Retain Your Rights, Even in the Academy

How academic authors can help themselves and the cause of author's rights by retaining their copyright, and demanding a royalty for the use of their work. The days of truly not-for-profit educational publishing are over, so why are you gifting your work to the academy?

Plus, a quick trip to Halifax and the intro to this year's Margaret Laurence Memorial Lecture. Here's that lecture for you enjoyment: Writerstrust – Author-olive-senior-on-the-writing-life-margaret-laurence-lecture-2019

And here is Dr. Aileen Fyfe's blog post about academic publishing: blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsci…ut-open-research/

I want to thank my son, Fred Degen, for his help in editing and preparing this episode.

Canada Decides to Lead Again on Artists' Rights

Checking back in on an earlier episode in which I took you to Ottawa for Parliamentary testimony from The Writers’ Union of Canada in the matter of Canada’s copyright law review.

On May 15th 2019, the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage released a report containing 22 key recommendations. The upshot of those 22 recommendations is that Canada’s lawmakers have accepted the invitation to value the work of those who produce our culture. They've decided to lead again on protecting artists' rights.

This is very good news. If incorporated into law, these recommendations will go a long way to rebuilding the cultural marketplace in Canada, a market eroded and pillaged by rampant free-riding in the digital space, and huge amounts of uncompensated copying in educational settings.

Jay Odjick on Illustration, Language Preservation, & Spectacularly Bad Advice

A short interview with author, illustrator and television producer Jay Odjick.

I first became aware of Jay on Twitter, through his wonderful series of Algonquin Word of the Day tweets in which he provides an illustrated word in the Algonquin language. Jay is an Algonquin artist from the Kitigan Zibi community in Quebec. Go find him right now on Twitter @JayOdjick

I sat down over Skype with Jay to talk about his latest success, which is his second illustration collaboration with popular children’s author Robert Munsch.

You can access this podcast on either Soundcloud, RadioPublic, Stitcher, the Apple podcasts app, or the Google Podcast app. You can find individual episodes through my own website at www.jkdegen.com/, and @bookroompod on Twitter. If you have suggestions for stories I might want to cover, you can reach out on Twitter or by e-mail at bookroom14@yahoo.com.

Image of the Algonquin Word of the Day courtesy Jay Odjick Shop.

Three Cheers for Europe's New Author-Friendly Law

Today I'm just quickly checking back in on an earlier episode to let you know that the European Parliament has indeed voted in favour of progressive new legislation encouraging and protecting professional content, including writing and publishing, across all member states.

Finally, there's a group of lawmakers who see behind the curtain, and have made a real effort to share the online wealth, regulate and require responsible behavior from online platforms. This new law promises new content licensing opportunities for authors and artists fenced off from the banquet created by their own hard work.

You can access this podcast on either Soundcloud, RadioPublic, Stitcher, the Apple podcasts app, or the Google Podcast app. You can find individual episodes through my own website at www.jkdegen.com/, and @bookroompod on Twitter. If you have suggestions for stories I might want to cover, you can reach out on Twitter or by e-mail at bookroom14@yahoo.com.

Image of the European Parliament building in Brussels courtesy me and my little camera.