GETTING PERMISSION

An author recently wrote about the difficulty of getting permission to reprint quotes, etc. Mainly she was having trouble getting up with authors--they would not respond to her queries. This always ticks me off, assholes, you would think they took some page out of Truman Capote's love of self. Anyway, in thinking about it, I mainly sent this reply and thought that maybe some might want to see my approach. And, my answer is right out of my personality, ENTP.

Jean, this is a crazy sort of thing getting permission. You can spend lots of time on it. I chose to thank everybody in the world, if you'll look at Phil's poetry book: Rhymer IN The Sunset and, I think it was where I said, "I might have missed getting permission and if I did, I would acknowledge in future additions."

Granted, my approach is somewhat laissez faire with the idea that I didn't have anything (meaning money) anyway and so why sue me. Or, I would not callously do things, surely not intentionally steal someone's material. I personally think authors are too sensitive. You would think that they had discovered a cure for cancer and wanted to keep it to themselves. Still, I would do the best I could in acknowledging other's works. With a book like yours, I don't see where there would be difficulties. If there were, you simply say, "sorry" I won't do it again. In Flanders Field, I think it is in the public domain.

And, as I have looked at writings, I think there's a pretty broad spectrum of approaches. For instance, a very famous author wrote a book, (many of these famous authors don't write the books, they just lend their names to them); in one particular book with him as author with somebody else who probably wrote the book--they absolutely took at least a half dozen quotes from my book, Gen William C. Lee, the Father of the Airborne, word for word. Some of them quite lengthy. Nobody ever asked my permission and basically, I could care less. Needless to say, most don't have my attitude. Sorry I can't be more helpful.