A few weeks ago, I wrote about the common scam of "book returns insurance", in which scammers take something real (book returnability, a normal element of book publishing and selling) and spin it into a nonexistent "service" (a kind of "insurance" product, which you supposedly have to buy if you want your books to be returnable) for which they can charge big bucks.

Today's blog post focuses on the similarly deceptive scam of "book licensing". Like "returns insurance", this fictional item is based on something real (the licensing of rights that's necessary for publication) that scammers have distorted into an imaginary requirement they can monetize (a book license you supposedly must obtain in order for your book to be published or re-published).

To be clear, there is no such thing as a "book license"--at least, not in the sense that scammers use the term, meaning an item like a driver's license or a fishing license that you have to take steps to acquire and must have in order to do the thing associated with the license. As the copyright owner of your work (which you are, by law, from the moment you write down the words), you have the power to grant licenses for publication, but you do not have to obtain any kind of license or permission in order to do so. By re-framing licensing as something authors have to get, rather than something they are empowered to give, scammers turn the reality of licensing on its head.