Copyrighting Our Books

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

When I was first signing a book contract in 2008, I remember that the industry generally scoffed at writers worried about copyright issues. Some writers wondered if they should register a copyright on their manuscripts before submitting them to agents and publishers. There was even a line of thinking that authors could simply mail their manuscripts to themselves to acquire a ‘poor man’s copyright’ through the postal service.

Acquiring a copyright to send work to a reputable agent or publisher was probably overkill. But the problem now is more insidious: there are cases where retailers like Amazon have challenged writers to prove a book’s content is theirs after receiving challenges from unscrupulous writers.

I’d been meaning to copyright my books for some time, but it became a higher priority after the copyright challenges became news. And I hopped right over to the US Copyright site after reading a post on Joanna Penn’s blog: an interview with attorney Kathryn Goldman. I recommend you read or listen to the entire post.

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