March 10
Unfortunately it looks as if I may have to ditch the idea of using quotes from Babylon 5 beneath all my chapter headings. Initially I contacted Warner Bros who produced the programme, believing that they owned the copyright. However, they referred me on to Michael J Straczynski’s agent. I emailed, but they advised me that he was no longer with them, and now had a new agent. What they failed to provide was this new agents contact details..... Luckily I managed to find him via the Internet. Imagine me writing to a Hollywood agent.....
A week later there was still no reply. What is it with these people? Coran suggested that I try and contact JMS via the site that is selling the scripts from B5, as I may be able to get permission that way. I received a very nice email back from a lady named Jaclyn informing me that his company, Synthetic Worlds will only grant permission to use 2 quotes from the series. The only problem is, as my book has 33 chapters, I use a minimum of 33 of these quotes. So, it looks now as if I will not be able to use any at all. I could still use just 2 of them, one at the beginning of the book and one at the end, but will have to go through them all again and think very carefully on which ones would be the best, and at this stage whether it is really worth all the hassle.
I had hoped at some point in the future, to begin work on what may become another book - the title I thought of was "Babylon Five - Science Fact or Science Fiction?" If this is true and I cannot use more than 2 quotes it will be damn near impossible to write a book such as this. I asked Jaclyn to let me have the contact details for Synthetic Worlds so I can check this for myself, as it could mean that you can only use 2 quotes free of charge, but she has not replied. Maybe I will try contacting some of the B5 websites who seem to use copious quotes, as they must have got permission for more than 2 of them from somewhere, so I find it hard to believe that I could not.
Unfortunately it looks as if I may have to ditch the idea of using quotes from Babylon 5 beneath all my chapter headings. Initially I contacted Warner Bros who produced the programme, believing that they owned the copyright. However, they referred me on to Michael J Straczynski’s agent. I emailed, but they advised me that he was no longer with them, and now had a new agent. What they failed to provide was this new agents contact details..... Luckily I managed to find him via the Internet. Imagine me writing to a Hollywood agent.....
A week later there was still no reply. What is it with these people? Coran suggested that I try and contact JMS via the site that is selling the scripts from B5, as I may be able to get permission that way. I received a very nice email back from a lady named Jaclyn informing me that his company, Synthetic Worlds will only grant permission to use 2 quotes from the series. The only problem is, as my book has 33 chapters, I use a minimum of 33 of these quotes. So, it looks now as if I will not be able to use any at all. I could still use just 2 of them, one at the beginning of the book and one at the end, but will have to go through them all again and think very carefully on which ones would be the best, and at this stage whether it is really worth all the hassle.
I had hoped at some point in the future, to begin work on what may become another book - the title I thought of was "Babylon Five - Science Fact or Science Fiction?" If this is true and I cannot use more than 2 quotes it will be damn near impossible to write a book such as this. I asked Jaclyn to let me have the contact details for Synthetic Worlds so I can check this for myself, as it could mean that you can only use 2 quotes free of charge, but she has not replied. Maybe I will try contacting some of the B5 websites who seem to use copious quotes, as they must have got permission for more than 2 of them from somewhere, so I find it hard to believe that I could not.
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