World, Writing, Wealth discussion
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Quoting reviews
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New and useful information.Thanks Krazykiwi - well done.
Very useful info, thanks! I don't think many know these nuances
In my opinion, if I write a review and publish it to the world (I never mention copyright), it's like a little lantern sailed out to sea and anyone can use it in full, in part, reprint it on their blog, put a quote on a poster, hot air balloon, paint it on an albatross and fly it around the world or whatever kind of stunt they feel would help light up their product. When I press send, it isn't mine any more, it's petrol in the author's tank. I'd like people to read what I've written, so it comes down to that.
You want to reach people - I get that too.
Faith wrote: "In my opinion, if I write a review and publish it to the world (I never mention copyright), it's like a little lantern sailed out to sea and anyone can use it in full, in part, reprint it on their ..."I get that Faith, I do. Perhaps you could put an "Anyone can quote my reviews in their entirety" disclaimer on yours.
But the fact is, copyright law doesn't care about opinions, and some reviewers do care very much who uses their words, where and how.
One of those DMCA takedowns I know of was the case of an author who firmly believed that the only reviews she deserved were 5 star ratings with copious acknowledgements of her genius. She was copying reviews she didn't like (and not just low ratings, some of them were 3 and 4 stars) verbatim to her website, and writing vitriolic and personal attacks on their authors, in a couple of instances resorting to actual threads and in one case doxxing someone. Are you absolutely sure you'd be ok with that, Faith?
Krazykiwi wrote: "One of those DMCA takedowns I know of was the case of an author who firmly believed that the only reviews she deserved were 5 star ratings with copious acknowledgements of her genius. She was copying reviews she didn't like (and not just low ratings, some of them were 3 and 4 stars) verbatim to her website, and writing vitriolic and personal attacks on their authors, in a couple of instances resorting to actual threads and in one case doxxing someone...."
Just by curiosity, is that author still in business? She sounds like the perfect way to repel readers.
Just by curiosity, is that author still in business? She sounds like the perfect way to repel readers.
Tim: Doxxing = posting someone's personal info publicly - address, real name, etc. It's slang for documentation, and it's a nasty thing to do. (She actually called one reviewer at home and demanded the review get changed).Michel: She's published another two books after that so I guess so. But she was banned from GR for some of her other antics, and has pretty much no online presence anymore, so who knows how it's going for her.
(It actually took me a while to even remember which author that was, but once I did, it was very easy to find out a lot of info about her misdeeds, and very hard to find out what she's up to now or anything remotely positive like author interviews or anything like that. Which is a good reason you don't want to gain that kind of reputation - it'll stain any actual legit book promotion you try to do for years after.)
I've found a couple of mine used on authors' LinkedIn profiles, and I have to say I find it a highlight more than anything that they felt my review was that good to use to showcase their work.
I have to agree with Faith and J.J. When I write reviews, I don't mind how or where an author uses them. If someone launched a personal attack and went through the trouble of reviewing my review, that's pretty sad and says more about them than it does me. Of course, I could be a real arse and write a review of their review of my review; but that wouldn't paint me in a great light either, lol. Revealing my personal details would be annoying, but it's a risk you take as a reviewer.As an author, however, when quoting or pasting full reviews I do always give credit to the source, out of courtesy more than anything.
tl:dr version: Quotes from reviews should be just that, short quotes of max. a couple of sentences, properly credited to their author, not the site they were posted on. Anything longer, you should ask for permission before using it.
- Reviews are not public domain, nor do they belong to the author of the book they are written about. Copyright belongs to the person who wrote them, including reviews posted on Amazon and GR, just as much as the content of your book belongs to you, and the words to Blowin' in the Wind belong to Bob Dylan.
If you ask Amazon for permission, they'll probably say yes if you only quote reviews on your own website. This is sort of madness, because in actuality they don't have a say - they are only granted a non-exclusive license in their TOS - so there's not much point even asking. GR has an actual option that users can turn on or off that permits further resharing of reviews, but you need to pull the reviews via the API (that is, programatically) to know which ones are shareable and which ones aren't. Easiest way to do that is with one of the GR widgets. If a review you particularly like shows up in the widget, you're probably good to quote from it.
- What's this fair use stuff then?
Fair use is complicated: It doesn't apply to commercial enterprises, with the exceptions of parody, transformative works and criticism or commentary. That last bit is what lets you quote from reviews at all.
Particularly note that is quote from reviews - not cut and paste a review in it's entirety. It's pretty hard to find a good guideline how much you can quote, but several publisher's guidelines suggest 200-300 words from a book length work is ok. Apply that pro rata to a review, and you probably shouldn't be quoting more than a sentence or two without asking for permission.
If you do quote from a review in any amount, you must credit the source. "A Goodreads Review" is not a source credit, because GR aren't the source or the copyright holder, the user is. Credit the user by name.
- What if you do ask for permission?
If you do ask for, and recieve permission, you can quote as much as you like, or as much as the reviewer said you can use. And you should still credit the source. IME, very few people say no, most find it flattering to be asked. But if the user says no, respect that. You could, in theory, still quote a sentence under fair use, but why ask for trouble? Ditto if you used a short quote under fair use, and the reviewer asked you to remove it. Technically you could get away with keeping it, but again, asking for trouble.
- Who cares though? It's not like a GR reviewer will sue me for using their review in my newsletter, right?
Well, no, that's pretty unlikely. But if you're asked to remove a review and you don't, you'll get a rep as one of those special snowflake authors who think the rules don't apply to them. You really don't want that reputation.
And there have been actual cases where reviewers have had author websites taken down with a DMCA notice until the offending text was removed. That's the power of being the copyright holder. And if you think it's not worth the effort, a DMCA notice takes about 15 seconds to send and your ISP is legally obliged to remove the content or disable your site until you remove the content - the latter is a lot easier to do for an ISP, so it's the route most take.
Anyway, fair quoting is just the right thing to do - the rules are pretty simple, and it's not very hard to stay within them.
Hope someone finds all this useful :)