Textual Congress, Part II
When, Why, and How of Copyright Registration for the Self-Published Author
If you enjoyed Tuesday’s article, you will enjoy today’s article because it is more of the same. Something I see a lot of budding writers concerned about is how to protect their intellectual property (IP). How can I make sure editors, agents, and publishers don’t steal my idea? What is my recourse if someone copies my work and publishes it on Wattpad under their name? How do I make sure my copyright to my own work is ironclad?
I opened the last article with a story about administrative publishing odd jobs that get punted to the unlucky editorial assistant, like submitting CIP applications all the livelong day. There is a lot of administration involved in publishing. I’ve learned over time that when people picture “the publishing company” whatever they’re picturing is not the office we work in, a building where we sit in cubes at computers and could easily pass for accountants or any other kind of desk jockey.
Back when I worked in an office, we’d have authors visit from time to time. This was true of every publisher I ever worked at, but the last book operation had a really excellent protocol to welcome visiting authors. My group (production) was the last stop on the established tour and authors usually arrived with their hands full of company swag, heads full of new names and faces, and, to a one, looking around with a confused expression. The source of confusion, always the same: “Where is the printing press?”
Friend, it’s in Ann Arbor, Michigan, or possibly China. The printing press is not located in the office. It is much too large.
Things you definitely do find in the publishing company as expected are stacks of books everywhere. Orderly or disorderly varies from place to place. Sometime during my first week at my very first publishing job, I was taken down a long hall to a cube with no nameplate and it was full of:
Folders
Books
Dust bunnies
A trash can that the cleaners never, ever emptied on account of the cube having no occupant
Anytime we published a book (a few thousand times a year), four copies of that book came to the production editor’s attention:
One to check for obvious printing errors and then keep on their shelf in the event that an error turned up and they needed to reference it quickly.
One to send to the CIP office as a requirement of participating in the CIP program.
Two for the Copyright Registrar.
Production editors, however, had not been sending out the second and third copies, but instead placing them in the empty cube—along with their old project folders—for the assistants to ship out. There had been a shortage of assistants or something because books were spilling out of the cube into the hall. “Try to get these mailed to the CIP and copyright offices I guess.” The CIP office would send us a list of outstanding titles by email every now and again. In this case, I’m sorry to say, outstanding meant late rather than great.
At my next publishing company there was a much better solution, the warehouse (or possibly even the printing vendor) was automatically shipping copies to CIP for us. I learned a valuable career lesson—one that has nothing to do with copyright—which is, never accept “that’s how we’ve always done it” as an excuse for preserving a bad process.
Sometimes we don’t question cumbersome processes because we think, “Well I’m new here, the experienced people would have already thought of this if it were a good idea.” That is the opposite of how it works. Experienced people never think about processes they’ve been following forever. It takes new people to see a better way. Always question experienced people about their old processes. If someone gets angry at you for suggesting a process change might be indicated, that only says something about them and nothing about you.
Down to the brass tacks of copyright. There are two things I wish more people understood off the bat about copyright, which are:
If you create something, it’s yours and you own the copyright and you do not need to take any action to claim ownership of that copyright.
Except sometimes when you create something it’s not yours and none of the above is true.
Okay. The reason I specify these two contradictory things is because people are naturally curious about how to make sure they own the copyright to the things they create and ask about how to copyright their work. Most of the time, item #1 above is true, but it is not true 100 percent of the time, and I see a lot of people answering the question with that response with great confidence, as though it were true 100 percent of the time. It’s not.
If you create an original, intellectual work that is fixed in a tangible medium—literary, musical, artistic—on your own time, then it is yours and you naturally own the copyright to that work. You do not have to do anything to own the copyright. You do not have to register your copyright with the copyright office to own it. It’s already yours.
If you create an original, intellectual work as above, on time that is being paid by your employer as part of the scope of your job, then it is not yours unless you have worked out a special agreement with your employer. That product is generally understood to be a work for hire and whoever paid you a wage or fee for the time you spent working on it owns it. While employed at the LockMart I occasionally wrote articles for professional publications on behalf of their contract clients. Although I authored the work, I did not own the copyright to those articles at any time. Sometimes my name was on the byline and sometimes the client’s name was on the byline. Those articles were made for hire.
If you create an original, intellectual work as above—say, a manuscript for a fantasy novel—by writing a few paragraphs each day on your paid break at the Widget Factory where you manufacture widgets, that work is yours. It was created on break time and outside the scope of your job description at Widgets ᴙ Us. It is not a work for hire made on behalf of the Widget King.
If you create an original idea—a concept that will later become one of the fixed, tangible media products above—you do not own the copyright to that idea. Ideas cannot be copyrighted. Ideas have no value, so there’s nothing to protect.
So if you have created an original work in a fixed medium, and not as a work for hire, then it’s yours and you own the copyright unless you transfer that copyright to another party.
If you sign a contract with a publishing company to publish your work on your behalf, you will have to sign over some or all of the rights that come with copyright ownership. You may sign exclusive or nonexclusive licensing rights to a publisher, which gives them the opportunity to use your work for some things while you retain the copyright, such as publishing a print book, an e-book, and/or an audiobook. No one can publish a work on your behalf unless you confer at least two of your six inherent rights—the right to reproduce the work and the right to distribute the work. This conference of rights may be perpetual or it may be limited.
If, instead, the publisher’s contract talks about assigning rights or the assignment of rights, that transfers ownership of the copyright of the work to the publisher. If you see this language—assign, assigning, assignment—think twice or speak to a media lawyer before you sign. You will be signing away your ownership of the copyright.
Importantly, you cannot give away your copyright entirely or give away exclusive rights to it verbally. These rights must be granted or transferred in writing. Be careful what you sign when it comes to your intellectual property; when in doubt, consult a copyright lawyer.
Let’s say you’re self-publishing your book. Nobody is going to own the copyright to that book but you. It’s yours—it was granted to you automatically the moment you put “the end” on the last page and it remains yours until and unless you sign it away.
Most of the time, if someone steals your work and claims it as their own, all you have to do is go to the place that is violating your copyright by reproducing or distributing copies and let them know that the person who claimed authorship does not own the copyright to your work—and then demonstrate that it is yours by proving that you had the text earlier than the other guy. If the other guy is working with a publisher or a website in the United States, chances are excellent you won’t have to do anything else. Publishers and online content hosts usually take copyright violations and plagiarism accusations seriously.
If you wish to file a lawsuit for copyright infringement, though, your copyright needs to be registered with the US Copyright Office. Someone infringes your copyright when they steal your whole work or when they take any part of it for use without first acquiring permission from you. This includes creating derivative works from your copyrighted work.
It’s not hard to register your copyright—even an editorial assistant their first week on the job can do it! You can file online through eCO and then ship your deposit materials if a print edition is required. Or, you can fill out a form TX and print it, prepare your filing fee as a check or money order, and then package your materials for shipping. All you need to have on hand is:
Your trusty Form TX
Filing fee
Deposit material
The Form TX is very straightforward and comes with embedded instructions on how to fill it out. You’ll have to fill in some personal information about yourself as the author and some bibliographic information about the book. Unless you copyright a lot of stuff, you probably don’t have a deposit account with the copyright office—that’s fine. You can enclose a check.
The filing fee to register your copyright changes and it is also dependent on exactly who is claiming what, so I’m not going to put a specific number here. You can look up the current filing fees on this site. Most likely scenario is you’re a single author filing one claim for a single work, not a work for hire, either electronically or by mail. That’s the fee you’ll pay.
Deposit material is where it may get a little confusing. The copyright office requires a deposit of two copies of the best edition of the book. If your book is published in electronic format only—as an e-book with no print components—then you can submit your deposit material electronically. However, if your book is publicly circulated in both electronic and print formats, or in more than one print format, you will have to determine the best edition available and submit two copies of that edition to the Library of Congress. There is a lot of guidance on what constitutes the “best edition” of printed material available in Circular 7b, but the short answer is: Probably the version that is most expensive to print.
If you’re releasing a clothbound edition with a dustjacket under one ISBN and a print-on-demand paperback edition under a second ISBN, Library of Congress needs two copies of the dustjacket edition. If you’re doing a lithocase edition (cheaper hardcover than clothbound) and a paperback, they want the lithocase. If in doubt, consult the circular but generally speaking you won’t have to choose between too many editions and it will be easy to identify which edition is “the best one.”
An important note here is that you choose your best edition out of the editions that are publicly circulating at the time when you register the copyright. That means if you publish your title as an e-book only and register the copyright with a deposit of the e-book, and then after registering, release a paperback or hardcover edition, you do not need to go back and replace your deposit with the “better” edition.
It is notable that fully e-filed registrations are completed significantly faster than mail-in registrations or hybrid registrations (in which the paperwork and filing fee are submitted electronically but deposit material is mailed). Just something to keep in mind as you are planning the formats you want to make available at launch.
Whether you decide to register your copyright or not is up to you. Just remember that neither the act of registering your book, nor the certificate you receive from the Copyright Office, confers the copyright on you. You already have that simply by having created the work. But if you’re losing sleep over the possibility of having to defend your copyright in court, it’s not that much of a hassle.
A final word on the Copyright Office and the Library of Congress. While you do not need to apply for CIP data, for a PCN or LCCN, or register your copyright, US law states that the Library of Congress is entitled to receive copies of every book published in the United States within three months of publication. Yes, even if you publish as an e-book only. Yes, even if you published it only through KDP. You can be slapped with a fine for failing to supply the books if requested.
You can read about the mandatory deposit law here. Whether you register your copyright or don’t register your copyright, legally you owe the Library of Congress two copies of the best edition of your book (or your e-book, if electronic only). If you register your copyright, the two copies you send for that purpose fulfill the mandatory deposit requirement. So if you intend to comply with the mandatory deposit requirement, you should go ahead and register your copyright.
If you are an indie, self-published author and you don’t have a lot of sales, the Library of Congress is unlikely to come knocking and demand their deposit—but they have the right to do it and sometimes they do.
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