A special package arrived today in the mail:
It was a copy of the "New Encyclopedia of Origami and Papercraft":
A year ago, I was contacted by the publisher asking my Mom and me for permission to reprint some of our artwork from our book "The Encyclopedia of Papermaking and Bookbinding". We gladly gave them permission since we too had relied on artist submissions for each of the three books that we've written (for more about this, read Our First Book Contract).
But as I looked through the book, I realized that instead of reproducing the artwork on page 6 and page 7 like originally asked, they actually reprinted piles of images along with verbatim and paraphrased copy. Some images show my artwork and sheets of paper, and many of them show my Mom's and my hands in the step-by-steps. Here's an example of the artwork with a credit:
Here's a page with my Mom's hands from "The Encyclopedia of Papermaking and Bookbinding":
And here are a couple of pages with the paper samples that we made for "300 Papermaking Recipes":
Contractually, the publisher has the right to republish material from our past books. I'm not sure why they would have requested permission for pages 6 and 7 and not the full scope of the material they were planning on using. But I feel disappointed that my Mom and I don't have our name on the front of the book as we would have loved the opportunity to author "The New Encyclopedia of Origami and Papercraft".
My next step? To turn my disappointment into action and reach out to the publisher and inquire about future opportunities. I'll keep you posted.
