All those great unpublished books?

Having sold The Worsley Press to business consultant and fellow author Geoffrey Heard a few months ago, I've been slowly clearing out a lot of old paperwork.

Today I decided to rid myself of a stack of old manuscripts which I'd rejected, and not returned because they didn't come with a prepaid envelope or because return was not requested.

I decided to check a random sample from 2000 and earlier by searching on Google for the authors' names.

Of about a dozen which produced some reference, only one was published (and by the larger publisher I suggested the author contact!) though it does not seem to have warranted a second edition.

Another came up with an author's site which featured her several successful novels but no mention of the book she submitted to me on how to run a low-cost wedding. Her novels have been published on three continents in several languages. I think they could be categorized as "chic-lit" and somewhat anti-men so I'd guess her days as a writer for US bride magazines, which she was pushing strongly in her covering letter to me, no longer rate highly... no mention at all in her online biography.

I was a just a little concerned that I might have rejected that major title which someone else picked up (after all I did listen to Brian Epstein extolling his new band which was to play at the Cavern club that night in Liverpool in the 1960s and did not take up the offer of a free ticket).

Fortunately, or unfortunately, according to your point of view, it seems that did not happen with these manuscripts.

A magazine title someone else has used?

It is among the more common questions I get: I am starting a magazine and I assume I need to make sure no one else is using the title I want and that it is not already copyrighted. How do I check that and how do I then copyright that name?

Titles as such can't be copyrighted, but it is normal for them to be registered either as a trading (business) name or as a trade mark.

However, it really depends on how important this is to you. The protection you may need is only really within the narrow field of the publication. It is not unusual for regional publications, for example, to have the same name with a suffix or prefix added in very small type on the cover and seldom used within the local area. Think of newspapers and particularly the many with News, Times, Chronicle etc as their name.

Registration as a business name/trade mark is more common in the US than in the UK or Australia, but I've previously mentioned the magazine known as the Musician which I published in the UK in the '60s. There was also a Musician published by the Salvation Army and one by the Brass Band Association. I recall only one mixup which was by an advertising agency which should have known better.

Consideration of potential confusion is more important than registration as you do need to make sure you cannot be accused of "passing off" your publication as one owned by someone else. Also, many titles are generic descriptions of the field and would be unlikely to be allowed for registration -- but may still be an ideal publication title.

PDF format acceptance by Microsoft

At times it has seemed as if Microsoft was in full battle mode against Portable Document Format, the open format files based on Acrobat which has become the backbone of the publishing/printing industries.

Now however comes the announcement that the next version of Microsoft Office (currently known as Office 12 and due for release in the second half of 2006) will include a built-in ability to save documents to PDF format.

The chosen format, it seems, will be PDF 1.4, the format for Acrobat 5, which is two versions behind, and likely to be three behind when Office 12 is available. However, this is not really a problem in that 1.4 is the basis of the PDF/X standards which are the acceptable file standard for most printers. Almost every magazine and newspaper ad, for example, in many parts of the world, is now supplied to PDF/X standards. Worsley Press, as a book publisher, has noted that for the past couple of years it has been unnecessary to ask printers for their file requirements: the statement that the file will be supplied to PDF/X-1A standard has never been queried in that time.

The editorial on Planet PDF also has the notable quote from a Microsoft spokesperson that "Microsoft receives over 120,000 queries per month worldwide requesting the ability to 'save as PDF' in Office."

The danger is that many who produce documents which will eventually be printed in magazine or book form will think that "save as PDF" means that their document will now be ready for final use. It has become quite normal for the basic cost of "converting a Word document to PDF" to be charged by publishers, printers and designers at several hundred or even thousands of dollars -- but this is not because of the file conversion. In many cases it involves layout to a different page format, choices in fonts, margins, type sizes etc, and even some final editing.

We'll just have to find a different acceptable term for that part of the publishing process.