“Happy Birthday” is public domain, former owner Warner/Chapell to pay $14M – A settlement has been reached in the lawsuit against music publisher Warner/Chappell, which had claimed copyright to the song “Happy Birthday,” and had been collecting royalties for decades. As part of the settlement, the song is now unquestionably in ... more >
How Instagram Became the New Oprah’s Book Club – Forget Twitter – Instagram is now the best, most influential platform for books. The fact that you can see a book in a pretty little picture is apparently far superior to the 140-character Twitter blurb (even though you can have pictures on ... more >
Novelist who redefined the ‘bonkbuster’ genre with her tales of bad behaviour in Hollywood. Source: The Telegraph Thank you to Katie F., who answered my Twitter call for a good obituary on Jackie Collins. I think this long profile from The Telegraph is great, because not only does it treat her work ... more >
Publishers’ Overall U.S. Books Sales Down 5.6% YTD But Downloaded Audio Booms, Up 33% YTD – AAP has collected information from more than 1200 publishers and reports that book sales in most categories are down. It may not be surprising to see ebook sales down in the wake of Agency Pricing’s ... more >
The Public Domain Class of 2015 – In countries other than the US works by Ian Fleming and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry are entering the public domain along with the music of Glenn Miller. Of the eleven featured, eight will be entering the public domain in countries with a ‘life plus ... more >
Facebook can see what users type even if status is not posted – And here we go again. Facebook conducted another study on its users, this time to determine how often they self-censor. This was measured by tracking anything more than five characters long, even if it was not published. ... more >