Melissa Wiley is the author of the Charlotte and Martha series of Little House books. These are books that extend the Little House on the Prairie series with stories about Laura Ingalls Wilder’s grandmother and great-grandmother, and they are very nicely done. When HarperCollins announced its decision to re-release Wiley’s books in abridged form to appeal to younger readers, Wiley decided not to write any more books for the series. Read more about her decision here. While you’re at Bonny Glen, take a moment to browse her blog. I don’t know a better blog about family life and homeschooling.
Filed under: authors, books, homeschooling, writing
How can a publisher abridge without the copyright holder’s permission? Is it a contract thing?
I’ve never read these, though I read all of the LIW Little House books, and they wouldn’t have been the same without Garth Williams’s illustrations.
It must be. My guess is that publishers own a lot more of the rights on children’s series, but I don’t know for sure.
I’m not too familiar with this series, but if the characters are derived from “the little house on the prarie” series then the author is not the rights holder. In this instance the concept for the stories probably came from the publisher- who then hired the author to create the series of books.
It’s like those novelizations of popular tv shows where there was no novel to begin with (Sliders, Star Trek, etc). There the rightsholders are the production company funding the show (in this instance the publisher), and the writer is just a freelance employee.
I personally think it’s the Entertainment Industry’s influence on publishing that is responsible for that trend (derivative novels from another novelists original material). It’s more like how Producers and Screenwriters work (which stinks because it devalues the writers contribution to the process- even when they are the creators of the original material).
You’re right–I looked at the copyright page of one of her books, and the holder is HarperCollins.
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