Trying to understand how copyright works for your creative business? Then this post collection will help you understand what copyright is and how it can help you.
Abby Glassenberg and I first connected via Twitter earlier this year. While we’ve talked on the phone a few times, we finally got to meet in person recently in San Francisco. When we chatted she told me that she was dreadfully embarrassed by the mistake she’s sharing with us. But I know lots of creative […]
If you aren’t familiar with Maria Brophy, you should be. Maria has been helping her husband, Drew Brophy, run a successful art business for more than fifteen years. She’s also a super savvy businesswoman. And is always willing to share her wealth of experience and stories with creatives. Because she knows what it takes to […]
I’m so excited to introduce a new interview series: learning the ropes. In it, I’ll be talking with creative entrepreneurs like you and discussing empowering and not-so-empowering experiences. They’ll be sharing a time when they learned the “legal” ropes in their business. Allowing you to learn the same lesson, without experiencing it. After each interview, […]
Over the past few weeks, there has been a lot of Internet discussion (and hopefully discussions over food) about appropriation art. These discussions can all be tied back to a single man, Richard Prince. This is not the first time that Price has been in the limelight over his work. And he has long been […]
The final steps: making payment and uploading your work If you’ve been following along, you’ve completed the first step to submitting your copyright registration application: filling out the form. Today we’ll tackle the final two steps. As a reminder, three things must come together for the U.S. Copyright Office to register your copyright: Complete registration […]
Explaining who created it and who owns it This series on how to complete your U.S. Copyright Office eCO application was inspired by the webinar Maria Brophy and I co-hosted. In Part One, we tackled selecting the right application and identifying what you are registering. In Part Three, we are going to learn how to […]
Picking the right copyright application and identifying what you are registering Every Sunday night I make a cup of tea and plot out my week at the kitchen table. I pull out colorful pens and my trusty Little Ostu planner. I make sure my appointments in my planner match up with my electronic calendar and […]
Probably the most common question I get is: Can I use this quote on {fill in the blank}? I wish I requested a dollar every time I answered it! Although then my bank teller might wonder why I started bringing in stacks of singles and that might be awkward. The serious answer to this question […]
I knew that in my quest to cultivate a community here, I wanted to make sure this website was appealing to those I wanted to attract. I wanted my visitors to feel like a guest and want to sit down and pull up a chair in my virtual home. That these guests were easily able […]
This isn’t the post I intended to write this week. My editorial calendar has a post about visual inspiration and how these can lead to unintentional copying. How you can accidentally be a copycat. But then, Design*Sponge published an article about the ethics of copying and giving credit. If you haven’t read it yet, I […]
The beginning of a collaboration is magical. Working together fills you both with excitement. Maybe you have been admiring each others work for ages and feel lucky that you get to team up. Your initial instinct is likely to jump in and get started. But I encourage you to have a couple tough conversations with your collaboration […]
The start of a collaboration is magical. The two of you are bouncing ideas off each other, getting inspired, and having lots of fun. Luckily, a good chunk of the time things stay that way and the collaboration goes off without a hitch. But sometimes problems crop up. Recently I got a call from a woman […]
Earlier this year I got an email from a friend who works as a coach. She was in a tizzy, because she had gotten this odd email from a stranger asking her about the status of their project. At first she freaked out because she thought she had dropped the ball on something. She looked […]
Last time, I gave you an overview of when you can, can’t, and maybe shouldn’t act when you find your content used without your permission. This time I want to give you the exact procedure that I use to make this decision. And it’s all based on four simple questions that you only have to answer […]
