Sounds like someone — say, everyone at Indigo? — needs to actually read the Copyright Act.

Indigo is the industry leader in idiocy. God bless them.

I was at an Indigo store yesterday and was admiring their many disorganized tables spilling with discounted books. Prices slashed from their original prices to the standard ??.99 – and then, if that wasn’t enough to tempt the ravenous public to fill their boots with books, Indigo has slapped red circular stickers on their books that say $1. Wow. $1 for this useless remaindered book?

Indigo. Leading the industry to extinction.

Couldn’t she just use the library? Bookstores aren’t exactly research hubs. They’re places for selling books.

Re: “Couldn’t she just use the library?”

Last time I went to the library I could not find one book I was looking for. I was told by staff that current books often have waiting lists.

Very true re: new books in libraries. Takes quite a while for them to be ordered, catalogued, & shelved.

This is so absurd. Last time I was in a Indigo / Chapters store, they had couches and chairs so that you could take a book off the shelf and read it if you were so inclined. This is one of the reasons why, I am looking into opening my own independent store – to give customer service, and things that the big ones can’t or don’t feel they need to simply because they are the big ones in the retail industry. This makes me to keep walking on by their stores and boycott them. Shame on them!

Reviews of new titles have to be done way before they appear on library shelves. When I reviewed regularly for the newspaper in Victoria I often quoted titles and material therein from the new releases section of our local independent, Bolen Books (to augment or compare to books publishers had sent). I had no idea this was actually illegal. I was left alone in an armchair openly reading and making the odd note, and was ready to explain to staff that a review would be in the daily and maybe more copies sold as a result – but no one ever did challenge me, which just shows what a lovely pro-reader independent Victoria’s great Bolen Books store is.

Amazing, absolutely amazing. I completely agree with the author that Wilson’s efforts are helping the industry, not hindering it. By blogging about the books that other Torontonians are reading, her readers are exposed to more books for them to go out and buy. This is just ridiculous of Indigo.

You mean fair dealing. Fair use doesn’t exist in Canada. (Feel free to look it up.) Her rights in this regard are unchanged, though.

When I worked at Indogo there was a guy who’d come into the store every single day and sit at a table transcribing English software manuals into the French. When I casually asked him one day what he was up to, he got all skittish and split. It was highly likely that he was reselling the stuff to some French publisher. Meanwhile people in the cafe would have notebooks out transcribing stacks of travel guides for their vacations. I guess the climate has changed.

Just a link… – http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/legislation/canadian_law/federal/copyright_act/cdn_copyright_ov.cfm

it states “However, under its “fair dealing” provisions, the Copyright Act does allow individuals or organizations to use original works without such use being considered an infringement: criticism and review, news reporting, and private study or research (section 29). The Act also exempts certain categories of users, such as non-profit educational institutions (section 29.4).”

It’s too bad HoA isn’t a bigger publisher, then she could just buy them all and expense them.

It’s too bad the pages Julie wants aren’t in Shortcovers, then she could just cut and paste the sections she needs.

As a former Indigo employee, I can tell you that we often had people come in and do homework from our stock of books, cracking the spines and damaging books in the process. Indigo does a lot of silly things, but they do need to keep their books in sellable condition. So I’m prone to give the employee a little leeway in this case, no matter the ridiculous reason they gave.

However, I’m quite sure Julie gives the utmost respect to all the books she uses and I’m a big fan of her blog.

Just a quick post to say that while I have experienced this behaviour before, and always in this particular store, I recognize this is a unique encounter for a bookseller to come across, and something that at first glance feels worthy of action. I was approached by two employees who were, as it happens, misinformed. I didn’t feel it was an option to argue. It was awkward, and I left. That said, in other Indigo locations, I have been treated warmly. In fact, most booksellers are curious and eager to know about and help me with my project. (If ever in Sudbury again, I expect they’ll give me the keys to the city.)

And, for the record, while I toss my own books around like rag dolls, I would never, ever leave a book in less than sellable condition. To that end, I can only presume that once the MOD was done with me, he turned his immediate attentions to the gentlemen who had his book bent backwards like an Olympian, all the while fumbling an egg salad sandwich into the fold.

Be seein’ ya!

Not using this as an excuse to damage books, but when you turn a bookstore into a “lifestyle” emporium aren’t you creating an environment where people are going to sit and read. I also find it ironic that larger companies are demanding that excerpts of books be made available to foster on-line sales but when an individual uses her own time at no profit to try and foster interest in books, these same firms cry foul. Hopefully this occurence is the exception, not the rule.

I don’t give a hoot about Indigo, and never go in there. I like Anansi enough. Julie’s blog maybe have been hyped due to her connections, but it seems like a pretty inane use of time to both write or read. This is a sort of non-story to me.

I sent a letter to Indigo about this using the community@indigo.ca email address and I have no doubts that it will be ignored in true corporate style. But everyone should email them – be polite – just let them know whose side you are on.

I think Julie should speak to someone at Indigo’s Home Office to perhaps get special permission from them to use their books in this way. So many customers take advantage of the availability of the books in the stores (copying recipes, photographing design books, doing homework) that I understand the employee’s frustration.

Ditto what Former Indigo Employee said re: calling Head Office. Or perhaps Julie should write a letter directly to Heather. A few years back I wrote a letter of complaint addressed to Heather Reisman, and two weeks later Heather actually phoned me at home to discuss my concerns.

Thirded! I was just going to suggest the same thing: a letter to Heather. Not to be indignant and demanding, but to explain your project and to ask for her support.

The front-line employees are in no position to make a call like this, but it should be a no-brainer for those in charge.

“Wilson points out that she spotlights hundreds of books on her site each year, and that it’s not within a publicist’s budget to actually buy that many books.”

Well, I’m poor freelance writer and can’t afford all of the music I’d like to review for my pieces. So that makes illegally downloading songs okay? There are ways to legally acquire copies or excerpts whose uses are endorsed by the copyright holders.

I don’t want to get into a debate about “reviewing” here, but is what Ms. Wilson doing really considered reviewing books? I think it would be closer to art, as she only provides colourless words inspired by the text. You’d be shocked to find solid, thoughtful commentary on her site. Mostly, I’m just bored and unimpressed. What she is doing is hijacking others’ copyright for her own advantage. There’s not much creativity going on in her “imaginings,” simply another has-been author riding on the coattails of men and women more successful than she will ever be. And without their consent, at that.

I understand the willingness to attack Indigo, after all they’ve earned it over the years, but to willfully ignore Ms. Wilson’s acts is foolish. Ms. Wilson is running a small business in the form of her website. She advertises on the site (http://www.seenreading.com/contact/) and solicits “media requests,” presumably under a mission to publicize herself and her burgeoning writing career (http://www.seenreading.com/writing/). If she is trying to make money and promoting herself from this scheme, fair dealing no longer applies.

Guess what, Seen Reading is republishing online content from copyrighted works, sorry fair dealing under Canadian Copyright Law is for personal use & personal presentations, not republishing on the Internet! She needs permission to republish….
Seen Reading blog is publishing on the Internet and in turn Julie Wilson owns the copyright to this blog — so it goes. I am glad to see most of the comments to your article have a lot of common sense — just ask Indigo to help Seen Reading blog before copying their merchandise, in this case intellectual property. Communication may go a long way and breed good will with the store and publishers. Seen Reading lost an opportunity to do things right!

Find the same book on Amazon.com and see if they have the excerpt you’re looking for. Then publish the Amazon link to purchase it. Screw Indigo.

Anca, you say that you are a copyright specialist. But then you say that fair dealing does not cover republishing short excerpts for the purpose of review or criticism — and that asking Indigo for permission would cure the violations of copyright which you believe exist. Are you sure about either of those things? As you are a copyright specialist, I think you may want to get a better handle on this.

Just because you don’t have the budget to purchase books, it doesn’t mean that Indigo should have to provide content to you free of charge.
If I’m a music reviewer/blogger, I can’t walk into HMV and start ripping CDs -full songs or excerpts. I would certainly ask a manager’s permission before doing so.
They’re just trying to sell books, while you’re trying to get “free” research material for your articles. You don’t want to pay for the books, you don’t want to wait for the library to get them in…
This sounds to me like someone who was caught doing something they probably shouldn’t have, feels embarrassed, and is now making a big deal of nothing.
I’m sure this all could have been avoided had she simply asked the company (or at least the store’s manager) beforehand.

“This sounds to me like someone who was caught doing something they probably shouldn’t have, feels embarrassed, and is now making a big deal of nothing.”

Please, you couldn’t mean Julie Wilson? Does everyone remember her previous public gaffe: http://www.quillandquire.com/blog/index.php/2007/11/12/anansi-kicked-off-facebook/

I’m surprised no one at Anansi is not publicly embarrassed by her antics. How ridiculous.

What utter nonsense! I knew there was a good reason I’ve avoided Indigo stores like they were a plague-infested medieval village. If anyone has a right to complain about copyright violations, it’s the publisher or author, but I think most publishers and authors are smart enough to recognize fair dealing when they see it, not like the village idiots who obviously populate the staff lounges at Indigo. Indigo does have the right to refuse business to anyone it wants, subject to the restraints of anti-discrimination legislation. But to make the excuse that it has anything to do with copyright just makes me angry. There’s enough confusion about copyright in Canada as it is. We don’t need idiot booksellers contributing to the mess.

A message was sent to Indigo. I’m waiting for their response. In it, I simply introduced them to the project, stated the purpose and scope of Seen Reading, as well as my constraints. Visiting a bookstore is key to the process because I focus on book buying habits, as well as reading habits. That Indigo carries so many titles increases my chances of the book being readily available. (As a reader, I love libraries. Nothing against libraries.)

As for my personal opinion, customer service ain’t easy. I don’t want to demonize anyone at Indigo, nor the two gentlemen who approached me. It’s the accumulation of reaction I’ve received, which escalated on this day, who knows why, that I’m responding to.

I’ve thought about introducing myself to MODs, but they don’t have the authority to interpret policy. And is this policy? Because to announce myself each time I enter a bookstore when I’m not doing anything wrong, clearly, can’t be the solution to this. The intention isn’t to be a bee in anyone’s bonnet.

Thanks for the discussion, and support!

I found this topic rather ironic, given what’s being discussed in Indigo’s online community group “Community Focus.” I had looked into Indigo’s Terms of Service and discovered that as bad as Facebook’s TOS was, Indigo’s was worse. They assume all copyright and moral rights over anything that is written in their online Community. I started a discussion on that topic, asking Indigo to revise the parts acknowledging users retain copyright over their own words, not realising what a Pandora’s box I was opening. I have yet to hear from them — they’re working on it — but the comments, both from writers and Indigo employees, have been illuminating.

i first met julie in a vest when we worked at chapters together

i knew this day would come

long live the empire

i remember so many times having to tie the fire hose around my waist and jump from the third floor kids section to stop shoplifters…

and this is how they repay us? Heather! You are so evil it hurts, no matter how many hours i wait in your emergency rooms

Why can’t Julie go to some indie stores?

“Today, I was told it’s illegal. Not untrue, but it’s a roadblock, for sure. (You can use passages for review purposes from purchased books only.)”

Actually that is very untrue. There is nothing in Canada’s copyright act that states you must own a copy of a work in order to be able to claim fair dealings. What she was doing WAS PERFECTLY LEGAL.

Now Indigo has every right to tell her that she can’t to it in their store, ask her to leave, and charge her with trespass if she does not. But be clear. There was NO VIOLATION OF COPYRIGHT in her behaviour.

Indigo’s use of copyright law in this case is specious — it does not own copyright in any of the quoted works, and it would be laughable for the chain to claim it owes a duty of care to the authors and publishers who do own the copyrights — one only has to pay attention to the way it conducts its day-to-day operations.

Does Wilson’s quoting qualify as fair dealing? Not if one reads the criteria strictly. That said, a publisher or author would be wise not to press the point, as she does seem to be acting in their interest by drawing attention to their works.

The “overzealous” employee who “schooled” Ms. Wilson is talking out of his or her arse. It is not up to Indigo to enforce the Copyright Act. As Darryl Moore writes, if a store manager has a problem with what she is doing, the remedy is to ask her to leave, and if she does not comply, have the police charge her with trespassing.

Why is it even necessary to quote a 50-word passage from the book? Wouldn’t a snippet of jacket copy (available from a variety of sources) be just as useful?

Perhaps one solution is to quote jacket copy (available from a variety of sources) rather than the text between the covers. Or to gather material for the blog only from visits to independent booksellers.

By the way, what is this snippet from the Seen Reading blog all about:
I’m running a CONTEST at Twitter in partnership with Chapters-Indigo. They’ve offered up a generous gift card so I can go shopping! For you!

Curiouser and curiouser.

>It is not up to Indigo to enforce the Copyright Act

You might as well say it’s not up to Indigo to break up fights in their stores, or that they have no obligation to interfere with drug deals being transacted there. Everyone has an obligation, when witnessing something illegal, to do something about it, particularly if it’s happening on their property.

“Everyone has an obligation, when witnessing something illegal, to do something about it, particularly if it’s happening on their property.”

Paul, while that may be a reasonable argument. It presumes that she was violating someone else’s copyright. The copyright act is pretty clear that what she was doing qualifies as fair dealings. “29.1 Fair dealing for the purpose of criticism or review does not infringe copyright” – from the copyright act.

Unfortunately this store clerk did not have a reasonable understanding of copyright herself, and therefore should have simply left her alone.

I’ve spoken with Julie at length about the contest with Indigo and she told me that it was her idea to go to Indigo for their participation. She wanted to do something that showed good faith between the two of them. But she also saw an opportunity to use her influence to introduce readers to new books (re. smaller presses) that don’t get the same promotion at Indigo. Julie’s good for this industry.

There appears to be a lot of misplaced anger on this blog…

“Indigo is the industry leader in idiocy”
“Screw Indigo.”
“This makes me to keep walking on by their stores and boycott them. Shame on them!”
“I knew there was a good reason I’ve avoided Indigo stores like they were a plague-infested medieval village.”

Obviously, a couple of Indigo employees mishandled the situation, but it sounds to me like the company’s eventual reaction to all of this was both gracious and reasonable.
I don’t know if Julie’s negative experience warrants this kind of rage, and it makes me wonder if this is one of those things where people love to hate an industry giant. Sure, we’d all love to have more indie bookstores in our neighbourhood, but is Indigo evil because they do a good job of selling popular books to the masses? Are we really going to boycott them because they make money? We talk about how much Julie “helps” the publishing industry, but let’s face it; she helps sell books to book geeks who read about books on book blogs – people who would otherwise be purchasing a book today, whether they read her blog or not.
I shudder to imagine the state of the Canadian publishing industry without Indigo’s sales right now. Like them or not, they are arguably MUCH more important to the survival of Canadian publishers than Julie Wilson.

Like some people above commented, all of this probably could have been avoided if Julie had spoken to somebody with the company beforehand. I’m glad to see that they’ve come to an understanding, and I hope that this non-story goes away.

While I would agree with Dan that this little story is a classic Canpub tempest in a(n herbal) teapot, his post reads as if it were penned by Oprah Reisman.

I was the first of two Indigo employees who dealt with Julie on this occasion.

First of all, she was not kicked out of the store. She was simply asked to stop copying out of the book.

Second, although her copying may not have violated the author’s rights, she was violating the store’s rights by removing product (albeit in copied form), unpaid, from the store.

Customers are welcome to browse and read, but they are not welcome to copy from books. It really is that simple.

It is one thing to disagree with Indigo’s business tactics but it is really necessary to attack it’s employees?

Stopping a “customer” from stealing is part of any retail job.

Marci Catania, you do realize that when people just sit and read and money isn’t changing hands it becomes pretty tough to run a business…

Sean Cranbury, you don’t even make sense.

While I am shocked by how many of the commenters here seem to be ill-informed about the way the publishing and book-selling industries actually operate, my main concern is the extremely provocative and emotional language used by the authour of this article. “absurd power-trip”, “overzealous Indigo employee”, and “BIg Blue Monster” contrasted with the overtly sympathetic description of Wilson, who I imagine would be getting an altogether different reaction if she had gone into a poor, beleaguered independent bookstore and attempted to copy from their merchandise.
I think the greatest irony is found in one of the tags for this post: “Uninformed Blowhards” seems to describe Steven W. Beattle and Julie Wilson better than any of the employees who were involved in this unfortunate incident.

Shouldn’t it be B!g blue monster?

That’s so rude111!

Любое искусство, особенно нетрадиционное, всегда вызывало ожесточенные споры. Думаю, оно просто имеет право на свое существование, вот и всё!