Writing a re-telling of someone else's work

Any book that has had its copyright expire, is good to go. These books are generally considered public domain.

As far a obtaining permission to use in whole or part any work that is still copyrighted, that generally falls under the authors responsibility.

Yup, I've just written a prequel to a popular classic. If it's out of copyright, it's fair game. The only word of warning I would give is that cult classics tend to come with a ready made fan base. That doesn't necisserily mean they're going to be your fan base. With cult fiction, readers feel a strong sense of ownership over the characters. You're not going to satisfy everybody's expectations. Some will follow you into new territory, some prefer to remember the characters as they were first told. If you can make your story stand alone, referencing the work but not relying on it, you'll stand a better chance of reaching new audiences.

A word of caution: while the original work may be long out of copyright, another more recent re-telling may not be. The Walt Disney Company has armies of copyright lawyers they threaten to unleash on authors/artists who come too close to the 'Disney version' of a story. (Disney seems to have 'borrowed' key elements of the Beauty & the Beast movie from Robin McKinley's 1979 fantasy book Beauty; were that book published today, Disney would almost certainly challenge it. Neither party owns the fairytale, only their interpretations of it.)

Likewise, out-of-copyright works from long-dead authors and artists may be held by modern trusts and museums. They may block permission for the originals to be reused in a manner they deem harmful to their investment.

Be careful, and check copyright law in your country.

You won't have any trouble with Three Musketeers. It's long been out of copyright everywhere. If you are just reworking from Dumas' novel, that is.

But it's right to be wary of these issues. And understand the differences between copyright and trademark protections.

caw

Public domain = Free game.

Neegh said:

Public domain = Free game.

Click to expand...

Not quite that simple. Example:

Edgar Rich Burroughs published Tarzan of the Apes around 1910, to instant major success. He followed that with a bunch of sequels, along with other famous adventure fantasies. Everything of his published before 1923 is in U.S. public domain, which means anybody can freely reprint and sell those works.

However, Burroughs continued to write prolifically for another three decades or so, and the works published from 1923 onward remain under copyright protection. More pertinently, he obtained trademark protection for his characters and the specific story settings they inhabited, and after his death the Burroughs estate has vigorously maintained those protections. That means you cannot write new Tarzan stories, or re-tellings of old ones, without obtaining permission of the trademark holders.

caw

Also, Peter Pan and Sherlock Holmes are two more sticky wickets of copyright that depend on what country you're talking about and which iteration. "Public domain" and "fair use" are two areas of copyright that people really, really need to pay more attention to because they aren't as simple as their descriptions/titles imply.