Blog Book Tour: Part 4—Review

Phil Davis of Authors on the Net interviewed me on a podcast about my blog book tour and the results summarized in my report.

Listen to the podcast as Phil and I discuss blog book tours.

Blog Book Tour: Part 3—Advice for Hosts

In the last installment, we talked about what authors can do to make their blog books more successful. Now we’ll look at advice for hosts.

Start by reading 30 Tips for Blog Tour Hosts by Helen Ginger. Helen hosts many authors, including me, at her blog Straight from Hel, and she’s used her experience and the experience of other bloggers and authors to compile her tips list.

I’ve hosted a few blog book tours and hope to do more. Based on my experiences both as a host and as a guest, here’s my advice for tour hosts:

• Ensure your blog is ready to host blog book tours. Make it easy for readers to visit and comment. I recommend a blog other than Blogger; if you don’t want to spend money on a blog, you can get a free one at WordPress.com that is much more user friendly than Blogger. Requiring commenters to register or identify letters buried in squiggly lines discourages commenting. If you feel you need to moderate first-time commenters (as I do because of spam), clearly explain this on your blog and moderate comments promptly. If your blogging platform allows it, offer subscribe to comments  so readers will be notified in e-mail when new comments are added, which makes it easier for guests to respond to comments promptly. Make your blog as attractive and functional as you can.
• Host authors whose books fit with your blog’s theme. Book blogs can host can just about any author, but other blogs need to be more selective. Business blogs can host authors of business books. Cooking blogs can host fiction authors whose books feature cooks as main characters as well as cookbook authors. Blogs about arts, crafts, and hobbies can host authors whose books include something about their topic—a character who quilts or a story set at an arts and crafts fair. Although my blog is pretty general, I won’t host authors who write books that conflict with my values or books in genres that I personally don’t like. If authors approach you, don’t feel obligated to host them if you aren’t convinced they are a good fit for your blog. And if authors don’t approach you, feel free to invite authors you would like to host.
• Collaborate with the author on the content and format. Let the author know your preference, but be open to her suggestions. You may want to write a review, but if the author has already lined up a number of reviews but doesn’t have any interviews scheduled, consider an interview. Don’t agree to something you’re not comfortable with, but be willing to consider other ideas. I was hesitant at first to conduct a character interview, but it turned to be a lot of fun for me and the readers. Some blogs hosted me twice on the same tour—once for a review and once for an interview.
• Allow enough time to plan the visit. Schedule far enough in advance to allow you and the author to prepare. You’ll want to read the book ahead of time so you can ask appropriate questions or prepare your introduction and wrap-up if the author is writing a guest post. The author will probably offer you a book; if she doesn’t, ask. If you’re doing an interview, you’ll need to prepare questions for the author to answer. Remember the author is making a number of other tour stops in a short amount of time, so allow her lead time to get her responses back to you.
• Get all the information and material you need from the author. You’ll need cover art and possibly an author photo along with an author bio and book blurb. You won’t necessarily post the bio and blurb, but you can use the information in your introduction and wrap-up. Ask the author for links—to her Web site, blog, and complete tour schedule as well as links to buy the book. If you are an affiliate of Amazon.com or other bookseller, you will use your affiliate links. If not, the author can provide links to where the book is sold. Even though I am an Amazon affiliate and link to Amazon, I also include links to the publisher or other places to buy the book to give readers a choice. You can also visit the author’s Web site and blog to learn more about her to help you promote the visit more effectively.
• Find out if the author is sponsoring a giveaway. Some authors plan to give away a certain number of books or other prizes in a drawing from commenters on all tour stops. Other authors may be willing to offer a prize specifically for your blog. Some may require that readers comment on every stop on the tour to qualify to enter the drawing. Plan to hold a drawing or promote the author’s giveaway.
• Prepare the post early. Give the author an opportunity to review the post so she can make any corrections or suggest any changes to the introduction and wrap-up.
• Announce the visit in advance. A few days before the author visit, write a post on your blog letting your readers know about the author’s upcoming tour stop on your blog. Include the cover art and author photo and tell your readers something about the author and her book. Don’t duplicate information here that will be posted on date of the actual visit. The purpose of this post is to intrigue readers and motivate them to return on the day of the author’s visit.
• Ask the author to promote the stop on her blog. She will probably post about each day’s stop, and she  may promote on Twitter and other social media as well.
• Promote the tour stop. Use Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo groups, and any other social media you’re involved with to announce the author’s visit to your blog. I don’t do this well—OK, not at all—but I know many hosts and authors find social media very effective in building traffic.
• Schedule the post to appear by 8 AM Eastern time. You want the post to be online when readers start looking for it. If the tour stop has been announced for a specific day, many readers will go to the host blog early in the day … and go away never to return if they don’t find the post.
• Check often for comments and ensure your guest is also responding. Acknowledge and respond to comments promptly. If questions and comments start to accumulate and your guest isn’t responding, e-mail her to let her know readers are asking questions.
• Thank the author and offer to send stats. Some authors will appreciate having traffic statistics about their visits to your blog. Don’t worry if you don’t have a huge amount of traffic to your blog. If your readers, no matter how few, are interested in the subject or genre of the author’s book, the author will be glad to reach them.

What suggestions do you have for blog book tour hosts? Have you ever hosted an author on tour? If you haven’t hosted authors in the past, are you interested in hosting blog book tour stops in the future?

Blog Book Tour: Part 2—Advice for Authors

In my last post, I described what a blog book tour is. Instead of traveling to bookstores and sitting around waiting for someone to buy a book for the author to sign, the author travels to blogs. The visit may consist of a guest post, an interview, a review, an excerpt from the author’s book, or anything else the author and host can imagine.

Now, let’s talk about how authors can plan the most effective tour.

You’ll find excellent information at the Quickest Blog Book Tour Guide Ever. The guide is prepared by Dani, who blogs at Blog Book Tours and runs the Blog Book Tours Yahoo group. The e-mail group is an excellent training ground for authors planning tours. It is designed for authors to join and go through the three-month training, conduct their tours, then leave to make room for new authors.

I learned from Dani’s guide, the Yahoo group, and my own experience as an author of a blog book tour. Here is my advice to authors planning their own tours.

• Understand the purpose. All of us would like to take a blog book tour and sell thousands of books. However, it usually doesn’t work that way. Just as most authors (except celebrities and politicians) don’t sell thousands of books in the bookstores when they tour in person, a blog book tour may not results in immediate huge sales. The purpose of the blog book tour is to make readers aware of you and your book. For years, marketing gurus have said it takes seven exposures on average before someone buys a product such as your book. Now, I’m hearing the number of required exposures has increased to 10. A blog book tour will introduce your book to many readers who would not hear of it otherwise.
• Start planning far in advance. If you want to promote your book as soon as it is published, you need to start planning months before the book’s release. If you are promoting a book that was published some time ago, allow yourself plenty of time to plan the tour. I spent nearly 100 hours planning and executing my first blog book tour, and I think that’s a pretty standard amount of time.
• Determine your tour schedule. My first tour lasted three weeks, and my second lasted only four days. I think the first was too long, and the second was too short. If the tour is too long, people get tired of it and quit following. If it’s too short, you don’t build any momentum. A tour with stops every day takes a lot of time and effort and is exhausting (though certainly not as tiring as traveling to that many different cities). Something that seems promising would be a tour of about a week to launch the book followed by a year-long tour of one stop a month. That would start promotion with some momentum and keep the promotion going long-term. I haven’t tried this and don’t know anyone who has, so it may not be as good as it sounds. If anyone has tried it or does something like this, please let me know.
• Become a part of the blogosphere and social media long before your tour. Create and maintain your own blog. Visit other blogs and comment. Participate in events—such as group writing projects—that will raise other people’s recognition of you.  Regarding social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Good Reads, and all the other groups and networks on the Internet, all I can say here is to do as I say, not as I do. I am not active in social media, but I think that authors who are have more successful tours.
• Target appropriate blogs. These can be blogs dedicated to book reviews and author interviews, blogs focused on your genre, as well as blogs related to themes in your blog. For example, a blogger whose protagonist is a cake decorator visited cooking and cake decorating blogs. I should have targeted some blogs about domestic violence as that is an important theme in Dream or Destiny. I was blessed that a number of bloggers I’ve come to know through my own blog as well as visiting and commenting on other blogs offered to host my tour. Since I had enough hosts, I didn’t go looking for other kinds of blogs.
• Determine if the targeted blogs meet your criteria. Some people advocate that you visit only blogs that have significant traffic, but I went to blogs that had as few as 45 page views in the first week. Certainly you want most of your stops to have more traffic than that, but sometimes making a few targeted people aware of your book is as beneficial as announcing it to a huge crowd that may or may not be interested. Check the blogs to see how easy it is to leave comments, and ask the hosts’ comment policy. I didn’t do this, and one of my hosts moderated all comments only once a day, so the comments didn’t appear until the next day for me to respond, then it took another day for my response to appear. To encourage interactivity, be sure it’s easy for people to comment.
• Contact the targeted blogs with information and a request. I prepared a PDF file with information about my book and my upcoming tour that I sent to prospective hosts. The information is included in the report on my tour.
• Aim for a variety of events on the tour.  Readers tire quickly of seeing the same information on every tour stop. Your book cover should appear at every stop, along with how to order the book. Different tour stops can include guest posts that you write for the bloggers’ readers and interviews (audio or written) in which you respond to hosts’ questions about your book, yourself, and your writing. Hosts can even interview one of your characters rather than you. They can post excerpts from your book or write reviews. Maybe you can think of something creative that no one has tried before that relates to your book.
• Confirm stops and send information to hosts. You may have to exchange several e-mails with prospective hosts to determine a schedule that works for everyone. Not only do you want your stops spread out over the entire time of the tour, but also you want variety from day to day. You don’t want three days of interviews followed by three days of reviews—mix them up. After you and the host agree on a stop, send a confirmation e-mail showing the date and the content/format (interview, review, excerpt). Include additional information such as as the Information for Hosts in my blog tour evaluation report. Offer to provide book cover art, your photo, book blurb, your bio, and anything else the hosts requires. One thing I didn’t include in my information packet that I should have: let the hosts know that you will be asking them for feedback, including traffic and comment counts, at the end of the tour.
• Post the schedule on your blog. My blog book tour schedule showed the dates, the host blog, and the event/topic (guest post on XYZ topic, interview, review, etc.). When you first post the schedule, you will link to the home page of each host blog. However, after the posts appear, change the URLs on your schedule to the permalinks so readers can always find the posts.
• Consider sending the hosts a copy of the book.You will obviously have to send a copy of the book to any blogger who is reviewing your book, but I offered a copy to every blogger who hosted me. Some bloggers in other countries got e-books, and a couple of bloggers didn’t take me up on my offer. The book was a nice thank-you for hosting, and also generated additional reviews outside the tour, including one at Amazon.com.
• Consider offering books to hosts for giveaways on their blogs. I made this offer to all hosts, although only three took me up on the offer. Book bloggers, especially, like to encourage comments and participation by drawing prizewinners from commenters. Some authors give away a specific number of books (usually two or three) to winners drawn from comments at all blog tour stops. Others require a comment to be left on every tour stop to qualify for prizes. I prefer offering each host a book—the hosts interested in participating will agree; others won’t. The hosts who give away prizes can build reader loyalty.
• Respond to hosts promptly. Send cover art and other material as soon as the host requests it. Answer interview questions promptly, and send guest posts several days (preferably about a week) in advance of the scheduled date.
• Remind hosts as the date approaches. I sent an e-mail to hosts a few days before the scheduled stop, asked if there was anything else they needed from me, and included the details of the scheduled stop. This gave the hosts another opportunity to be sure they had cover art, blurbs, and anything else they needed, and it was a gentle reminder/confirmation of the tour stop.
• Promote each stop. Every day I posted a short announcement and a link to the stop of the day. I asked hosts what time their post would go live, and scheduled my announcement post for a few minutes after that. Ideally, all the posts should be live at the beginning of the day, but if you’re touring blogs located around the world, the beginning of the host blogger’s day may not be the beginning of your day. For those more social media savvy than I am, promote on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo groups, and other social media sites.
• Be available at each stop. I tried to post the first comment at each stop, though every once in a while, someone beat me to it. I thanked the blogger for hosting me and said I would be available to answer questions. Then I checked throughout the day to acknowledge comments and answer questions. This is much easier when the blog has the subscribe to comments feature so you are notified in e-mail when there is a new comment for you to respond to. At the end of the day or early the next day, I left a final thank-you comment though I continued to respond to comments that came in later.
• Thank the hosts. In addition to leaving a thank-you comment, I thanked each host by e-mail at the end of the day. Once a week, I sent e-cards to thank each of the hosts for the previous week.
• Evaluate the tour. I sent a form to my hosts asking for information. The form is part of the report on my tour. I hadn’t told my hosts in advance that I would be asking for this information, and I had to wheedle and cajole some of the them to get the information (and one never responded). The information was extremely valuable—but I should have given advance notice that I would be asking for it.

Are you an author or a host who has taken part in a blog book tour? What advice do you have for authors to make their tour successful?

Blog Book Tour: Part 1—What It Is

I recently took two blog book tours for my romantic suspense novel Dream or Destiny.  The first tour lasted three weeks and included seventeen stops; the second tour lasted less than a week and included four stops. After the first tour, I wrote a wrap-up reportof the tour that I hope will be helpful to other authors in planning their own tours as well as to bloggers hosting blog book tour stops.

I’ve also hosted several authors on blog book tours and plan to do more of this in the future. Blog book tours, also called virtual book tours, are becoming increasingly popular, but I’ve learned that not everyone knows what a blog book tour is.

More than a year ago when I was planning ahead for the release of my novel, I wrote a post about virtual book tours (VBTs). Since then, it seems that blog book tour is becoming the preferred name.

Authors have often gone on book tours, traveling across the country or within a region to visit book stores for readings and booksignings. Book tours don’t always result in a lot of immediate sales for authors, but they do give authors the opportunity to meet booksellers and readers and to build their and their books’ name recognition. Book tours give readers live contact with authors. 

Today, book tours are too expensive for all but best-selling authors. Many authors prefer to spend their time and energy writing rather than traveling, yet they still need to promote their books. More and more books are being sold online rather than in local bookstores, and booksignings don’t often draw large crowds (unless the author is already famous).

Blog book tours are taking the place of physical book tours for many authors. There are no travel expenses and no time away from home. Instead of physically visiting bookstores, authors virtually visit blogs to promote their books. Blog book tours don’t always result in a lot of immediate sales, but they give the authors the opportunity to virtually meet readers and bloggers. Tours build name recognition for the authors and their books, and they give readers virtual contact with authors. 

A visit to a blog can take many forms, including interviews—written or audio (podcasts), reviews, excerpts, and guest posts. The schedules for my first and second blog book tours show that my tour stops included most of these.

I’ve hosted reviews, an author interview, and a character interview, a fun and different visit. Hosting authors on their blog book tours is new to me, and I’m looking forward to a variety of different visits.

In the next installment, I’ll offer advice for authors, and in the final installment of the series, I’ll make suggestions for bloggers hosting blog book tours.

As a reader, do you enjoy blog book tours? What do you like or not like about blog book tours or individual tour stops that you have read?

I Love to Write Day and My Best Writing Advice

Do you love to write? So do I, and today is our day, I Love to Write Day. According to the official Web site: 

November 15, 2008 will mark the seventh I Love To Write Day, a grassroots effort to have people of all ages practice their writing skills. Created by Delaware author John Riddle, I Love To Write Day is an opportunity for people of all ages to write something: a poem, an essay, a letter to the editor, a short story, start a novel, finish a novel - the possibilities are endless!

This post is filed under Writing and Publishing Advice because I’m going to share the two best pieces of advice I can give to any aspiring writer:

1. Read, read, read!
2. Write, write, write!

Writers are readers first. Why would anyone want to write if they didn’t love reading? You’ll learn a lot about writing if you read a lot. Certainly read writing how-to books, but also read poetry, creative nonfiction, history, biography, fiction—a romantic mystery titled Dream or Destiny comes to mind. You will learn as much from observing other writers’ techniques as you will from reading about those techniques in how-to books.

At some point, though, you have to stop reading and start writing. I Love to Write Day is a perfect day to write. If you’re already writing—maybe you’re halfway through National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)—be sure to write today.

If you haven’t started, take the first step. Begin a journal. Get a jump-start with a writing prompt. Write a letter to a loved one. Compose a poem or start a book.

What did (or will you) write today?

Post at The Blood-Red Pencil

I hope you’re reading The Blood-Red Pencil regularly. It’s a great blog with daily posts from a group of professional editors. My latest post there is When Should I Start Editing?

Great Editing Blog: The Blood-Red Pencil

I’ve recently joined a great new editing blog: The Blood-Red Pencil. A dozen professional editors ”take the mystery out of of book manuscript revision.” My first post on the blog, Ten Tips for Self-Editing, appeared today. I encourage you to subscribe so you don’t miss any of the great editing advice.

Guest Post: Your Competition Stinks – Isn’t it Great!

When I wrote a guest post at Poewar: Writer’s Resource Center, John Hewitt promised to reciprocate. John’s site is a great place for writers of all kinds—I’ve been a subscriber and a fan for a long time, and I’m delighted to host John’s guest post. I hope you like the post as much as I do and that you will show John your appreciation in comments.
_____________________________
There are a lot of people out there competing for freelance jobs. A freelance posting on a popular job site such as jobs.problogger.net or freelancewritinggigs.com can easily generate 400 responses. Numbers like that can be intimidating. You may wonder why you should bother applying if you have to compete against that many people. How can you possibly win?

I’m here to tell you it is easier than you think. The truth is that your competition stinks. They’re terrible. They’re awful. They don’t know how to apply for a position. They don’t know how to write a decent e-mail query. Many of them can’t write their way out of a wet paper sack. Just reading their e-mails is painful. Ninety percent of the people applying for these freelance positions can be eliminated within a sentence or two — a paragraph at the most. That is because their writing is terrible and it shows. The first 90% can be eliminated immediately because they have made one (or more) of six mistakes:

• They use informal language
• They make an obvious grammar or usage error
• They talk about their personal problems
• They don’t know what they are applying for
• They don’t give their qualifications
• They don’t send samples or links to samples

These very basic mistakes take that 400 person applicant pool down to a manageable 40 people. That is still more competition than you would like, but even at this point, many of the applicants aren’t serious competition. They have their own series of mistakes that they make. These mistakes are less obvious and less deadly, but they still keep most of these candidates from moving forward.

• They fail to cite relevant experience
• Their samples are not appropriate (or they point you to their web site instead of specific pieces)
• They don’t provide full contact information
• They don’t discuss why they are the best writer for the job

Once you eliminate the people who make those mistakes, you would be surprised how dramatically the pool of applicants shrinks. In the end, out of 400 applicants, there are perhaps 10 that can withstand even this level of scrutiny. That doesn’t mean there are 10 great applicants, just that there are ten who didn’t already blow their chances because of an easily correctable mistake. Competing against 400 people is daunting, but competing against 10 is a reasonable challenge, especially if you think you are the right person for the job. Just follow these eight simple steps and you will get yourself into the top ten most of the time:

• Write in a professional style
• Check and recheck your query to be sure that the language is correct
• Discuss your qualifications, not your needs
• Know exactly what you are applying for
• Discuss your relevant qualifications and experience
• Provide relevant, specific samples
• Provide full contact information, including your phone number
• Give at least one reason why you are the best applicant for the job

That’s it. Those eight things will rocket you to the top of the pile. There are plenty of ways to improve your chances even further, but these eight will keep you from being lumped in with the idiots.

Good luck.
_____________________________
John Hewitt is the publisher of the writing site, poewar.com. If you like this article you may also enjoy reading, How to Write a Query Letter and 10 Ways to Make Editors Hate You Before They Even Know You. He also knows all about Writing Your Way Out of a Wet Paper Sack.

Copyright: Part 4 - Protecting Your Copyright

Now that we’ve covered the basics of copyright and fair use, let’s talk about what you can do to protect your copyright and defend your rights if your copyright is infringed.

Note that I have never had copyright infringed, so I am not writing from personal experience. I hope you never have to use this advice, but if you are in the position of having your rights violated, I hope these suggestions from others who have been victimized will be helpful.

• To reduce the risks of having your content stolen, be proactive. Although the copyright symbol is not required, you may want to use it on your Web site, blog, individual posts, and feeds. The notice won’t stop determined content thieves, but it may stop unauthorized use of your content by people who don’t realize that just because it’s on the Internet doesn’t mean it’s in the public domain.
• Be prepared to prove that you are the original author of the work. Since blog posts can be back-dated, the post date is not necessarily proof of when the post was written. Even the dates of comments can be changed, so the dates of comments might not be sufficient evidence in court, either. However, your database file should have the actual date the post was made. If you create posts in your word processor rather than directly in your blog platform, the file on your hard drive will have the date it was created as well as the last date it was modified. For books and other longer works, you may want to mail a hardcopy of the manuscript to yourself. Have the clerk at the Post Office wrap the package in date-stamped tape and don’t open the package until you have to present it in court.
• Monitor your content by searching or using Google Alerts for your articles. Jeanne Dininni found the unauthorized use of her work because she set up a Google alert for a unique phrase in an article. Don’t expect to find your article by searching for the title as the unauthorized user has probably changed the title. You can also use Copyscape to search for duplicate content.
• As soon as you discover that your work has been used without permission, contact the copyright infringer. You may want to start out assuming the infringement was out of ignorance. Describe the work that was used without authorization and explain when and where you originally posted it. Explain what you want the user to do: remove the material immediately, ask for permission, pay for the rights to use the content. Mike Goad describes what he did when he discovered his article - on copyright, no less! - had been used without permission and the successful result.
• Even if you have no objection to a specific use, contacting the user every time there is a copyright infringement helps establish that you are taking steps to protect your copyright. If you end up in court suing someone for copyright infringement, being able to demonstrate that you have not allowed others to use your content without permission will be to your advantage.  
• If the user does not respond to your request and a follow-up message, contact their Web site host. The terms of service of most Web hosting companies allow them to shut down Web site that infringe the copyrights of others. Of course, sometimes, the burden of proof they put on the copyright owner makes the protection they offer more theoretical than practical, but it is a tool to use.

If these steps do not get results, you may decide to pursue legal action, which is beyond the scope of this series. This guide is designed to cover the basics of copyright and give you some ideas to protect your copyright.

More detailed information, including legal remedies, can be found in the following articles and sites:
Articles about Copyright by Mike Goad
Copyright Articles at Research Copyright
Digital Millenium Copyright Act at Google
Do It Yourself Copyright Protection Online by Robert Niles
Internet Copyright Law:  A Rat Pilfered My Web Site Cheese - What Do I Do?by Richard Keyt
Plagiarism Today - site dedicated to content theft, copyright infringement, and plagiarism
Six Steps to Prevent Content Theft and Combat Copyright Infringement by John-Paul
What to Do When Someone Steals Your Content by Lorelle Fossen

Copyright: Part 3 - Fair Use

Recently, a college professor friend called to ask my advice. One of her students created a PowerPoint presentation for a class project. She wrote the text and used artwork she copied from a Web site to illustrate her presentation. My friend asked if I thought that use of the artwork fell within “fair use” since the student was using the art for a class project and not selling it or even making it publicly available. Absolutely not!

One of biggest misconceptions about copyright may be the idea that copyrighted works can be used if the user doesn’t recognize monetary gain from the use. Copyright gives the author complete control of how the work is used, whether or not the user realizes any value from the use. A blogger who copies a post from another blog and gives the author credit is still infringing copyright because the author no longer has complete control of the work. A student who copies artwork to use as illustrations in a class project is still infringing even if no one but the student and the professor see the project.

The Copyright Office offers a fact sheet on fair use. Criticism, news reporting, research, and teaching are among acceptable uses. However, whether a specific use of copyrighted material is fair use or infringement depends on several factors, including 1) the purpose of the use, 2) the nature of the copyrighted work, 3) the amount of material used in relation to the total work, and 4) the effect of the use on the potential market or value of the work.

There is no standard for fair use. Some institutions and organizations have internal policies, such as ten percent of a copyrighted work can be used for academic purposes. However, those criteria are arbitrary and may not hold up in court. Ten percent of one work may have little effect on the value of the total work, but ten percent of another may have a significant adverse effect on the market.

The best policy is to ask permission of the copyright holder if there is any doubt that the use is fair use. The author has the complete control over the work and can choose how much or how little to allow to be quoted. Authors can transfer copyright or grant exclusive or non-exclusive rights for any amount of time, for a fee or for free. The author might grant the exclusive right to one publication to publish the work first, then grant to other publications non-exclusive rights to publish the same piece after the first rights period ends.

Most bloggers believe it is fair use to post a brief excerpt with a link to the full article on the author’s blog or Web site fair use. However, the law does not state this. The law states that the four factors listed above be considered to determine whether the use is fair use under the copyright law.

Let’s compare two hpothetical cases of use by those criteria.

Hypothetical Case #1: A blogger posts a brief excerpt of the piece with a link to the complete post:

1. The purpose of the use is likely educational rather than commercial, even though the quote might improve traffic and income. 
2. The copyrighted work (a blog post) is intended to be read online by the public, and a link from another blog would likely increase the number of people who read the article. If the author earns income from advertising or product sales, the opportunity for that income is still there.
3. The excerpt is a small portion of the total work.
4. The use isn’t likely to damage the potential market for the work. In fact, linking to the post could possibly make the work more profitable if the author earns income from advertising.

Hypothetical Case #2: A blogger publishes the complete post, giving the author credit and linking to the author’s blog:

1. The line blurs between educational and commercial use. The material does educate readers, but the blogger posting another writer’s work is likely receiving commercial benefit from advertising.
2. The copyrighted work (a blog post) is intended to be read online by the public, and publishing the material for another audience would likely increase the number of people who read the article. However, if the author earns income from advertising or product sales, the opportunity for that income is lost.
3. The post is the entire work.
4. The use will reduce the value of the work because the author loses the opportunity to earn income from readers.

This is my personal analysis of the two cases. Since the law is unclear, fair use or infringement can be determined only in court. Asking permission prevents any future problems.

Writers will often freely give permission to quote part of an article and link to the complete work, and they may give permission to publish the entire article on another site or in another publication. However, the right to grant or not grant permission belongs to the author and no one else.

What do you think constitutes fair use of a blog post or article? What about books and other long works? Share your thoughts in comments, and be sure to read other comments to carry on the conversation.

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