Ever since discovering Cory Doctorow and finding out (to my delight) that he releases all of his books under a Creative Commons license…and still sells books (since that whole putting-food-in-the-mouth thing doesn’t go away unless you’re old money, which I’m definitely not :)), I’ve thought about what I’ll do when I start getting books published — more particularly, I’ve wondered how on earth I’ll get a publisher to go along with it.
Well, today I found a great post outlining how you negotiate a Creative Commons license with your publisher, including gems like this:
1. Figure out what you want and ask for it Every contract is negotiable. Choose what you want and ask for it. Do not be afraid to ask for it. In our case, we focused on getting Creative Commons licensing into the contract, but we also asked for and received other modifications, including a higher percentage of royalties after a certain number of books sold, a stipend to design the book and ownership of the book layout and design (which we licensed CC).
This sounds good. :) Anyway, it’s a great read and I highly recommend it if you’re considering CCing your creative works. (And if you’re not, well, you should.)