Fair Use

[nomadic myth]

I'm in the research stage of writing a non-fiction book. Why am I writing it? Mainly for personal reasons and for a mentor of mine. I would like to publish it someday but probably just through a small publisher because it is mainly of local interest to my province of origin. Regardless of publishing or not, and extent of publishing, I want to do everything correctly.

A confusing thing right now is "fair use" when quoting other works. Although I don't want the book to be an extended academic essay, I do have a lot of sources to draw upon. I realize in a lot of cases it might be better to paraphrase than to quote, but nevertheless I will want to quote some things. Here's where I run into confusion.

I'm consulting The Chicago Manual of Style, and it has a section on fair use, but basically qualifies what it says by stating that it is not real legal advice and one should consult a lawyer for any final word. I realize I'm not going to consult a publishing lawyer, nor do I need to unless my book funds its own expenses.... But, I do want to do things correctly.

Most books I'm reading now freely paraphrase and only cite the source within the text, such as by saying something like "Nomadic Myth, in his famous book on cats called Cats, Cats, Cats, says that cats are lovable, cute, and useful. He focuses on cuteness, and outlines what makes cats cute: color, personality, and size." However, if anything is directly quoted, the author lists a thank-you in a permissions section. I'm confused. It would seem that fair use would allow for minor use of copyrighted material without permission, but the authors of most books I read have sought permission to quote.

I imagine I'm worrying a bit too much, mainly because most of what I'm researching is not going to end up in my book directly, but I guess here is where a major problem arises. Being at a creating ideas stage, and because I'm doing extensive reading to get ideas, I want to be very cautious about plagiarism. Very cautious.

 

[unKeMPt]

The problem with fair use is it is so ambiguous. You may use a good part of one work and be fine, then use one line of a song or poem and find yourself with a lawsuit on your hands. However, this is the courts' reasoning: as long as your use does not have an impact on the commercial viability of the work or negatively affect its market, (most clearly, this would happen if you were to compete with the work you are borrowing from) you should be okay.

Of course, if you retrieve consent, you don't have to worry about this, as long as you don't exceed the consent given. (In other words, do not publish your piece places other than where you promised it would be and keep only to the ideas that you agree you can take.)

Finally, keep this in mind: copyrights are for the expression of ideas, not for the ideas expressed. If you can come up with a novel way to express the same idea, you should be fine.

 

[nomadic myth]

Cool.

I guess that considering I respect all the authors I would wish to quote from, it seems the easiest thing would be to ask for permission. It just seems like such a hassle since the non-fiction I'm used to writing is academic papers, where quoting is very frequent.

The academic background is what makes me hesitant to use other people's material by just briefly giving their name and then paraphrasing their idea. I feel I should put footnotes and a bibliography.