How to Make a Living in the Creative Industries

Authors: WIPO

Abstract: Making a living in the creative industries means many different things to different people. For some it represents an ideal of creative freedom, for others a business strategy. Individual motivations and roles are as varied as the activities that make up the creative industries – a sector that includes a range of activities from architecture to production of video games.

This booklet explains simply and clearly how copyright helps creative people to earn money from their original works. It has been written to be accessible to nonspecialists or newcomers to the subject of copyright and intellectual property rights. If you want more detail, this booklet also lists some useful websites and introduces some other WIPO publications that offer more insight into the role of IP within particular subsectors of the creative industries.