A Guide to Using Quotes, Excerpts, and Lyrics in Your Book
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Many authors write a book because they have been inspired by someone else’s creative work. It seems only natural to include a short excerpt from the book, or a verse from the song lyric, that influenced the writer. It’s often a phrase that has personal meaning to the author while also being germane to the story they’re telling. They are paying homage to the original work while giving credit to an artist they admire. What could possibly go wrong? Perhaps nothing — at least until the letter from your muse’s lawyer arrives in the mail.
As innocent as it may seem, any unauthorized quote from another published work that’s not in the public domain is copyright infringement. Automatically. End of story. However, you can safely use excerpts if you have secured the permission of the copyright holder. You can also insert shorter quotes without permission if the usage is considered what is legally known as “fair dealing” in Canada (or “fair use” in the United States).
First, the disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. But I am married to one. That’s why I’m compelled to caution you that this is not legal advice. These are only guidelines I’ve used in my work advising clients as a book-writing coach and ghostwriter. My opinions are only that — opinions, based on research and many years spent in the world of book writing and publishing.
(Editor’s note: FriesenPress advises all authors to seek legal counsel regarding questions about copyright and fair dealing.)
With all that being said, here are my five tips to help you navigate the murky legal waters of copyright, permissions, excerpts, quotes, and fair dealing.
1. Be the quoted — not the quoter
My default advice to clients is to write a book that others will want to quote. Focus on your ideas, your nuggets of wisdom, your unique way of communicating a universal truth. The reason most writers want to use someone else’s words is because they think the other person said it so much better. Why not try and top them? Dig deeper into your own creativity. Believe in your own experience, your own truth, and your own talent as a writer. Say something in a new and fresh way. Be the one who’s quoted, not the one who quotes. Then you can avoid all the legalities because your book is completely original.
2. Determine if the work you want to quote is in the public domain
If I haven’t already talked you out of using a quote, excerpt, photo, or song lyric in your book, the first step is to find out if the source material is in the public domain. A copyrighted work enters the public domain after a certain period of time has passed since it was published and/or the artist has died. In Canada, that’s 75 years after the end of the calendar year in which the creator died. If the work is in the public domain, you have virtually no worries about using the material. Though you don’t have to attribute the original creator, not doing so could reflect very poorly on your own credibility.
Contrary to what many believe, finding something in a Google search or on Wikipedia does not mean it’s free to use — especially not without giving proper credit to its source. Google image searches allow you to search by use rights. Websites can be sources, just as books can be, and all have authors that should be credited in your work. For short quotes, in-line citations may be sufficient. For longer excerpts, they may require footnotes and bibliographic citations. Any words that aren’t yours need to be properly attributed.
Unfortunately, determining the copyright holder of a published work is not as straightforward as you might think. The lyrics for the blues classic House of the Rising Sun are a good example. This song was not written by Eric Burdon or The Animals for their 1964 chart-topping single. It’s a folk song dating back to at least the 1930s and possibly even the 1800s. But the rock band did change the lyrics a bit, which means their 1964 version of the song is still under copyright. If you feel confident that the lyrics you want to use in your book are from the original folk song, you’re probably on pretty safe ground.
You should also know that many musicians are quite vigilant in protecting their copyrights.To be safe, it’s better to refer to a song’s title, as titles can’t be copyrighted. Or, make an oblique, paraphrased reference to the song, like “Queen started singing about wanting to ride their bicycles.” Your reader will pick up on the reference without directly quoting the lyrics at all.
Here’s a link to a great resource from the University of British Columbia on public domain and copyright. This is worth examining to see how many factors affect copyright in written, musical, and image-based creative works. While the focus is on Canadian law, they provide helpful information that applies to other jurisdictions. At the very least, this data can be a wake-up call on the complexities of public domain. For information tailored to Americans you can check out another excellent resource on public domain from Stanford University.
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3. If in doubt, leave it out
Maybe you’ve tried but can’t top another writer’s wisdom. Perhaps it seems too complicated to obtain permission to use an excerpt or find out if a work is in the public domain. Maybe you’re not sure if the material is too long to qualify as fair dealing.
Just drop it. Hit “delete” and move on. No one will notice what did not get written. The reader isn’t going to look at your self-help book about the importance of being spontaneous and think; “Hey, this would have been a perfect spot for that John Lennon quote about making plans.” They won’t know what isn’t there. They won’t decide to not buy the book because it doesn’t have an excerpt from some other person’s work. Readers are buying your book because they’re interested in what you have to say.
4. Get permission from the copyright holder
You’ve probably heard the old saying, “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.” This might be sage advice when it comes to secretly borrowing your sister’s favourite sweater. But in the cold, cruel world of copyright protection, it’s always better to secure the permission of the legal owner of a copyright before using an excerpt of their original work. They may provide permissions in exchange for proper crediting in the book (those “graciously provided by the estate of” notes on copyright pages), or for a one-time rights fee. You might even get interest from them in the form of a testimonial or retweet. So, there’s no harm in asking.
First, you’ll need to identify who owns the copyright. For books, it’s usually the author, the author’s estate, or the publisher. Even when an author still holds the rights, many traditional publishers will be the best place to start. They’re set up to field permission requests with staff dedicated to responding to such inquiries. For a photograph, the owner could be the photographer or the publication where the image originally appeared. With lyrics, the songwriter is your best bet. But the artist may have sold their rights to a company like Sony Music for hundreds of millions of dollars — as Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen have recently done.
Next, you have to send the request. If you do a quick online search, you’ll find templates for sample letters you can send to publishers asking for permission to use excerpts by their authors. You can easily customize the letter if you’re hoping to use a photo or song lyrics. Make sure that you’re requesting “nonexclusive world rights.” If you are quoting a text at length or frequently throughout your own work, you can expect to be charged by the publisher.
5. Pursuing fair dealing
The most common path for quoting someone else’s work in your own book is through the claim of fair dealing. I’ve left this to the end because this post is written in the same order of options I recommend to my book coaching and ghostwriting clients. I want them to take a long, hard look at the first four alternatives before choosing to pursue fair dealing. That’s because you are now entering one of the greyest areas of copyright law.
Fair dealing in Canada (and fair use in the United States) are exceptions to copyright infringement that you can use to defend yourself if you are sued. The problem is that neither country’s laws detail explicit amounts or percentages of the original work that can safely be excerpted.
How much is too much? Nobody knows for sure. Each case is treated differently in court based on a number of factors — and size of the quote is just one of those. Bradlee Frazer is a lawyer practicing internet and intellectual property law in Boise, Idaho. He’s also a published novelist. In his excellent article on fair use, Mr. Frazer estimates that if you copy ten or fewer words from another book, you may be able to defend yourself successfully. But the truth is that you’ll never know for sure until you are sued and manage to prevail in court.
Quoting poetry and song lyrics can get especially tricky. Since the original work is often quite short, an excerpt of a couple of lines could mean you’ve copied a huge percentage of the piece in total. How would you feel if another author included twenty-five percent of your book in theirs? That’s how a poet or songwriter might view the usage of a portion of their work for a two-line epigraph to begin a chapter in your book.
The best advice I can offer is that less is more. The shorter the passage, the more likely it would be considered fair dealing by a judge or jury, assuming that your use also constitutes a very small percentage of the original work itself, and assuming your use of the quote builds upon the source material in some meaningful way.
Both Canadian and American copyright law touch on the end product itself. In Canada, your claim of fair dealing will be treated much more broadly if the purpose of your new work is research, parody, news reporting, private study, education, or criticism and review. In case you’re wondering, your self-help or how-to book is not considered educational. It’s a commercial work: printed for profit. This means that you’ll have a higher burden of proving fair dealing.
You should also expect to sign a contract with your traditional or assisted self-publisher stating that your manuscript contains only your original work or other material that you have the legal right to use. You will assume full responsibility for what is in the book, which means your publisher won’t swoop to the rescue if you end up in legal trouble over copyright infringement.
If you’re interested in seeking legal advice, you’ll need a lawyer who specializes in intellectual property law. If you want to do your own research, here are links to Canada’s Copyright Act and the Copyright Law of The United States. There are many articles, blogs, and opinions you can find online about using quotes, excerpts, and lyrics in your book. Spend some time doing your own research.
In the end, using quotes or excerpts in your book is going to come down to two things: your appetite for risk and your desire to be truly unique. If you can’t be one hundred percent certain something is in the public domain, and you couldn’t obtain permission from the copyright owner, you are rolling the dice. That’s why I suggest making every effort to say something unique in a way that makes you the author everyone else wants to quote — rather than the other way around.
©2022 Steve Donahue
Steve Donahue is a professional speaker, book coach, and the author of two bestselling nonfiction books. His works have sold over 100,000 copies and have been translated into Korean, Turkish, Russian and Greek. Steve helps new and experienced authors turn their book ideas into well-crafted publications that delight readers and inspire change. To learn more, visit his website at MyBookCoach.ca.
