Do Authors Own The Copyright Of The Characters In Their Books?

J. D. Salinger

Jerome David Salinger (born January 1, 1919) is an American author, best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, as well as his reclusive nature. He has not published an original work since 1965 and has not been interviewed since 1980.

The Catch In The Copyright -- Financial Times

J.D. Salinger’s 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye has sold 35m copies over the decades and stood, this week, at 122 on the Amazon bestseller list. Now Mr Salinger – a reclusive, litigious 90-year-old – is suing Britain’s Wind-Up Bird Publishing, Swedish publisher Nicotext and a US distributor over their decision to bring out a novel that draws on it. Just published in the UK and due out in the US in coming weeks, 60 Years Later was written by “John David California”, the pseudonym of one of the Swedish firm’s founders. It concerns a 76-year-old named Mr C. – easily identifiable as Mr Salinger’s protagonist Holden Caulfield – who escapes from a nursing home and returns to many of the same Manhattan places that Holden did in Mr Salinger’s original.

Mr Salinger filed a legal complaint in Manhattan this month to halt publication, on the grounds that the book is “a rip-off pure and simple”, an “unauthorised sequel” that wrongly uses “his Holden Caulfield character”. But is the character “his”? Are literary characters the property of the artists who create them?

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Bookyards section on J.D. Salinger is HERE.

Computers Can Boost Literacy

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (June 19, 2009) — Computers do not spell the demise of literacy -- in fact, they may help to create one of the most literate and engaged generations the world has seen.

Carl Whithaus, associate professor of writing at UC Davis, will make that argument during a session on June 20, at UC Davis, part of a four-day Computers & Writing 2009 conference sponsored by the University Writing Program at UC Davis.

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The Kindle: We Can Rebuild It. We Have The Technology

From Popsci.com:

The Grouse plays with the new Kindle DX. It could be better in oh, so many ways.

This week I put some face time in with Amazon's latest print assassin, the Kindle DX. I was a big fan of the original recipe, despite what I'd call some minor design flaws. But I always felt like it was missing some important features.

The DX is a slick update, to be sure. The stretched-out screen is beautiful, the buttons are now in logical places, and the body is more svelte than ever. The software (for Kindle DX and for Kindle 2) has also been updated under the hood to include some smart features -- the iPhone app being a personal favorite. Still, there's a lot I'd fix. Some of it's a little far-flung, but the rest of it should have been figured out already.

So, here's Amazon's to-do list for the next Kindle.

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Librarians Fighting Google's Book Deal

(l. to r.): Danile Deme / epa / Corbis; Bloomimage / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

Critics of Google's book-searching agreement with publishers and authors were cheered last week when antitrust regulators in the Justice Department set their sights on the search giant's publishing deal, demanding more information.

"This is a monumental settlement that's at stake, and for the government to show this kind of attention is heartening," says Lee Van Orsdel, dean of university libraries at Grand Valley State University. "The increased scrutiny on the part of the DOJ tells us that our concerns are resonating far beyond the library community," concurs Corey Williams, associate director in the office of government relations at the American Library Association.

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My Comment: This is not a surprise .... for if Google succeeds, libraries, as we know it, will be mostly gone.

Jeffrey Archer Rewrites Kane And Abel

Jeffrey Archer Photo: MARTIN POPE

From The Telegraph:

It has sold more than 34 million copies in 33 different languages but now the author Jeffrey Archer has rewritten Kane and Abel his most successful and famous novel.

The ultimate tale of sibling rivalry has been redrafted by the Conservative peer to mark the 30th anniversary of its publication this autumn. It will be the 83rd edition of the book which has been published in 97 countries.

An international best-seller it was number one simultaneously in Britain and the United States and was made into a CBS television miniseries starring Sam Neill as William Kane and Peter Strauss as Abel Rosnovski.

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My Comment: Free Book Spot has a collection of his books, including Kane and Abel. That link is here.

Obama’s Half Brother Inks Book Deal

Photo: George Hussein Onyango Obama, youngest half brother of Barack Obama, sits in front of his home in a Kenyan slum in Nairobi in September 2008. Stephen / EPA file

From MSNBC:

George Obama didn’t grow up with president, but gets contract for memoir.

NEW YORK - Another Obama relative has a book deal.

A memoir by George Obama, the president's half brother and a resident of Huruma, Kenya, will be published by Simon & Schuster in January 2010. George Obama, 27, shares the same father with his famous, older half sibling, although George and Barack Obama — 20 years apart in age — did not grow up together and did not meet as children.

George is the youngest of the senior Obama's seven children and was born six months before his father died.

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My Comment: This book will not sell.