A Spoonful of Sugar: How to protect original ideas.Byline: Alan Sugar Sir Alan Michael Sugarton or Sir Alan Michael Sugar (born 24 March 1947 in Hackney, East London) is an English businessman. After leaving school at 16,[1] Sugar started selling car aerials and electrical goods out of a van he had bought with his savings of £100. Dear Sir Alan A`lan´ n. 1. A wolfhound. MY father and I have written a series of short stories for children aged five to eight. We believe we have created a wholly original family of characters that children will enjoy and identify with. Can you give us some advice on how to protect our ideas and how to venture into the commercial world. Rebecca Rebecca or Rebekah (both: rēbĕk`ə), wife of Isaac and mother of Jacob. One day, as was her custom, she drew water at the city well; while there she showed kindness to Eliezer, Abraham's servant. Rylance, by email Sir Alan says VERY simply, and assuming you have not got any graphical ideas or sections of your written work by copying it from someone else, anything you and your father have written is your copyright. If you have genuinely originated all the words and designs for the characters, then, by definition, they are your copyright. The simple way, and all you will ever have to do to prove they are your copyright, is to show a certain date of existence. The easiest and cheapest way of doing this is to contact a small firm of solicitors and ask them to hold them on file and acknowledge receipt of them on a certain date. You are then free to show your stories and ideas to any publisher you want. In the unlikely event that they rip you off and you find your stories being sold without your prior knowledge, you will easily be able to prove the existence of your copyright. It's important before handing any copies of your work over to publishers to make sure every single page you hand over to them bears a copyright mark, your name and a date. It may sound like overkill overkill Vox populi An excess of anything , but I suggest this is done on every piece of paper you hand over and not just on the front page. Trying to get a children's book published is a very difficult job. Many people write to me believing they are the next J K Rowling and fancy themselves as high-profile authors. It's not easy and there's no fast track solution I can recommend to you, or indeed anybody else, other than the conventional way of sending your work to literary agents to get their opinion and see if they are able to pass you on to a publisher. Earlier this year one of our readers kindly told us of a website - www. virtualbookworld.com. authors.asp - that helps budding budding, type of grafting in which a plant bud is inserted under the bark of the stock (usually not more than a year old). It is best done when the bark will peel easily and the buds are mature, as in spring, late summer, or early autumn. authors to get their books published. You may find this a useful way to start. |
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