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How Does It Work The Copyright For Books?

Posted on | January 15, 2010 |

I would like to publish a book that I wrote this year. It’s a manual on a specific subject, for example “how to cook eggs”. I check on the Internet and there are a lot of other books on the same subject where you can read very similar suggestions.
Obviously I’m sure my book use a different approach and different words, because I haven’t read other books. Can I publish it immediately or there is something about copyright that I should know?

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3 Responses to “How Does It Work The Copyright For Books?”

  1. Steve
    January 15th, 2010 @ 12:02 pm

    As long as your book is your own work, you’re OK. Copyright protects the expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves. If your book and another book both have instructions on how to poach an egg, they might be similar, but that’s because there’s only one way to poach an egg, not because you copied the other book (as far as I know, anyway - making toast is about the limit of my culinary skills).
    You can include material from other books if (a) the book is in the public domain (copyright expired) or (b) you get permission.
    In some countries, copyright law has the notion of independent creation. If you write something the same as or very similar to another book, you can still be in the clear if you can prove you hadn’t read that other book. Nowadays, however, with the Internet making it quite easy to get hold of any book that’s in print anywhere in the world, and out-of-print books not being as hard to obtain as they once were, it would be hard to convince a court that you never had the opportunity to read a particular book that you’re accused of copying.

  2. Gianna
    January 15th, 2010 @ 6:44 pm

    Oh. For a while there I thought you were writing about “How To Cook Eggs”. Say if you really want to be different and stand out from the rest of them, maybe you would like to place a twist to your book.
    Ex:
    FROM
    How to Cook Eggs
    TO
    How to Cook Eggs Without Oil
    Something like that. Now about copyright. Read this:http://editorinchic.wordpress.com/2009/0…
    Good luck! :)

  3. redunico
    January 15th, 2010 @ 7:45 pm

    Recipes and jokes can’t be copyrighted. So you could use the same recipe but your description and pictures would have to be different.

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