Cockygate Update

Cockygate is over!

Recently a notice was posted at Cocky Authors, the website for those who were affected by Faleena Hopkins attempting to trademark the word cocky in a romance title, along with a specific font.

The good news is that the trademarks have been surrendered and the lawsuit has been withdrawn.

This is a HUGE win not just for the Indie romance author but also for every author. One of my fears was that this suit, if given any credibility, would lead the way for people attempting to trademark titles, phrases, words, fonts, designs – something that small time publishers and independent authors couldn’t easily do, but what large publishing houses could do.

It also could have led to ‘squatting’, much as domain squatting happened; that practice was eventually prohibited, but if it started happening to romance authors, especially authors who didn’t have the funds to fight a big house squatting on a book title, who would really have cared?

Kudos to all those involved who decided to fight this and bore the stress of it; the rest of us also got a win out of it!

Exciting News

I was recently contacted by a small Australian publisher, and I have just entered into an agreement with them!

They will have the right to publish Lily and Stuart’s story on iBookstore, in every country that iBookstore has a presence.

This is great for me, because I always had mixed feelings about what I would do if I was contacted by a publisher. The fact that this publisher focuses on iBookstore and I retain all other rights makes me feel a lot more comfortable than I would otherwise. I was also put at ease by the answers to my (rather numerous) questions.

It’s not a vanity imprint (where the author pays a fee), and the publisher has set a tentative date of the end of March to have the books re-released with a new cover.

I’ll keep you posted as we get closer to release. I hope this will be a good experience for my readers (and also for me!).

Warm regards,

Holly