By Donna Shea
Friends, we have a problem we need to talk about.
The launch of our new anger workbook for kids has been exciting to see our work being so well received by all of you. We are hearing stories and reading reviews of how helpful the book is for the kids who are in need of support and strategies for managing those big feelings and learning how to problem-solve.
We are very concerned and sad about comments we are seeing, particularly on Facebook, about people asking other people to make and send them a copy of the book or questions such as, “is it reproducible?”
Can we openly talk about that? Certainly, if you are a parent, teacher or social worker and purchased the book, we understand that making a copy for your child to write on without writing in the book, a few copies for your classroom or a therapy client of one or more of the worksheet pages is expected. You purchased it, and it is for your own personal use.
Reproducing or copying our book in its entirety to distribute in any other way is a violation of pretty significant copyright laws. We do have a clear copyright notice in the front of the book. Why? Rather than addressing this with a lot of legal language, can we address it another way?
A kid’s book may seem easy to do from the outside. The print is large, our tips our simple and a 40-page workbook may not seem difficult to publish. When in actuality, the book took well over a year to complete, hours upon hours of illustrating and editing by our team and thousands of dollars to bring to fruition. Nadine and I and our team are real people, working hard every day. Seeing discussions of that hard work being reproduced without permission is discouraging.
We have had some parents comment that being able to afford and purchase the workbook is not something that is feasible for many reasons. We certainly understand that difficulty. Many town libraries or your child’s school library may have our books, and if not, you may want to request your local or school librarian to purchase one so that it can be borrowed for free.
Our passion is friendship, problem-solving and helping kids. We really do not want to be put in the position of pursuing legal action for copyright infringement or indirect infringement by encouraging others to reproduce the book, but we will if it becomes necessary to protect the hard work of our team. So, as you stand at a copy machine with our book, we simply ask that you let your conscience be your guide.
