Please help me on book copyright laws.

[bonruiz]

       Sir, I would like to know the rules regarding copyrights of book publications, I am at present coming up with some books in English Grammar , Vocabulary, Writing and Reading Comprehension, which I would like to market someday. Are there royalty free topics or pictures on the internet? Where can I find an easy guideline for book publications? How broad is the scope of plagiarism? Thank you very much.

Henry Ruiz

bonruiz@yahoo.com

[Joe Carillo]

You can get the rules governing copyrights in the Philippines by clicking this link to the Copyright Law of the Philippines, and a copy of the copyright application with the Philippine National Library by clicking this other link. 

There are hundreds of websites offering royalty-free photos, but as far as I know, they are only for private one-time use and not for use in publications for mass distribution like books. In any case, most of the photos use foreign models, situations, and locations, so they would generally be unsuitable for use in an English-usage book for Filipino audiences. There are also a few Philippine-based suppliers of royalty-free photos but the rules governing their use are essentially the same as those of foreign suppliers. For your book, however, I would suggest that you seriously consider getting a professional photographer in the Philippines to work with you in coming up with Filipino-specific pictures of high quality.

I’m not aware of any freely available printed guidelines for getting a book published in the Philippines, but you can check out these two foreign websites to give you a general idea:

(1) EHow Guidelines for Publishing a Book
(2) ASTD Press Book Publishing Process Overview

As to plagiarism, I couldn’t find any website in the Philippines devoted to explaining its basics. I suggest you look up the definition of plagiarism and the basic law governing it in the United States by clicking this link to USLegal.com.

Good luck on your English-usage book project!