Oh Shit! (I Need Advice: Would my solution work?) · 8:53pm Jun 10th, 2019
My stories often contain pictures. I just realized that from an ethical and legal perspective, for a print anthology, I probably would need to clear every picture used with its creator, at least the pony ones. And I wouldn't be able to embed gifs or videos in my book obviously.
SO! About five minutes after I realized this was a problem, I thought up a solution. Could I place instead of pictures in the book, small QR codes that one could scan with their phone to take them to the piece of media in question? This would also allow me to print the book in black and white, keeping costs down. It's looking like I'll be able to sell the books for $5 dollars, which is half the cost of even my cheapest competitors.
Please give me your feedback or alternate suggestions for this.
P.S.: I'm finalizing the cover art details. The guy who's doing it also did this:
So yeah, it's going to be by far the coolest fucking cover there.
This is one of the reasons I try to find art licensed under CC-BY. QR codes would work best for me as a gimmick that matches some theme in the stories. Failing that, I'd commission some simple line art, which can look very good and work well even in b/w printing. However, the Doom That Came to Commissions (aka Bronycon) is possibly restricting commission availability, at least according to some artists I talked with at EFNW. Try writing to artists whose work you've used and get permission. Possibly some combination of the four approaches is best.
Legally, you can absolutely publish a book with embedded QR codes.