How to Copyright Your Book (step-by-step tutorial) + Answering YOUR Copyright Questions

what's up my friend Abby here and welcome back to writer's life Wednesdays where we come together to help you make your story matter and make your author dreams come true today we are talking all about copyrights when to file them how to file them and why you should copyright your work before sending it out into the world I'm also going to be answering some frequently asked questions about copywriting your book if you are an indie author or just a writer who has ever felt nervous about sending your book baby out into the world without any protection then chances are you've done some searching and researching about copyrights like all legal things it can be a little bit complicated sometimes so let's simplify it in this video and let's start with the basics what is a copyright technically speaking a copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy distribute adapt display and perform a creative work in other words it means you are the sole owner of your thing and you are the legal owner of your thing and if anybody tries to steal it or copy it or reproduce it in any way you can sue their face but seriously this is something you are definitely not going to want to skip in the publishing process you want to copyright your work you want to protect your work legally officially with all the stamps of approval no exceptions without an official copyright you have no legal proof that you are in fact the sole owner and creator of your book and you have no power to contest anybody else trying to copy or steal or pyrite your book being the copyright holder also gives you authority to give other people permission to use parts of your book for other purposes so as we all know it's pretty dangerous to send your work out into the world without protecting it technically an author owns the copyright to their book as soon as they create it the act of creating the thing is the copyright technically it means that you have the right to it because you're the one who made it in fact you may have heard that a free and easy way to copyright your work is to send yourself proof of your intellectual property in the mail in a letter and then never open the letter and then the postmark serves as proof of when you created it and that you're the one who created it and that sounds nice in theory but it actually doesn't hold any legal power whatsoever it's kind of like shaking on an agreement instead of signing a contract like yeah it would be really nice if all we had to do to agree on something and to keep our word is just to shake somebody's hand or bump fists now I guess but the real world doesn't work that way just like you are more protected signing a contract than shaking someone's hand you are more protected registering an actual copyright for your book than just putting a copyright notice in your book or sending yourself something in the mail that actually does not count as an official copyright and if somebody tried to steal from you you couldn't take them to court with that that being said when should you copyright your book the short answer is this it's time to copyright your book when you receive your manuscript back from your editor or your last proofreader and all the changes have been made to the book okay you want as close to the final final official version of your book that's going to go to press you want it to be as close to that as possible now if you find a few Renegade typos after the fact and you want to fix those you don't have to worry about that that's something very small in mind her but you want to be copywriting your final draft the draft that is going to go to print you don't want to copyright a first draft or an unedited draft because it's going to look very different or at least fairly different than the final finished edited proofread manuscript that will be published and you want your copyright registration to reflect your final published work as closely as possible now if later down the road you decide to revise your book and publish a new edition of it you're going to have to register a new copyright for this new edition of your book during the process of that new registration you will be able to reference the previous copyright and previous registration of the previous Edition another question I've heard writers ask is can you copyright a book title now hence the reason you see many books songs movies TV shows with the same title however if this is a concern of yours and you don't want your book to get lost among other books that have the same or similar titles then just put a little bit more thought into your title and making it different putting a unique spin on it so that it will stand out from the crowd more and it will rank higher in search results before you decide on the final title of your book I would recommend searching up that title and seeing what appears seeing how many books have been called that or called something similar and then reconsider whether you want to put a unique spin on that title and maybe change it a little bit so that it stands out a bit more can you copyright an idea [Music] also no many books movies TV shows use the same ideas for their stories and their plot lines and that's why we can see these things and be like hey they ripped that off they rip that off it's actually not illegal to do that because you can't copyright an idea you can only copyright the expression of an idea okay so the expression of your idea is your book it's a tangible thing it is a written document and the expression of these ideas is what makes it unique it's what makes it yours it's what makes it a piece of intellectual property that you can then copyright another question that authors ask me is does a copyright notice work the same way as filing a copyright also no while a copyright notice May Scare off potential IP thieves it's actually not legally binding copyright notice serves to make someone aware of the fact that you do in fact have a registered copyright and you are in fact the legal owner of this work so I would recommend doing both first register your copyright and then apply your copyright notice by inserting it in the front matter of your book you'll see them in any book that you pick up and a basic fiction copyright notice might look something like this if you want to learn more about copyrights and intellectual property and all the ins and outs of bookish legalities I will link a super helpful article in the description box below this video so check that out if you want to dig deeper into this topic but those are the questions that I get asked the most as an indie author so hopefully I have answered some of your questions now let's get into the actual process of registering our copyright we're going to dive into the computer in just a minute and I'm going to show you step by step how to register a copyright for your book I'm in the United States so this tutorial will be for us-based authors and if you are based somewhere else you're going to just follow the copyright registration process according to your country okay let's jump into the computer and get started okay the very first thing you're going to do is go to copyright.gov and look for the tab on the menu bar that says registration you're going to click that Tab and there's a drop down menu you're going to click on the option that says register your work registration portal you can read these notices if you wish but basically you're looking for this big blue button that says log into the electronic copyright office registration system so click that button that will take you to a different website that looks like this so here's where you log into the copyright office if you don't have an IDM password you're going to have to register as a new user and you can do that by clicking the link below the login and signing up right here by entering your information but if you already have an account you're just going to go ahead and type in your user ID and your password and click login you will be taken to the home page of your dashboard where you can navigate over to the sidebar where it says register a work and you're going to click standard application okay and now this is where you start to register your work you can just click Start register registration and the first step is selecting the type of work it is so from this drop down menu you're going to pick literary work and then you're going to scroll down and select the box that says you have verified that you have chosen the right type of work and then you're going to just click the continue button okay next page this is where you're going to enter the title of your work so you're going to title it exactly as it appears um in your book title and to enter the title of your work you're just going to click the new button with the asterisk and then you are going to select a title type so you're going to choose title of work being registered in this case and then type in the title of your book exactly how it appears you don't have to worry about tag lines unless it's part of the title and then click save okay so that's in there and I'm just going to click continue into the next step okay has this been published before in my case no so if you have not published yet you're going to select no and then you're going to type in the year of the publication okay so it says year of completion and that's when you are publishing it so from my case this is 2023 so I'm going to click continue and then I'm now looking at a new page of the authors okay so the authors who are registering the work that's me so you can click add me and here's where you can easily enter your information once and then have it be on hand for the rest of this process where you can just click add me for all these options all these Pages which is really handy to have so take the time to enter your information if you haven't and click save okay so now it's asking what did the author do did they create the text the photographs artwork in my case it's just text so I'm going to click Text and click save and then you should see the author name appear underneath it looks right so I'm going to click continue okay so this is now about the copyright claimants and that's you so you're just going to navigate over to that option that says add me and click that it should show you or your information your address and your phone number make sure it's correct and then click save you can also double check the information on this page when you look down at the bottom of the screen it should be right there okay if it looks right then click continue okay you're gonna skip this step completely because this has to do with limiting your claim if it contains or is based on previously registered material probably not going to be the case so we're just going to click continue it's not the case for my book so we're going to go on to the next step which is providing information for the person or organization to be contacted regarding copyright management so you want that to be you and possibly another person that you trust who's on your team but for me for the moment I'm just going to add my information and then click continue okay and now this is the person that the copyright office will contact if it has questions about the application again it's kind of redundant so just keep clicking add me when in doubt you can always just put your own contact information make sure it's correct and then this is the mail certificate okay so this is the certificate that's actually going to be sent to you in the mail so again add your information and your address just make sure that your address is a mailing address so the next step is about special handling and I'm going to skip this step because it doesn't apply to me and probably won't apply to you either so you can go ahead and skip that step and click continue okay so now we have arrived at the end we're going to just check the box here that says I certify I am the author the copyright claimant the owner of the exclusive rights and go ahead and type in your full name the name of the certifying individual you could type that in in this box and that's all you need to do on this page so you can click continue okay boom so now you have to review the submission and I would recommend taking a moment to scroll through this entire page and check out all the information here make sure it's correct make sure everything looks right because after this step you're not going to be able to go back and make changes to it okay so look carefully at the information on this page scroll through all the different boxes of data and make sure it looks correct make sure your mailing address is correct and when you are done when everything looks good go up to the button that says add to cart and click that button and no it's not intuitive at all like adding what to the cart we're adding the copyright registration to the cart and if you scroll down you can see the price is going to charge you in this case it's going to be 65 US dollars so go ahead and click checkout you can pay with a deposit account or a credit card I'm going to pay with a credit card okay so now it's just letting you know that we're going to leave this website thank God and navigate to a payment website where we will process the card information so click OK and now you should land on a page that looks like this go ahead and select your payment option and click continue and then go ahead and type in your payment information once that's done you're just going to glance over your information double check that everything looks right and then check the box to authorize the charge and click continue okay once that's finished processing it will show it will show you that your payment was successful and now this is the moment where you actually submit the work you actually submit the file I know it's not at all intuitive to pay before you submit the file but that's how it goes so this is where you're going to upload your file you're just going to click that green button and then navigate to where you have your file saved of your finished final final official manuscript now the file will not start uploading until you click the blue button that says start upload once you click that you will see the progress bar and it should successfully upload and then you're going to go over to the big green button on the right hand side that says click to complete and boom that should be all you have to do you can navigate back to your home page and you should see on your dashboard the case that is your copyright registration for this book okay boom you did it congratulations you have registered your copyright for your book now all you have to do is wait a long time probably don't worry your copyright will be active in time for your book to be published usually it takes a couple of days maybe a business week and they will send you a confirmation email telling you that everything's good however it will probably take months for you to receive that letter in the mail because everything takes a long time with government stuff however your copyright is active even before you receive the letter so you don't have to be afraid that you haven't received your letter yet and their book is going out into the world oh my gosh what's gonna happen your copyright is active you can see that when you go into your portal on the copyright registration office you will be able to see your active copyrights and your registrations so you can always check there to make sure it's active but then when you receive your letter in the mail I'd recommend just keeping that in a safe place for your records and hopefully you'll never have to use it another thing to remember is that your copyright will not expire you will never have to renew it okay it will last for your lifetime plus 70 years that's the rule in the United States anyway it might differ a little bit depending on what country you're in but I know that that's the general rule of thumb so you don't have to worry about renewing or having to do this again until you publish a new book another thing that I probably should have addressed in the FAQ section but didn't is that you don't have to copyright every single edition of your book okay it's for one interior file which is your book's contents it doesn't matter if that's in Kindle format hardcover paperback those are not separate copyrights okay you are copywriting the book and then the different formats you publish don't change what's in the book so you don't have to register a new copyright for each new format that you publish only if you write a new edition of the book and actually make changes to the content that's when you would register another copyright for a new edition of your book but there's difference between additions and formats okay that's it hopefully this tutorial was helpful hopefully this video answers some of your questions about copywriting if it did Smash that like button and comment below tell me how it went tell me what stage of the process you're in in your Indie publishing Adventure I would love to hear all about it and again if you want to learn more about the ins and outs of copywriting your work and the different legalities with publishing check out that article that I Linked In the description box below I think it'll answer a lot of your questions subscribe to this channel if you haven't already because I post writing videos every single Wednesday and I would love to have you here in the community also be sure to check out my patreon because that's where we go beyond videos and take storytelling to the next level the patreon community is not only the best way to support what I'm doing here on YouTube but it's also the only way to get exclusive access to things like my monthly live trainings and my private Discord community so go to patreon.com Abby Emmons to get access to all of the exclusive content I have over there for you until next week my friend rock on villain was once an anti-hero far enough you know you know track your villain wasn't born like that they were made to be a villain throughout the course of their history and what they've gone through and the different conflicts that they've faced so

Channel: Abbie Emmons

Views: 33,014

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Id: 9Qw66gNT96I

Length: 19min 9sec (1149 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 05 2023