# Paperback Writer **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 13, 2019, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383 "2019-11-13T21:20:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2019, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383/1 "2019-11-13T21:20:42Z")
The lyrics to the Beatles song _Paperback Writer_ take the form of a letter sent by an aspiring, well, paperback writer to a publishing house, offering his latest work for publication. The book took him years to write and is based on a novel by a man named Lear. Was that ever a common business model in publishing - that existing novels, previously released as hard covers, would be adapted by a different author into paperback format, but without the whole affair being considered plagiarism? In my experience, novels are usually released first as hard covers; subsequently they are also released as paperbacks, but the texts of the hard cover and paperback versions are identical, and they are published under the same author name - there is no separate process of adapting a novel into a paperback version, let alone for publication under the name of another writer. Was that would British publishers would do in the 1960s? ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2019, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383/2 "2019-11-13T21:22:20Z")
Based on a story. The writer changed a few details to make it his own story. ---
**Author:** ![jaycat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jaycat/32/3015_2.png) [@jaycat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jaycat)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2019, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383/3 "2019-11-13T22:33:44Z")
They also all lived in a yellow submarine. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2019, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383/4 "2019-11-13T23:02:37Z")
And…wanted to hold your hand.🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Rain\_Soaked](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e19adc/32.png) [@Rain\_Soaked](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rain_Soaked)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2019, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383/5 "2019-11-15T20:29:10Z")
If I remember correctly, Paul wrote the song after his mother asked if he could write a song without the word “Love” in it. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2019, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383/6 "2019-11-15T20:58:18Z")
It’s not unusual for novels to be based on previous novels. _[Mary Reilly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Reilly_(novel))_, for instance, was based on _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_. In paperback, Barbara Hambly’s _Ismael_ is a _Star Trek_ novel based on the TV series _Here Comes the Brides_. Hambly wrote it believing that _Brides_ was owned by Paramount, so there wouldn’t be any permissions issue. Unfortunately, she was wrong – Screen Gems owned it – but they did grant permission without any problems. Another point is that if Lear’s novel was public domain, then the Paperback Writer could use it without any permission issues. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2019, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383/7 "2019-11-15T21:15:48Z")
> [@Rain\_Soaked](#): > > If I remember correctly, Paul wrote the song after his mother asked if he could write a song without the word “Love” in it. “Would that be as hard as visiting your Mother once and a while?” ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2019, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383/8 "2019-11-15T21:20:36Z")
> [@Schnitte](#): > > Was that ever a common business model in publishing - that existing novels, previously released as hard covers, would be adapted by a different author into paperback format, but without the whole affair being considered plagiarism? It worked for _Readers Digest_. However, that’s not what the aspiring author has done in this case. He’s written a paperback that’s a thousand pages long, and intends to make it even longer. It’s pretty obvious that he doesn’t have a clue. Plagiarism is only one of the problems with his work. Note, though, that it is possible to have a work that is an adaptation of a previous work, provided that you change the setting enough. An example of this is _Yojimbo_, being adapted into _A Fistful of Dollars_, and then again into _Last Man Standing_. Even then Sergio Leone had to settle a lawsuit. I can’t think offhand of any novels that did this, but there must be some. (edit - such as Mary Reilly) ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2019, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383/9 "2019-11-15T21:21:40Z")
> [@Rain\_Soaked](#): > > If I remember correctly, Paul wrote the song after his mother asked if he could write a song without the word “Love” in it. [Aunt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paperback_Writer#Inspiration_and_lyrical_themes). ---
**Author:** ![Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b487fb/32.png) [@Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walken_After_Midnight)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2019, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383/10 "2019-11-15T21:48:33Z")
McCartney’s lyrics may also be about John Lennon. > [@](#): > > _Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book? > It took me years to write, will you take a look?_ “Paperback Writer” came out in 1966. In 1964 and 1965, two “nonsensical” books by John Lennon had been published, _In His Own Write_ and _A Spaniard in the Works_. > [@](#): > > _It’s based on a novel by a man named Lear_ This may be a reference to [Edward Lear](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Lear), best known for his “literary nonsense in poetry and prose”. Lennon’s books had sold well and drawn parallel’s to Lear’s work. The mention of “Lear” is surely not coincidental. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2019, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383/11 "2019-11-16T03:38:52Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > It worked for _Readers Digest_. This is probably a joke, but just in case… Abridging novels for subsequent publication was common in publishing before and after and during \*Reader’s Digest’s \*heyday. But it was always done only after the original author and original publisher signed a contract authorizing the abridgement and getting money for it. And as WAM says, everything I’ve ever read about the song makes it clear that Edmund Lear was the inspiration. Writing a book based on Lear would be perfectly legal, just as writing a book based on Mark Twain would be. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2019, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383/12 "2019-11-16T03:54:30Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > … Writing a book based on Lear would be perfectly legal, just as writing a book based on Mark Twain would be. Watch out, the Twain Foundation keeps renewing his works and his image and is actively on the lookout for anyone infringing on any Ol’ Sam Clemens stuff (and I have the Cease ‘n’ Desist letter to prove it). ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2019, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383/13 "2019-11-16T08:09:56Z")
The fallacy I see: expecting a song’s lyric to make sense. Goo-goo g’joob, pilgrim! Sure, there’s that dig at the Daily Mail, but why don’t we do it in the road? ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2019, 8:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383/14 "2019-11-16T08:32:33Z")
Jane Smiley’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel _A Thousand Acres_ is a retelling of _King Lear_ by some English chap. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2019, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383/15 "2019-11-16T17:16:42Z")
> [@digs](#): > > Watch out, the Twain Foundation keeps renewing his works and his image and is actively on the lookout for anyone infringing on any Ol’ Sam Clemens stuff (and I have the Cease ‘n’ Desist letter to prove it). The Twain Foundation has the following on its site: > [@](#): > > Everything Mark Twain wrote that was published before 1923 is now in the public domain and therefore may be freely quoted or reproduced in its entirety, without permission or fees. In 1962, the University of California contracted with the copyright holder for the exclusive right to publish all then-unpublished writings of Mark Twain. Between 1962 and the end of 2002, the University of California’s Mark Twain Project published all this unpublished material, either in print editions or on microfilm. Some of the material was first published or reprinted during this period by other publishers, under license from UC Press. Although the copyright on all such materials is held by the Mark Twain Foundation, the University of California controls the subsidiary rights to them for the duration of their copyright (through 2047). > > In addition, texts edited by the Mark Twain Project and published by UC Press (such as, for example, the Project’s 2003 edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) are also protected, and may not be reproduced without permission. From that I would say than anyone could write a book _based on_ anything Twain pubished in his lifetime with no problems. What did they say you couldn’t do? It’s the _based on_ that’s important. Take sf writer John Kessel. > [@](#): > > Kessel won a Nebula Award in 1982 for his novella “Another Orphan”, in which the protagonist finds himself living inside the novel Moby-Dick, and a second for his 2008 novelette “Pride and Prometheus”, a story melding the tales of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2019, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383/16 "2019-11-16T18:36:47Z")
Generally speaking, you can’t copyright an idea, only a particular expression of an idea. Anyone can write a novel about an orphan who goes to a boarding school that teaches magic, and you won’t get sued by J.K. Rowling. It’s also not uncommon for someone to write a book as a “reply” to a more famous book. John Steakley’s sci-fi novel _Armor_ was in part a rebuttal to Heinlein’s _Starship Troopers_, recasting the “future soldiers in power armor fighting space bugs” theme into something more in tune with the post-Vietnam era. Steakley’s novel is based on Heinlein’s, but is not in any way plagiarized by him. As to the Beatles song, I’d always assumed the “man called Lear” was a reference to Norman Lear. I pictured this cocky asshole writing to a publisher and being all, “I’m really into this writer, Norman Lear? You probably haven’t heard of him,” and the publisher’s got a signed photo of Lear on his desk. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2019, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383/17 "2019-11-16T18:52:18Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > As to the Beatles song, I’d always assumed the “man called Lear” was a reference to Norman Lear. I pictured this cocky asshole writing to a publisher and being all, “I’m really into this writer, Norman Lear? You probably haven’t heard of him,” and the publisher’s got a signed photo of Lear on his desk. Not a single one of the tv series Lear is now famous for had begun when “Paperback Writer” was written in 1966. He was then a very minor writer of a few individual tv shows and one movie, probably best know for creating _The Deputy_, a western series without a lot of laughs. Outside of Hollywood, probably not one person in a thousand in America could identify him, and far fewer in Britain. OTOH, the Beatles were enormous fans of Edward Lear, who had godlike status and name recognition in their country. The odds favor him by about a billion to one. ---
**Author:** ![Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b487fb/32.png) [@Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walken_After_Midnight)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2019, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383/18 "2019-11-16T19:28:24Z")
From a blog piece, “[John Lennon, Edward Lear, and Nonsense](https://nonsenselit.com/2016/05/25/john-lennon-edward-lear-and-nonsense/)”: > [@](#): > > Following the success of _In His Own Write_, John had contracted with Tom Maschler at Jonathan Cape to produce a sequel for publication the following year. Having now used up all his student and Mersey Beat material, he had to start this second book from scratch, which gave the project an unpleasant flavor of school homework. To limber up, he began reading Chaucer, Edward Lear, and his other supposed stylistic influences, even making a stab at James Joyce’s nonsense epic, _Finnegans Wake_. “It was great, and I dug it and felt as though [Joyce] was an old friend,” he reported. “But I couldn’t make it right through the book.” ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stafford_cripps/32/7167_2.png) [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stafford_Cripps)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2019, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383/19 "2019-11-17T11:55:11Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > OTOH, the Beatles were enormous fans of Edward Lear, who had godlike status and name recognition in their country. The odds favor him by about a billion to one. The only thing that made me think that it might not be Edward Lear is the phrase “a man named…” Edward Lear was so famous that the suggestion that anyone working at any level of publishing in the 1960s hadn’t heard of him is inconceivable. Even if people don’t know him now they are still aware of the influence of his work in, for example, the popularisation of limericks, and _The Owl and the Pussycat_. But the suggestion up thread that this aspiring writer is delusional makes sense of this; to not know how well known Edward Lear is shows that the person does not have a good grasp of things. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2019, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383/20 "2019-11-17T12:18:23Z")
I teach a reading course to English language learners in Korea in which all the books are truncated, abridged, and simplified versions of famous novels. I really think Classics Illustrated or Classic Comics would work better, but my boss won’t go for it. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paperback-writer/843383.md?page=2)