Okay, after hours of thinking I found a plot to stick with. After two days of out lining. I finally started my first draft! YAY My word count: 1,552 (That's four days of writing. Yes I know I know, it's a low word count for four days.) So is it okay I mean legal wises, if I say some bands, song, TV shows, movie or books in my book? Is that legal?
First off, congratulations on your new project, it's always exciting when you have something fresh to work on. As for word count, I'd be lucky to have that much in a week! lol. Great question, I've been wondering the same thing, mostly because I made reference to a song in one of my stories and, just like you, I don't know if it's legal. Hopefully we'll both learn something today.
Thank you! Hopefuly, my word court well reach 10,000 but next week! I'll keep a update! Okay, then it's study time. I better study in it and I'll tell you if it is or not. When I find out myself.
If you use other peoples work make sure you quote it and have a citation page or footnotes. I personally like foot notes but I generally do not put other works of art in my work. I do use quotes now and then and I reference the artist or author. Songs and poetry on the other hand are a different ball game. They fall under different copy right laws. If the song is public domain then you can do it. If not you can only say the name of the song that is playing and the writer, NO LYRICS. If you want to quote lyrics in fiction you have to get permission from the author. I would Google plagiarism.org to get more on how to do this.
I think mentionig the name of TV shows and song titles in a novel are legally acceptable, marketing the character names and stories as your own is where the problems begin. With song lyrics I think its a bit more complicated. If you are quoting a whole song it needs to be clear where they came from and you probably need permission from the record label. If you are just quoting one line or mentioning its name, I think that is ok. You might want to double check with someone a bit more keyed in, but otherwise, good luck!
Well I wasn't going to put the whole song in it. Footnote? So it's legal or not? What if I say it's not my song or my art, it's blah blahs....
The thing is if your a small town writer getting ahold of the record lable would be near impossible I would imagine. But then again im also just writing my first novel so I'm not 100% sure. I'm sure you can check up on that stuff online. I cant imagine it being a problem though...as far as I can remember when a song name, band etc is mentioned in a novel they don't add a reference. Also I believe if you were to get it published thats something your publisher could help you with. Anyway like I said I'm not 100% sure either but I'd write it in and get it checked afterwards...you can always change it then!
You can not use any song lyrics in fiction at all without consent or public domain. If you are writing a non-fiction like a review then in a lot of cases you can. You should call the album company to make sure though. When in doubt call because the last thing you need is for them to suet. I wish I could put in a link. Just Google "Blake Morrison on the cost of quoting lyrics".
Okay thanks everyone! I'll keep a update! On my novel! I know a few books that has other books and tv shows in it.
It seems that whenever I read novels with song lyrics quoted, there's some kind of disclaimer in with the copyright page saying that permission was obtained. So I agree that you should research the plagarism laws just to be safe. But that's not something to worry about until you're done and ready to publish, and your publisher would be able to help you. For now, just focus on writing the story. And congratulations on getting started.
This is probably a dumb question, but how do you know if the song's public domain? And in some books you'd see poems quoted with no reference to anything except for the obvious name at the end of the quote, eg. -) 'I'm confused' - Patrick (- What's the story on that?
Update! Word count: 2,432! I haven't wrote in a couple of days, I'm to sick... but the story is coming along good, already on chapter 2.
