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Book Update
Hello everyone, and thank you for your patience with my silence and introversion as I work on editing books. The first volume, "Essays in Theravada Buddhism: Writings of an Incendiary Monk," is almost ready for publication, with pretty much all that remains to do before it is uploaded onto Amazon being to write the Introduction to the whole book and to design the book cover---which I think will feature some version of the trademark burning monk.
I am learning as I go with this project, so it will presumably get easier as I work on subsequent volumes. One thing that I have done from the beginning of my blogging career is to ignore the tab key when writing, starting the indentation of a new paragraph by hitting the space key five times...which now is causing irregularities in the indentations when the right margins are justified. I can leave them irregular like they are now, or I suppose I could spend a few hours going through the whole book and removing the initial five spaces and replacing them all with regular tabs. At present I'm leaning towards leaving them irregular, as a means of adding a personal touch.
As always, feel free to offer feedback on this process. I hope that some of you, especially those who haven't read the old Nippapanca Blog much, will read these books, the first one of which is turning out rather well, if I do say so myself, and I just did.
Oh, one question: Does anybody know the law regarding the quoting of copyrighted material? I do quote other books sometimes, and will eventually quote in their entirety the lyrics to a song by Alanis Morissette, so I am wondering.
I am learning as I go with this project, so it will presumably get easier as I work on subsequent volumes. One thing that I have done from the beginning of my blogging career is to ignore the tab key when writing, starting the indentation of a new paragraph by hitting the space key five times...which now is causing irregularities in the indentations when the right margins are justified. I can leave them irregular like they are now, or I suppose I could spend a few hours going through the whole book and removing the initial five spaces and replacing them all with regular tabs. At present I'm leaning towards leaving them irregular, as a means of adding a personal touch.
As always, feel free to offer feedback on this process. I hope that some of you, especially those who haven't read the old Nippapanca Blog much, will read these books, the first one of which is turning out rather well, if I do say so myself, and I just did.
Oh, one question: Does anybody know the law regarding the quoting of copyrighted material? I do quote other books sometimes, and will eventually quote in their entirety the lyrics to a song by Alanis Morissette, so I am wondering.
Direct quotes from books must be cited. For paraphrases, I think it’s preferable to cite but not illegal if you don’t. Quoting more than 10% of a book is illegal, unless it’s in the public domain and copyright-free. I don’t think these rules apply to songs, because the music is copyrighted and not the lyrics.
So even as much as a single sentence, from a copyrighted book must have permission from the copyright holder? And if a single sentence is OK, how about three sentences?
Nope, not permission, just citation. I.e. you have to name the author, the title, the publisher/publishing date, and the page from which you got the quote. There are several ways to do this - either in-text citations (APA style), or footnotes/end-notes. These are sort of a summarized version of the book details. And a complete bibliography at the end which lists all the books you cited.
You'd only have to seek permission if you're quoting more than 10% of a copyrighted book. Otherwise it's illegal.
Here's a guide to APA style: https://www.mendeley.com/guides/apa-citation-guide
For footnotes (bottom of each page) or endnotes (which follow each chapter), the format is flexible depending on which style you use, but generally it's: Last Name, First Name. Book title in italics. Publisher & Publishing Year (or Publishing Year and Place). page number (e.g., p45). (This might be British, I'm not sure.) If you're quoting from the same book multiple times, you can use several shortcuts like writing ibid, page number (e.g., ibid., p50) if it's in sequence. Or the author's name and date of publication, if it's not (e.g, Pannobhasa, 2021). For the bibliography at the end, you don't have to put the page number, and the books should be listed in alphabetical order of the authors.
The best way is to find a book you like and copy the citation style. End noted tend to work best for non-academic non-fiction, though.
*end notes
Ah, all right, that's not so bad