything 
but CafePress, or in eBook form, so we started to look into other 
options in the self-publishing zone. 

We had decided to take the self-publishing route because it was the 
speediest thing to do, and also because none of us had the time, 
this past spring, to find a traditional publisher with an interest 
in publishing the wide range of papers and panels presented at 
Nimbus - while we probably could've found someone to publish the 
more academic papers, we didn't want to leave things like the ship 
debate, the fanwords and fandom history panels, etc., off to the 
side; we wanted a comprehensive record of as much Nimbus as we 
could. 

Of course, there are some papers we couldn't include. <lj 
user=kitsune13> is putting one of her papers into a book already, 
for example, so we couldn't put it into the compendium - same with 
Phil Nel and Roger HIghfield (although he gave us an article to use 
instead). 

But as those of you with the CD-Rom already know, there's over 40 
papers and panels in there, and we were looking forward to them 
being available in book form. 

And they will be, but there's been a delay. 

A while ago, we contracted with iUniverse, a self-publishing house, 
to put the book together and put it out. Clearly, they were paying 
no attention to what they were doing when they put the first draft 
of the book together - they left the author names out of the table 
of contents, they didn't bold <i>or</i> center the author names at 
the top of each paper, and they did disasterous things to <lj 
user=ajhalluk> and <lj user=wendywoowho>'s footnotes, among others 
(although they said, when we sent the correction sheet back, that 
these things would all be corrected). 

But the dealbreaker came in the past two days, after <lj 
user=gwendolyngrace>, <lj user=tea_and_toast> and I had spent 
probably 30 person-hours proofing the book. 

On the proof, their copyright notice, which is their standard, said:
<blockquote>No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in 
any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, 
including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information 
storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the 
publisher.</blockquote> 

I asked them to add in "... and the copyright holder" 
after "publisher" in the last line. I told them it would be a 
dealbreaker, and we would have to cancel publication and get a 
refund, if they refused. 

They refused. 

They actually said, "In most cases iUniverse will bring requests to 
reproduce portions of the  work to you, as representative for the 
book, but we reserve the rights as indicated on the copyright page." 
They also said that per section two of their agreement, we had given 
them the rights they were claiming on the copyright page. 

Here's what section two says: 
<blockquote>AUTHOR grants to PUBLISHER the non-exclusive, worldwide 
license to publish the WORK in print, in the English language. The 
AUTHOR also grants to PUBLISHER the right to make the WORK viewable 
on the PUBLISHER's website or partner web sites that have entered 
into agreement with the PUBLISHER in order to facilitate sales of 
the WORK.</blockquote>

We're groovy with section two. We are not, however, groovy with 
permitting a copyright notice which implies to the public that 
iUniverse has any right to grant any reproduction rights to any 
third party without the consent of the copyright holder. Arguably, 
having such a copyright notice may even cause HPEF 
to "inadvertently" appoint iUniverse as HPEF's agent for such 
purposes; per our contract with them, they actually do not have the 
right to give anyone else the opportunity to reproduce or transmit 
the works, and <i>here they are, trying to make it appear to the 
public that they do.</i> And in <i>most cases</i> they'll bring 
reproduction requests to us? In what cases won't they? 

So the contract was disolved this afternoon. And the work we've put 
into getting the proceedings published by them this summer is more 
or less for naught. 

I had a long conversation with xlibris.com today - has anyone used 
them? - about having them do the proceedings, in which case they'll 
be available via Amazon and elsewhere this fall, about 6-8 weeks 
after we expected they would be. 

I really am sorry to everyone who wanted the book (and any teachers 
who'd hoped to use it in classes this fall) regarding this delay, 
but they were trying to act in violation of the contract we'd 
entered into with them, and we could not go forward that way. 

This is why self-publishing companies should *really, really* avoid 
dealing with IP attorneys. We can be quite rigid about our practise 
areas!


heidi the disgruntled