Sometimes It’s Not Better To Ask Permission

Probably the best article written on the issue of whether or not you should quote lyrics in novels (let alone self-published novels, forsooth) was by Blake Morrison in The Guardian:

My editor, reasonably enough, was more cautious, and at the last minute someone from the publishing house helpfully secured the permissions on my behalf. I still have the invoices. For one line of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”: £500. For one line of Oasis’s “Wonderwall”: £535. For one line of “When I’m Sixty-four”: £735. For two lines of “I Shot the Sheriff” (words and music by Bob Marley, though in my head it was the Eric Clapton version): £1,000. Plus several more, of which only George Michael’s “Fastlove” came in under £200. Plus VAT. Total cost: £4,401.75. A typical advance for a literary novel by a first-time author would barely meet the cost.

Anyway, read the whole thing. That’s what I did, and I systematically went through my novel (RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY, available on Amazon, and it would not kill you to read it and review it and I am going to stop before I start sounding desperate) and took out every reference to every pop song I could find. I even took out an adorable little conversational nugget where the characters quote the title of “Do, Re, Mi” from The Sound of Music because I didn’t want to run even the slightest risk of getting sued. (I am a lawyer by trade.)

The editing process wasn’t that awful, and I don’t think that taking the lyrics out of the novel hurt it any. But there was one lyric that I wanted to include in the novel–not actually within the text of the novel but as an epigram at the start of it. I had the perfect song to use. It was one of my all-time favorites. The lyrics commented perfectly on the ending of the novel, and its message. All I had to do was ask permission. It seemed easy enough.

I started the process last October. I went to the ASCAP database and did a search, and was able to find the song easily enough. The first problem was that there were two different people listed as being the rights-holders for the song. One was a large music publisher, and the other was a large record company. I figured that the music publisher would be the best bet. I sent an e-mail and a paper backup.

About a month later, I got a nice e-mail from someone at the music publisher, telling me that they no longer had the rights to the song. Well, all right. I sent another e-mail to the record company, again asking for permission. I heard back from them six weeks later, and they told me that they didn’t have the rights to the song any longer. However, they were able to tell me who had the rights to the song–a different music publisher. (I just checked the ASCAP database, and the entry still doesn’t reflect the current rights-holder.)

This music publisher had an online form to fill out. They wanted to know basic information about the book, some of which I could provide right away, and some that I couldn’t. The key piece of information that I didn’t have was the publication date.

I knew by this time that I was going to self-publish, and that meant that I could choose any publication date that I wanted. The site said that the process would take about six weeks. I had no idea at that time (this was mid-December) as to when the book would actually come out. At this point, I didn’t have a cover design or an e-book file. I had no idea how long it would take to get either one of these things.

So I guessed. I said that the book would be published on March 15, 2013. I figured I would have a response on the permission request by mid-February at the latest. I went ahead with the cover design, and then planned on hiring a freelancer to do the actual e-book design in February.

I didn’t get a response after six weeks. I sent a nice e-mail note to the publisher. I never heard back. I thought about an alternate epigram, and settled on a Bible verse. I told the freelancer who I hired to do the e-book design that it was a placeholder, and that I would hear any day now from the publisher to put the real lyrics into the book. Except I didn’t hear back.

I sent another e-mail to the publisher, explaining the situation, asking for a response, and providing a deadline. I never heard back. I got the files for the e-book and the paperback version in late February, and I was able to get them uploaded to Amazon without much in the way of problems. Once my deadline passed, I was reconciled to the idea that I wouldn’t get to use the lyrics in the novel. I approved all the files on Amazon and the book was ready for release. I had the official release date on March 1, and started the wonderful process of self-promotion.

So, five days later, I got a quote for the permission to use the lyrics.

I thought about it. I could have updated the paperback version; it wouldn’t have been that hard. I could have figured out how to edit the e-book files. But I didn’t want to spend the time to do it, and I didn’t want to run the risk of fouling up the formatting of the book for such a small change. It didn’t seem worth it at that point. (The cost of permission wouldn’t have been all that much–certainly within my budget.)

The clincher, for me, was that the permission would only be good for the first 10,000 copies. I haven’t sold a hundred copies yet, but I am hopeful that the book will do well and that it will sell quite a bit. What happens if I sell that many? Do I have to take out the lyrics?

I said no. Part of it was to save the money, but part of it was that it wasn’t as important to me to have those lyrics in my book. Part of it was that it didn’t feel like a lucky thing to do to take out the Bible verse that I used. Part of it was that I just didn’t feel like messing with the files.

The ironic thing, of course, is that if I had stuck to the release date that I had told the publisher, I would have gotten the permission in plenty of time.

My takeaway from all this:

1) The entire process is a pain and you’re better off not even messing with it.

2) Nobody will ever notice if you leave out a song lyric.

3) The people who handle permissions are nice enough people, and professional, but they work on their timeline, not yours.

4) It will take longer than you think. I made the initial ask in October; the entire process took five months.

5) I have a sneaking suspicion that the music publishing world doesn’t quite have a handle on e-books just yet.

It is better, in this instance, to ask permission rather than seek forgiveness. But it still isn’t easy. Avoid the whole issue if you can.