Copyright Issues in Producing Summaries of Published Works

I'm an Author who has a question about a specific type of nonfiction niche.

This niche includes writing "CliffNotes" style pieces on different books.

So, I would pick famous books, (fiction and nonfiction), and then publish a "review" style executive report on that book.

My question is whether or not I would need the publisher's permission to write a "report" on their book, and then publish and sell that book.

Would I have legal right to publish said works if I never received anyone's permission and simply published my "report", or "review" ?

So, if I review a specific published book, and write a report and/or review of that book, is it legal for me to publish without the original publisher's permission?

Example:

If I reviewed or wrote an "executive summary" on any book on the best seller's list for example, and then sold that review in a book marketplace without anyone's permission, is that legal?

I would love to have your thoughts on this.

Thank you.

There's a big difference between writing a book review and a Cliffnotes type of analysis.

This is a book review:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/bo...tml?ref=review

You might be OK quoting a few lines from a book under "fair use."

A Cliffnotes type of summary of a copyrighted work may need consent. I don't know. You are free to contact Cliffnotes and ask if they get consent for modern copyrighted works.

Bottom line:

If you're doing it for money, get consent.

It's that simple.

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Quoting Author1877

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I'm an Author who has a question about a specific type of nonfiction niche.

This niche includes writing "CliffNotes" style pieces on different books....

Example:

If I reviewed or wrote an "executive summary" on any book on the best seller's list for example, and then sold that review in a book marketplace without anyone's permission, is that legal?

I would love to have your thoughts on this.

Thank you.

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If it is truly just a review or analysis of the work you generally do not need consent from the copyright holder of the reviewed/analyzed work. But understand that reviews and analysis use very little of the protected work in them. Read a Cliff's Note analysis of modern works and you will see a lot of analysis but very little quoting from the work being analyzed. So the issue here will be exactly how your reviews/summaries are constructed and how much they use of the material protected by copyright. The fair use doctrine is a relatively narrow exception in copyright law and you do not want to go beyond what it allows. I suggest you write a sample review or summary that you want to do and have it reviewed by a copyright lawyer for advice.