In Canada, you automatically hold copyright to anything you have written, and you do not need to renew that copyright. The copyright lasts for 51 years after you die. If you own the copyright to a publishable work, your will should specify who will inherit it should you die.
If your book will reproduce anyone else’s work, you should ensure that you have the copyright holder’s permission to reproduce it. That doesn’t apply to such things as old family photos. It is going to be perfectly fine to reproduce a clipping from an 1865 newspaper in your family history. But a 1965 clipping will still be copyrighted and you’ll need permission to reproduce it.
When the copyright expires, the work becomes “public domain,” which means that anyone can reprint it without paying any fee to the copyright holder.
EDITORIAL
There is wide variation in how editorial departments in publishing houses are organized. Chapter 4 of this book examines the editorial function more closely. For the purposes of this quick overview, it is enough to note that the editorial department acquires, edits and proofreads the book. In doing so, the editors usually deal with the production and sales department.
Since you’re taking care of these functions yourself, your home-publishing project will demand that you ask the following questions about the manuscript:
• Who will offer an impartial evaluation of the book’s organization and writing?
• Does it need a structural edit?
• Who will copyedit the book?
• Who will proofread the book?
• Does the book need an index?
• Who will arrange for an ISBN and
• Who will arrange for an ISBN and for the CIP data? (see box on Editorial Legalities)
EDITORIAL LEGALITIES: Getting Your Book’s
ISBN and CIP and Registering it with Library and Archives Canada
Library and Archives Canada keeps track of all the books published in the country. It assigns each publisher a list of ten-digit (soon to be 13-digit) International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN). The ISBN of a book is its unique fingerprint, identifying a single publisher and publication, and is embedded in the bar code on the back of the book. No two books in the world are ever registered under the same ISBN (unless someone at the publishing house or filing office has made a terrific mistake!).
If you simply plan to distribute your print run to family and friends, you won’t need an ISBN. However, if your hopes stretch farther afield and you want to make your home-published book available to the book trade (be it to bookstores, wholesalers or libraries) you’ll absolutely need to obtain an ISBN before you go to press. It’s essential to the distribution, sales and tracking process in the industry.
The same application process applies whether you’re a huge book publisher or only ever plan to sell a hundred books. The office will need the publisher’s name, even if it’s the same as yours, and a title. Happily, registering your book is free and can be completed in a matter of hours. You can get an application by calling Library and Archives Canada’s Canadian ISBN Agency at (819) 994-6872.
After you’ve acquired an ISBN, you’ll need to get its close cousin assigned to your book: the Cataloguing in Publication (CIP) data. The CIP data gets included on the copyright page on the back of the title page. While the ISBN only reveals a book’s publisher, title and language of publication (if you can crack the code), the CIP data is far more descriptive. A book’s CIP information is very similar to what you would find in a library catalogue, including subject headings and classification numbers. When you apply for CIP data, the office creates a bibliographic record on a database that is linked to various bibliographic products, used by wholesalers, booksellers and libraries around the world. What this means is that you may get a whole lot of unwanted phone calls if you’re intending to market your book only to family members, so be forewarned.
You can request the CIP form at the same time as you get your ISBN application, but remember that you’ll need the ISBN first. You can also get the CIP form online at www.collectionscanada/cip/index-e.html. Because the CIP cataloguing process is more involved, allow two weeks for it to be completed. The central CIP office will tell you where to send the CIP form in your area.
PRODUCTION
The production department of a publishing company typically deals with budgets and schedules as well as design, layout and printing. Obviously, these are all major areas of the publishing process, and each will be dealt with in depth later in this book.
Production is one of the main areas that derail home-publishing ventures. Desktop publishing software has made it very easy to prepare book pages very badly. Small local print shops have made it easy to print up bound sets of those badly designed pages very shoddily. One of the main goals of this book is to point out the major book-production pitfalls. Questions to ask yourself about production include:
• Should I use offset or digital or handmade?
• Who will design the cover?
• How many colours will appear on the cover?
• Who will design the pages?
• Will there be any use of colour, illustrations or photographs inside the book?
• Who will lay out the pages?
• Who will print the book?
• How many copies should be printed?
• What paper stock should be used to print it?
GETTING HELP
The book publishing industry is a maze of associations, some of which can be very useful to the home publisher. The Editors’ Association of Canada’s website has an especially helpful section on publishing associations at www.editors.ca/web/assoc.htm. (Inevitably, some of the association web addresses below will go out of date quite quickly.The EAC site will provide you with up-to-date links, and also has links to non-Canadian resources.)
Some home publishers find they really need professional help with book design, editing or some other aspect of the publishing process. It is often worth the expense of bringing on a pro to help with the aspects that are giving you the most trouble. And, of course, if your budget is big enough you can have professionals do a lot of the work for you.
Some associations that offer useful services to Canadian home publishers are:
• Alcuin Society (www.alcuinsociety.com) is a Canadian organization for people with a broad range of interests concerning books and publishing, including the book arts of printing, binding, papermaking, calligraphy and illustration.
• The Canadian Association of Photographers and Illustrators in Communications (CAPIC) maintains a database of CAPIC members by style and specialty. It is used to responding to enquiries from potential clients about book and magazine photographers and illustrators. (www.capic.org)
• The Canadian Authors Association, which has branches nation-wide, offers meetings, workshops and an annual conference to published and unpublished writers. CAA is an excellent resource if you need help polishing your writing. (www.canauthors.org)
• The Canadian Publishers’ Council (CPC) represents the interests of 30 companies that publish books and other media for elementary and secondary schools, colleges and universities, and professional reference, retail and library markets. (Grossly simplified, the CPC represents the big publishers and the ACP represents the others.) (www.pubcouncil.ca)
• The Editors’ Association