Mike's twenty-two now and he's working for his popĪnd his heads full of business through and through Health and wealth and friends by the score There's tables and chairs all over they yardĪnd his friends jumped up and they hollered real hard He walked to his house and he's taken of his guard You see he just turned seven years old that dayĪnd he thought he'd get a party at school If I really, really want to use copyrighted lyrics in future books, I will at least check to see if they're affordable.We're going to let second grade out early today In any case, I was glad to pay the money and be legal. I don't know whether all self-publishing authors would get such a break on quoting copyrighted lyrics in a book or e-book, or whether this just happened to be the going rate for the song I wanted to use. and BAY MUSIC LTD.Īll Rights Controlled and Administered by EMI BLACKWOOD MUSIC INC.Īll Rights Reserved International Copyright Secured Used by Permission © 1968 (Renewed 1996) EMI BLACKWOOD MUSIC INC. In any case, this his how they told me to format the permission: I signed and returned their copy of the contract, along with a check.įor some reason, you can't see the Acknowledgements page with Amazon's Look Inside feature for the paperback version, but it shows in the Kindle preview. They quoted me a very reasonable price for permission, sent me a contract which specified exactly how the permission was to appear in the book. I think, when they realized I was a first-time self-publisher, they weren't, shall we say, expecting my novel to make it to the NYT bestseller list. They also needed a publication date (this was right before I planned to publish) and some other information. They wanted to see four pages of the manuscript, two before and two after the quote. I told them exactly what I wanted to use. They referred me to Hal Leonard Corporation, to procure permission to quote lyrics in a printed publication.Īnother email to Hal Leonard. I emailed them and they told me they only handle performance permissions. I located information online that licensing for the song was handle by BMI. It, along with other things, solidifies the identity of these two characters as Baby Boomers. This tells everyone (most everyone, anyway) that Max is singing a lyric from Spinning Wheel by Blood, Sweat and Tears, whose lead singer was David Clayton Thomas. And another character responds, "Cut it out. That being the case, I could have used it without permission from anyone, except for one thing. It you really want to use copyrighted lyrics in a story, it won't hurt to at least look into the cost of procuring permission.Įarly in my novel, this phrase appears in the dialog, "What goes up, must come down." This is a commonly used phrase that's usually understood to be a simplification of Newton's law of gravitation. A typical advance for a literary novel by a first-time author would barely meet the cost.' Plus several more, of which only George Michael's "Fastlove" came in under £200. For two lines of "I Shot the Sheriff" (words and music by Bob Marley, though in my head it was the Eric Clapton version): £1,000. For one line of "When I'm Sixty-four": £735. For one line of Oasis's "Wonderwall": £535. For one line of "Jumpin' Jack Flash": £500. My editor, reasonably enough, was more cautious, and at the last minute someone from the publishing house helpfully secured the permissions on my behalf. 'I'd restricted myself to just a line or two from a handful of songs and vaguely hoped that was OK or that no one would notice. It's not just inexperienced indie authors who can get a nasty surprise this is Blake Morrison talking about his eleventh novel South of the River in the Guardian: I thought it was worth posting about this just in case anyone here doesn't know that you have to get permission to use even one line of a song in a book.
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