Category: Blog

Last month, I talked about citations and how much I enjoy working on them. A related service I offer and enjoy providing for clients is permissions editing. I have talked a little bit about it before on the website, but this is the process of requesting and managing permissions for a book project.

Permissions covers pretty much any content from a third-party source you’re using in your manuscript. Quoting a book or a short story or a poem? Using a photo or illustration?  If you didn’t create it and you want to use it, that creates a situation where you will need to seek permission from the rightsholder of whatever it is you want to use, unless the material is in the public domain. If it is in the public domain, you don’t need to request permission to use the material.

I learned how to do this when I worked as a project editor at a publisher, and I have handled it a lot for one of my repeat clients, Elise Bishop.

Mrs. B., as I call her, was my grammar instructor and writing center boss once upon a time when I was in college, and it is a real honor to be entrusted with working on her Combine and Conquer Grammar textbook series. Mrs. B. teaches grammar through sentence-combining and combining sentences from literature.

A version of her textbook taught me just about everything I know about grammar. 😊 Our current project doesn’t require permissions because we are using a public domain text—stay tuned in the coming months to see what it is—but previous editions have required permissions work.

One edition focuses on sentence-combining with Biblical texts. Most Bible translations are public domain, as long as you are not using hundreds of verses, but I still had to make sure the attributions for each one was right and a few did require special permissions.

The middle school edition we did features sentences from over 40 different classic literary texts, ranging from novels to short stories to plays to poems to speeches, and we needed to ask permission for several that were not public domain.

I have always told Mrs. B. and my other clients I work with on permissions editing that the worst thing a rightsholder can say is no to the request.

Though I must confess, I have discovered that, strictly speaking, that is not the worst thing they can say. The worst thing they can say actually is that they refuse to either grant or deny permissions. However, my client and I both agreed that was basically a no, just with more words, so, technically, the worst thing they can say is still no. 

That being said, most of my experiences with permissions requests have been incredibly positive.

For me, locating the rightsholder can be a fun bit of investigative work in its own right. Depending on the copyright in question, the rights could still belong to the author or they may have reverted back to the publisher, been inherited by heirs, or been purchased by another third-party entirely. Likewise, I also enjoy verifying whether or not work is actually public domain. It’s a good rule of thumb to still investigate that, even if a website is claiming it is public domain and that you have no worries.

The biggest key to permissions is being organized and proactive. You may be waiting weeks if not months for rightsholders to respond, so to have an answer by the time you are ready to publish, you need to be tracking down the rightsholders and requesting permissions several months ahead of time. They generally give a timeframe to expect a response, and I always have that noted down to follow up with them if I’ve not heard back by then.

When they respond, they may well have contingencies, such as a specific way they want to be credited or they may want to see the usage in the context of your manuscript. As the rightsholder, this is well within their rights.

You also will need to have a budget in mind for permissions. Some rightsholders charge for use of their content and others don’t, and the amount they charge can vary wildly. As with their other requests, this is their prerogative. If you don’t want to pay, you can always use public domain instead or at least do the request, see if they will charge, and then make a decision on the usage then. You absolutely should not throw something in after being told no or refusing to pay (or dodge asking because you know you will be told no or be charged money). However, after making the request and hearing back what terms the rightsholder is willing to agree to, you can then decide if the content is important enough to pay for the privilege of using or if you want to swap it out for something else or drop it entirely.

Some of my other general advice, drawn from my publishing days, is that unless you have unlimited pockets, do not use song lyrics. I have had writers of niche content tell me no charge for using their material because I had the courtesy to ask, but I can assure you almost no rightsholder for music will be that generous, especially for well-known lyrics. When I worked for a publisher, one of the best way to stir up the editors (not in a good way) was to use song lyrics in a manuscript. I also became leery of quoting from websites during that job because so many times I found authors doing that for websites that inevitably had a notice up somewhere that forbade any use of their material.

Now you may be thinking, as many of my authors then did because they were also doing textbooks, that your usage qualifies as fair use because it is intended educationally in your manuscript. But if you’re selling the book you are putting it in, you substantially reduce your claim to fair use.

The bottom line about fair use is unless you are using public domain content—that you or your editor have done proper due diligence to verify is public domain—you cannot just assume evoking fair use will protect you. Even if you do ultimately have a strong claim to fair use, that doesn’t preempt the rightsholder from suing you anyway.

Of course, the specifics for any manuscript vary wildly and can lead more to the purview of what you’d discuss with your lawyer rather than your editor, but as an editor, I strive to prevent situations where my authors would find themselves blindsided by a future permissions issue. I can track down rightsholders and make the permissions requests for you and also advise on finding credible public domain material and how to reference material effectively without quoting it.

If the idea of tracking down permissions requests for your manuscript and making decisions about permissions seems overwhelming to you, don’t panic! Reach out to me! I am happy to help.