Copyright & Getting It Right

Happy New Year!

Public Domain Day - The Importance of Copyright

January 1 was Public Domain Day, the day that old works fall out of copyright and into public domain. Copyright is for a certain length of time, and when it runs out, then the book becomes public domain, which means it can be copied, modified, or used in any way you like. This year, it includes the first four Nancy Drew books and many more interesting works. StandardeBooks.org has made 20 of these free as ebooks. Check it out.

I’m reminding you that copyright IS our business. We only have rights to sell because the federal government recognizes the importance of encouraging and protecting creative endeavors. Copyright lasts your lifetime, plus 70 years. If you die this year, Public Domain Day of 2096 will be the first day that someone besides your heirs can exploit your works.

Over the holidays, I received six copyright certificates, which had been delayed when the government shut down in the fall. Here’s a quick flip through my copyright certificates. I use a 3-hole punch on them and put them into this notebook.

With the Anthropic copyright case, we found out the importance of filing a copyright.

Tomorrow, the Write a Book for Kids series goes live on Amazon, Ingram, and my website. That means later this week, I’ll be filing five new copyrights.

Available everywhere on January 6, 2026.

Working through Mistakes

Getting five books uploaded on my website/Lulu/Draft2Digital, Amazon, Ingram is a pain. I also send ebooks to Overdrive, and I’ve been using an ONIX feed for this. These books had two versions, ebooks and paperbacks. So—KDP kicked out one book because they didn’t like the subtitle.

Do you know what that meant? I had to totally redo the metadata and interiors for all five books. The interior had a chapter that introduces the series, and the book was listed with the now-changed subtitle.

Here’s the list of activities I had to do at the last minute last week:

1. Update subtitle on Bowker, and on my ONIX feed. Update the sales sheet and any marketing materials.

2. Redo the interiors of all five books. This was relatively easy because I used Vellum to format the books. I updated one book, the copied that chapter and inserted into the other four books, while deleting the old chapter. Regenerate print and ebooks.

3. Reupload everything to Lulu, the backend of my Shopify store. Ebooks and print books.

4. Reupload everything to Ingram, which sends books to the industry worldwide.

5. Reupload everything to KDP. Ebooks and print books.

6. Reupload five ebooks to D2D, for sale on my website.

7. Reupload five books to Overdrive.

Sometimes, it seems all I do is make mistakes. Publishing a children’s book is full of details, important but picky metadata, and lots of platforms. Read: lots of places to make a mistake filling out some new form.

But when I make a mistake, I don’t beat myself up over it. I just <sigh> and fix it. It has to be right, which means I have to redo everything until it’s right.

It’s the same answer when kids ask me how many times should I revise a story. The answer: until it’s right. That’s it. Until it’s right. I upload everywhere—revising, until it’s right.