Permissions: Step 1

Obtaining permissions from artists and authors quoted in your book manuscript can be difficult. To minimize problems, you need to make sure you identify every quote in your manuscript and gather the contact information required to find the person who needs to grant permission before you start asking for permission.

What I did was create an Excel spreadsheet that contained the following items of information:

Contact Date

Deceased Author Name (complete name first and last)
Representative Name of Deceased Author (first and last)

or Live Contact First Name
and Live Contact Last Name

Street
City
State
Zip Code
Phone Number
Email address

Chapter of your manuscript where quoted material occurs
Page(s)
Source of the quote (book, interview, other?)
Description of the quoted material (what is it? Text? A list? Something else?)

Date Permission was signed/Date permission denied

Notes/Issues (if permission is denied, note that in this column.)


I’ll say this again—it’s important to identify all the quoted material before you start asking for permissions. By doing this, you are more likely to include everything you need to ask permission for and you will understand the entire scope of your permission requests. What you don’t want to do is make mistakes and/or omissions. Worse, you don’t want to send multiple letters to the same individual because he or she is less likely to cooperate with someone who is sloppy and unorganized.

The spreadsheet helps you get organized and stay organized as long as you make it your working guide.

In the next blog entries, I will talk about what your permission form should contain, how you should present the permission request, what quotes may not need permission but only notification to the author or his/her agent, and how long this process might take.

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