How to Protect Your Creative Works

This show is about the legal issues every creative person should be familiar with in order to navigate successfully in today’s complex print, digital and self-publishing environments.

Publishing lawyer Sheila Levine will discuss decisions and potential problems in areas such as reviewing and negotiating terms of agency and publishing contracts; print-on-demand and self-publishing; websites and blogs; fair use and plagiarism; registration of copyrights and trademarks; minimizing the risk of defamation in nonfiction and fiction; and contractual disputes with publishers about such issues as rights granted, options, reversion of rights, and royalty payments. 

Guest SHEILA J. LEVINE is a publishing lawyer in New York City. She began her career in Subsidiary Rights at Doubleday and became Contracts and Copyright Manager and Managing Editor at Popular Library, a paperback imprint owned by CBS. She has had her own practice in publishing and intellectual property law for over 20 years, representing authors, agents, and publishers.

Sheila's workshop, Legal Pitfalls: How to Protect Yourself and Your Work in Print and Electronic Publishing, will be held June 24 to July 1, as part of the International Women's Writing Guild's (IWWG) summer conference to be held at Yale University.