World Book and Copyright Day is April 23. In honor of it, I thought I’d answer some frequently asked questions about intellectual property and your books.
Please note: The following FAQs refer specifically to American copyright best practices. However, I am neither a lawyer nor a legal professional. The information in this post should not be taken as legal advice in any way. In matters of copyright and intellectual property law, please refer to an attorney specializing in these fields.
What is copyright?
Copyright is a term that means that you have the legal right to reproduce, publish, sell, and distribute your book.
How do I copyright my book?
Great news! Because a manuscript is your intellectual property, you technically have copyright ownership of the manuscript from the moment it is written. When you reach out to Copyright.gov, you are not applying for copyright. Instead, you are registering your copyright with a federal organization.
The primary reason to register your book’s copyright is to prevent others from having the ability to publish and therefore profit off your work. If someone is infringing on your copyright and you’ve registered said copyright, you can take them to court relatively easily and hopefully get them to pay a financial penalty for their crime.
As mentioned above, the standard way for self-published American authors to register their copyright is through Copyright.gov. It costs $45 to register one copyright electronically, $125 through a paper filing. You can learn more here. Self-publishing distribution services like Amazon do not require your manuscript to have a copyright page, but you can add it into your manuscript if you see fit.
Other ways to demonstrate copyright ownership are:
That the date of a book’s publication predates the date on which a plagiarist published the same content.
That the date on which you mailed a copy of your manuscript to yourself (either via email or post) predates the date on which a plagiarist published the same content.
Though these are more cost-effective, they may be more difficult to prove in a court of law.
If I automatically have the copyright to my book and I sign on with a traditional publisher, how is my publisher legally allowed to publish my work?
In your contract with your publisher, there will be a clause in which you give them first US rights or possibly first world rights to publish your book. Depending on the agreement, there may be similar clauses for international rights, film or TV rights, and so on.
This is why, especially with smaller publishers who are lesser known, it’s a good idea to read the fine print before signing the contract. It doesn’t happen often, but I’ve heard one or two horror stories of someone signing over lifetime rights without realizing it.
How do I avoid copyright infringement?
Let’s say you’re not worried about your own copyright being violated so much as you’re worried you’ll be sued for quoting a book, movie, or song in your own novel.
We’ll get to this in a future blog post I have stewing about song lyrics in novels, but there’s a concept in intellectual property law called “fair use.” If you’re quoting from another person’s work to help educate your reader or in a brief epigraph at the beginning of the novel or the beginning of a chapter, then you may be able to claim that you have fair use to do so. This is why the feds weren’t hammering down your door every time you turned in a term paper in college.
Things get stickier when you’re making a profit off work that quotes another person’s copyrighted work, especially if you’re quoting a sizeable chunk of their work. Like I say, I’ll have more to share soon. For now, please refer to Jane Friedman’s fantastic explanation of Fair Use and copyright permissions: www.janefriedman.com/sample-permission-letter/.
It should also be noted that some works are in the public domain, which means that anyone can quote them and make a profit off them without fear of legal or financial repercussions. A good rule of thumb (though perhaps a truism) is that, as of 2020, all works published in America before 1925 can generally be thought of as being in the public domain. You can learn more about copyright duration here and here.
When in doubt, always avoid including potentially copyrighted work in your manuscript. Instead, find a way to share the same sentiment in your own words.
Should I register the copyright for my manuscript?
Before it’s a book? No. Many freelance editors, myself included, have clauses in our contracts noting that all rights to the intellectual property in question (i.e., your book) remain in your hands. However, once it’s going to become a book, you might consider registering your copyright for all the legal benefits laid out above.