15 Copyright Page
The Copyright page is another automatic page that Pressbooks creates.
Traditional books have a copyright page, which contains various “legalese” about the book. Copyright pages can be used for all sorts of other things, including:
- Acknowledgements (for instance of funding agencies)
- Information about production, printing
- Notices about cover design
- Library of congress catalog numbers
- ISBN
- etc.
Pressbooks automatically inserts a copyright page, immediately after the title page.
At a minimum, the copyright page will include an automatically-generated message containing: Book title, copyright holder, and year of publication.
Here’s the quick and simple way to add a copyright notice to your book’s metadata:
But you may want something more extensive. For example, if you want the ISBN to appear, you will have to create a custom copyright page.
Making a Custom Copyright Page
In order to make a custom copyright page:
- Go to the Book Info page (see left menu).
- Scroll down to the “Copyright” section.
- Add whatever you like to the “Copyright notice” section.
Designating Chapter-Level Copyright Notices
You may find that in a textbook or edited monograph, different chapters have different copyright licenses. It is possible to add chapter-level license notices to your book, however this feature is in development and has variable results across outputs. It is best used for the web version of your book, and we are working to improve its functionality for PDF and ebook. To activate:
- Go to “Appearance” –> “Theme Options” and select the “Display the copyright license” option.
- Save your changes.
- Go to the chapter where the license will be different from the global license.
- Scroll down to the “Chapter Metadata” section below the editor.
- Select the chapter license.
- Update or save draft.
Note: Currently, this option will display the license abbreviation (e.g. cc-by-nd) in your PDF table of contents. To avoid this, while retaining the chapter licenses in the web version, we recommend using a custom copyright notice for your book as a whole, and deactivating the “Display the copyright license” option before exporting your PDF.
Prefer to watch and learn? Here’s a brief visual intro to adding chapter level authors and licenses in Pressbooks.