Tolkien
Troubadour
What is the policy about using your own words in a future self-published book that is already published in a self-published book of yours?
TY.
TY.
uh....you need to be a bit more specific. Are you talking like a speech by one character that resonates into related books (a 'call to arms' type thing), or simply dropping a random chapter or scene from one book into another?
Why would you recycle the same few paragraphs in a new book?
Can't you come up with an alternative way to describe the object? Maybe a paraphrase of the original description?
It's not illegal, since you're the owner of the original copyright. You have to have the author's permission to use copyrighted work. If you're the author and you give yourself permission, who can argue?I can, just being lazy and wanted to know about the legality of it.
Would a large section of the audience be aware of the legal issues?Since both works are self-published, there's no legal issue, but it would be viewed much the same way by a large section of the audience.
Like I said, it'd work if it was a famous speech or prophecy that provides motivation across multiple books, but apart from that...
Now that I think about it, I do have one character who overheard a conversation in book one, relays it to another character in book 3, then dwells on it in subsequent books. However, it's also rather short - under 100 words, and is critical to understanding what is going on.
Would a large section of the audience be aware of the legal issues?
It's not illegal, since you're the owner of the original copyright. You have to have the author's permission to use copyrighted work. If you're the author and you give yourself permission, who can argue?
But it's likely to turn readers off. If I read multiple books by the same author, self published or otherwise, and saw the exact same paragraphs repeated verbatim in more than one of them, I would see it as a sign of bad writing. It would feel like a cheat.