Law and Authors: A Legal Handbook for Writers, Paperback

This accessible, reader-friendly handbook will be an invaluable resource for authors, agents, and editors in navigating the legal landscape of the contemporary publishing industry. Drawing on a wealth of experience in legal scholarship and publishing, Jacqueline D. Lipton provides a useful legal guide for writers whatever their levels of expertise or categories of work (fiction, nonfiction, or academic). Through case studies and hypothetical examples, Law and Authors addresses issues of copyright law, including explanations of fair use and the public domain; trademark and branding concerns for those embarking on a publishing career; laws that impact the ways that authors might use social media and marketing promotions; and privacy and defamation questions that writers may face. Although the book focuses on American law, it highlights key areas where laws in other countries differ from those in the United States. Law and Authors will prepare every writer for the inevitable and the unexpected.

Jacqueline D. Lipton is an internationally recognized professor of law, a consultant, and a literary agent who has published widely on contract, copyright, and trademark law, cyberlaw, privacy, and defamation issues, with an emphasis on laws relating to the publishing industry. She is the coauthor of multiple editions of leading cyberspace casebook Cyberspace Law: Cases and Materials and coauthor of The Criminal Law of Intellectual Property and Information. She also authored Rethinking Cyberlaw; Internet Domain Names, Trademarks, and Free Speech; and Security over Intangible Property.