- Are you thinking of putting graphics
in your nonfiction book?
If you are, and you're curious about
the rights to republish,
the size of the image you need,
and what you should do with your black and white photos,
well, then this video is absolutely for you.
(upbeat music)
Hey, there, I'm Julie the book Broad
from Book Launchers,
we're your professional self-publishing team,
helping you write, publish and promote
a non-fiction book that will help you
have a huge impact on your readers.
And done right, will help you grow your brand,
build your business and make you money.
The best part, you,
yes, you, keep all rights and royalties.
All right, let's get right to this.
Illustrations, graphics, images,
what can you use, what should you use
in your nonfiction book?
This is a big subject,
and let me first make it clear,
I am not a trademark and copyright attorney,
so what I'm advising are the best practices
we recommend to our clients,
but you should consult with a copyright attorney
if you're wanting to use an image
that you don't have the rights to use.
I understand and appreciate
that a picture can be as valuable as a thousand words,
nothing can simplify a seemingly complex concept,
like an illustration or a graph,
but before you get really married to the idea
that a certain image has to be in your book,
let's make sure it's a good idea.
Number one, generally speaking,
it's wise to stay away from celebrity
or trademarked images
because you do not want to be sued,
and those images tend to be defended fiercely.
Newspapers and magazines
use these images under fair use law,
as they're using them
for the purpose of criticism and comment.
They've often paid for the images as well
in order to have the rights to use them.
Two, images you download from the internet,
full stop, you don't have the rights
to just randomly grab images
from someone's website or social media and use them.
It doesn't matter if you credit the source or not,
you just can't do this.
Some people think the internet
is a place where you can take any image and use it,
nope. (laughing)
So now, if you are a more savvy user,
you may look for royalty-free images,
but it's still not 100%
that you can use that image in your book.
There are some great websites I use for getting images
for posting on our blog and website and social media.
There's sites like PixaBay, Getty,
iStock, Shutterstock, and Dreamstime.
But first, let's be clear,
royalty-free images are not free.
There are some that are free,
they've been uploaded to the public domain
for limited rights usage,
but typically, royalty-free images
are licensed for a price
and the photographer or the stock agency
retain their copyright.
You pay for the right to use the royalty-free photo
with the accepted terms,
but you only pay once,
and then you can usually use the photo
as many times as you want.
There are a couple of things to note for authors though.
The first is that this is a limited use license,
if you wanna use the image in your book,
you may have to buy a more extensive license.
Read the fine print,
some are for editorial use only,
which is not part of a book.
Editorial images can be used for newspapers,
magazines, editorial broadcasts,
non-commercial websites, blogs,
and social media posts
that illustrate matters of public interest,
again, not commercial use.
You need to be allowed to have the image used
for commercial use for wider distribution or reproduction,
and as a result, you may have to pay more.
And some have a limit on how many times
they can be reproduced.
But good news, it's usually at least 250,000 times,
so pretty much an author's dream come true
would be to have to worry about selling and printing
that many books.
Also, keep in mind, this is not an exclusive agreement,
other people can license and use the same image.
Third thing, color versus black and white.
This is a complex question,
but the simple considerations are this.
Do you need the image,
if so, can it work as black and white?
If not, you have to enter the color territory
where your book print costs will go up quite a bit.
The thing to watch out for
is that some color images convert
just fine to black and white,
but others lose their contours,
contrast, and really their impact.
So if you're really keen on having pictures,
but you want to have a print book
that is not in color, for cost's sake,
you have a couple options,
you can have color in the ebook
and have a free download option
for people who buy your book
so they can see the color images,
or you can have those beautiful images on your website
and link to them there so people see them.
The good part of this
is then you're sending them to your website,
where they can then sign up for your newsletter
and stay connected with you for the longterm.
Four, charts and graphs.
Some of our clients have presentations
that they give that have charts and graphs,
and they are made for their slides.
I am a robot. (laughing)
(beeping)
Some of our clients have taken presentations
that they've given and taken a lot of that content
and put it in their book,
including the charts and graphs.
This can work well,
however, you have to be certain
the color in those charts and graphs
converts to black and white as well.
My recommendation is to use patterns
to distinguish different lines, or pie pieces,
instead of trying different shades of gray and black
to make your point,
because those can be really hard to see.
Number five, just because an image has you in it
doesn't mean you have the rights to use it.
We've seen this with some of our more famous clients,
there'll be images of themselves from the media
or even stock photo sites,
but they can't just download it
and use it for their own purposes
because they actually don't own the picture.
It seems a little bizarre
because the picture's of themselves,
but the ownership belongs to the photographer.
If you took the picture, then you're good to use it,
unless it contains a trademark symbol in it,
in which case, you may wanna gray that out.
Now, a few other little details, got your pen?
You're probably gonna wanna write this down.
Don't try to place your images in the Word document,
instead label the image
and the place in the book
where it should go in the Word document.
Keep them saved in a separate file
that you'll send to your interior designer
when you hit that phase.
It messes up Word to try to keep them in the document,
and it changes the size of the image,
and the layout person's gonna need them separate
from the Word doc anyway,
so save yourself the hassle
and do it from the beginning.
Your images need to be 300 DPI or better,
that's dots per inch.
Anything smaller, and your image will be fuzzy,
and that's not good.
Essentially, if your image isn't at least one megabyte,
it's too small,
it's gotta be high resolution.
And the file type, JPG, EPS, or TIF.
GIFs are web images only
and PNGs are too small.
Final point, the orientation of the image
matters a lot more than you think.
A lot of images on the web
are made landscape for rectangle screens,
but images in a book are portrait,
this requires some editing
and can mess with your image, too.
(sighing) That was a lot of detail,
and I could've covered even more.
What did I miss,
or what other questions do you have?
Let's chat about it in the comments below.
And when you comment the day a video is released,
you'll be entered to win some sweet #noboringbooks swag,
like this mug.
Coffee, tea, and hot chocolate
are proven to taste better in it,
or this, oh, so soft journal.
And when you do that,
you'll be one step closer
to being one of my beloved YouTube besties,
like Aaron Crowley, xjp1998,
Efren Delgado, Sandra Rodriguez,
Poetry from the Heart, Joyce Robinson,
Alan West, and Andy W.
Thank you so much for always liking,
commenting and sharing my videos,
you are the best,
that's why you're my besties.
We have new videos every Tuesday and Friday,
make sure you catch every one
by subscribing to the channel
and turning those notifications on.
Well, I think you were rather fun,
would you like to spend a little more time together?
This video right here
is the latest and greatest from the channel,
and this one right here
is also about images,
and whether you should put your face
on the cover of your book.
They are both pretty awesome,
so choose the one you wanna see,
and I'll be waiting there for you with coffee.
I'm excited to hang out a little longer.
(upbeat music)