What About Copyright?

A year or two ago I bought licenses for using Publisher Rocket and also Atticus so I am on Dave Chesson’s email distribution list. Mr Chesson is the CEO of Aegis Investments, and the founder of Publisher Rocket, Atticus and more. In an email received today, subject: Why copyright registration just became non-negotiable, Dave had this to say: “Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI model, scraped hundreds of thousands of books from pirate sites. When the case went to court, the judge ruled that using pirated books isn’t fair use. The result? About 465,000 books were identified as part of the case, and the rights holders of those books are now eligible for payments of around $3k per title. But here’s what most people missed: Not every impacted author gets a check. Only those with registered copyrights are eligible.” So, is it true? Is this something else indy authors need to do? I had checked this out previously and from the copyright.gov/engage/writers page they state the following: If you want to dive into this deeper, on the Copyright.gov site, specifically the registration of literary works page, there are a bunch of resources for your learning experience that are as follows. Rather watch than read? The U.S. Copyright Office also has a YouTube channel. So, I thought, what the hell. I’ll do it. Some notes from the process are as follows. Here is where you create an Electronic Copyright Office (eCO) account: https://eservice.eco.loc.gov/siebel/app/eservice/enu?SWECmd=GotoView&SWEView=VBC+User+Registration+Initial+Form+View&SWERF=1&SWEHo=&SWEBU=1&SWEApplet0=VBC+User+Registration+Initial+Form+Applet&SWERowId0=VRId-0 Once I logged in I used the One Work by One Author I went through the eCO process and here are some of the decisions I made. After I finished I realized I’d probably made a mistake. I have two ISBNs assigned for my novel. One for the hardcopy paperback, the other for the eBook. I decided

Continue readingWhat About Copyright?

To or Not To Create an Audiobook

The old school cassette recorder is funny, right? I had one just like that. When The Beatles album, Let It Be, came out I recorded it on a cassette so I could take it with me everywhere. At night I’d listen to it in bed using the one little ear bud that was the norm for such things back then. Ah, today there are many choices. I have been trained and have done voice over work (games & training videos). I wanted to do some audiobook recordings for LibriVox some years ago but dealing with the technical aspects of Audacity were tedious and I gave up. So when my cousin begged me (she said Please) to create an audiobook of my SAAI novel the first thoughts I had were how tedious that would be because I assumed I’d do it myself using Audacity. Me. The AI immersed silly woman did not, at first, think of using AI to convert my book. Me. The author who always uses the “Read Aloud” function in Microsoft Word as part of my editing process. I crack myself up. There are so many options out there for creating audiobooks it’s kind of hard to decide so here’s what I’ve learned in my pursuit of knowledge in that area. Of course, I eventually get around to asking my AI Assistant for help and was advised as follows. Q: What are the most secure (not risking my copyright) methods of using AI to create audiobooks? A. To create audiobooks using AI while protecting your copyright and creative control, you’ll want to focus on tools and workflows that respect authorship, offer licensing clarity, and minimize the risk of voice misuse or unauthorized distribution. Here’s a breakdown of the most secure methods: 🔐 1. Use AI Tools That Offer

Continue readingTo or Not To Create an Audiobook