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Signed copyright assignment agreement

hello my name is Ruth Carter and I'm a licensed attorney in Arizona and I'm also the owner of Carter law firm in Phoenix and I apologize in advance this week that I am so washed out it's a sunny day here and I have lots of windows in this room but I want to take a few minutes and talk about an issue that came up at the changing hands indie authors conference over the weekend and that was publishing contracts particularly what's the difference between having a copyright assignment and a copyright license because if you are lucky enough to get a publishing contract it will be one of those two things so to back up a little bit let's talk a little bit about copyright when you write your book you have copyright rights in whatever you create the second it is fixed in a tangible medium and your copyright rights are the right to copy distribute display perform and to make derivative works based on whatever you wrote so when you get a publisher and they want to publish your work they're gonna give you a contract that is either an assignment or a license so what's the difference a copyright assignment means that you give up your copyright to the publisher they become the owners of your copyright you no longer own your copyright if you publish your work after giving an assignment to somebody you are actually committing copyright infringement against the person you assigned it to even though you are the original author of the work if you assign your copyright to somebody and you realize after the fact that you've made a mistake you probably are gonna have to buy your copy right back now on the flip side if you have a copyright license you retain ownership of your copyright and you are only granting the publisher permission to publish your work and the license will have details about whether they are the only people who are allowed to to publish your work what type of payment or royalties you will get and how long the license will so for those of you who are authors I strongly recommend that you have an attorney review your publishing contract before you sign it to ensure that you understand what rights you are retaining and what rights you are giving up if you want to contact me there's a link below and I put out content every week so feel free to subscribe there's a button up here somewhere so you can keep up with whatever legal tips and ideas I have to share so thank you for watching and I'll talk to you next time take care