M. L. "Matt" Buchman has 70+ novels, 125 short stories, and 50 read-by-author audiobooks. From the very beginning, his powerful female heroines insisted on putting character first, then a great adventure.

PW declares of his Miranda Chase action-adventure thrillers that: "Tom Clancy fans open to a strong female lead will clamor for more." About his military romantic thrillers: "Like Robert Ludlum and Nora Roberts had a book baby." He is also the founder and editor of Thrill Ride – the Magazine.

A project manager with a geophysics degree, he's designed and built houses, flown and jumped out of planes, solo-sailed a 50' sailboat, and bicycled solo around the world…and designs quilts. He and his wife presently live on the North Shore of Massachusetts. More at: www.mlbuchman.com.

Estate Planning for Authors by M.L. Buchman

Writer, painter, photographer, musician, designer, animator, graphic artist, programmer, screenwriter, textile artist, choreographer, composer, sculptor...

A will or trust controls who inherits what. The Final Letter tells your heir(s) ways to maintain it, even make it thrive, once they've got it.

The challenge with an estate that includes Intellectual Property (books, stories, plays, films, etc.), is it has a value that can last another 70 years after your death.

This book is a practical guide for educating your heir on quite what they've just received and what their options are to manage it. Topics also include: basic vocabulary, income opportunities with Intellectual Property, the power of trusts in IP estate planning, and much more.

Estate Planning for Authors will help authors create their Final Letter as well as help the heirs whose benefactor did not create one.

It's a guide on how to make sure your legacy remains profitable for decades after you're gone!

CURATOR'S NOTE

Writers disappear after they die. Famous writers disappear after they die. And usually they disappear because they either had no will or left their large estates to people who can't handle them. Matt Buchman and I have discussed this problem for years. I had started an estate planning book and got sidetracked. Matt wrote a letter to his heirs, and realized that the letter didn't go far enough. So he expanded that letter and its reasoning into this wonderful, useful, essential book. Read it, even if the topic makes you uncomfortable. Especially if the topic makes you uncomfortable. – Kristine Kathryn Rusch

 

REVIEWS

  • "An absolute must-read book for authors and other creatives."

    – Goodreads

  • "Every author or owner of intellectual property should buy this book."

    – Amazon Review

  • "Every writer should own this book. It's incredibly helpful and I've already started planning based on this advice."

    – Amazon Review
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Introduction

So, what is this book? This is about how I developed the letter I wrote for my wife and kid. A letter that explained how they could manage my intellectual property once I'm gone.

How many of your heirs even know what intellectual property means in that last sentence, never mind the options that exist regarding how to manage it? We need to educate our heirs and do it in simple language—I will repeat this often and it still won't be often enough.

Dear Heir, Intellectual Property (commonly referred to as IP), which we'll get into more later, is all the stuff the author created: books, stories, notes, audio, film, and potentially much more.

This book is first an education that I gave myself and then it is about the method I've found to communicate this to my heirs. Further along I've included a copy of my own Final Letter as well as a list of the best reference books I've found so far in my research.