Copyright is Copyright, Right?

Last week, we covered the front and back matter of your book, including the required copyright page. This week, we’re going to talk about what copyright is.

What is a Copyright?

In the US, copyright refers to a set of exclusive rights. These include the right of reproduction, distribution, creation of work-based derivatives, and sale, lease, or lending of your intellectual property. For the purposes of this post, we’re going to assume the intellectual property in question is your book.

The creator or owner (i.e. work for hire) holds copyright once they have created the work, regardless of whether they register the work with the US Copyright Office. The current copyright term is for the life of the author plus 70 years.

Is Copyright Registration Required?

Short answer, no.

Once you’ve created a work product, you own the copyright to it, and enjoy the rights listed above. However, your unregistered copyright does not allow you to pursue legal remedies if someone fringes upon your rights. Scary, right?

Registering your book with the Copyright Office provides you with additional protections. Here’s the language (verbatim) from the United States Patent and Trademark Office:

• Registration establishes a public record of the copyright claim.
• Registration is necessary before an infringement suit may be filed in court (for works of U. S. origin).
• If made before or within 5 years of publication, registration establishes prima facie evidence in court of the validity of the copyright and of the facts stated in the certificate.
• If registration is made within 3 months after publication of the work or prior to an infringement of the work, statutory damages and attorney’s fees will be available to the copyright owner in court actions. Otherwise, only an award of actual damages and profits is available to the copyright owner.
• Registration allows the owner of the copyright to record the registration with the U. S. Customs Service for protection against the importation of infringing copies.

Why Register My Work?

Per the second bullet (above), the most important reason to register your work is to give you legal options in case someone plagiarizes or pirates your book… but it takes time to process your application.

This means if you realize an infringement has occurred, and you haven’t registered your work, you have a problem: you cannot press suit until the Copyright Office has registered your work.

For electronic submissions, the current processing time 1-4 months, but the submission time for claims with main-in physical products (i.e. books) is 3-17 months. You would have to wait for the processing to finish before you could even file an infringement suit, unless you want to pay for expedited registration.

If someone is selling a pirated or plagiarized version of your work, you could lose a lot of money while you wait for registration. Worse, when you win your case, you cannot apply for your legal fees as part of restitution, unless you registered your work prior to the infringement.

Besides the stronger protections discussed above, your book’s registration clears the way for licensing agreements including film/television adaptations, translation rights, etc. As part of registration, the Copyright Office adds your book to the searchable public database, and mails you a certificate. This means interested parties can verify you are the registered owner of the intellectual property.

Note, there’s a myth that if you mail yourself a copy of your book, you can use the unopened package as the proof needed to start copyright infringement litigation. This myth is false; in the US, the only way to pursue legal action regarding copyright infringement is if you’re registered your copyright.

How Do I Register for a Copyright?

There are many paths to copyright. On the most expensive end, you could hire an Intellectual Property attorney to do it for you. Next, you could use one of many, many online filing services. These include LegalZoom ($114 + Federal Filing Fees), Cosynd via BookBaby ($20 + Federal Filing Fees), Bowker ($79.95 + $65 in fees), and Trademark Engine ($99 + Federal Filing Fees), among others.

However, since all the above options require you to provide the information anyway, why not register your book yourself? Yep, save yourself a few clams and head over to Copyright.gov.

Once you’ve on the site, click on the option to log in to the Electronic Copyright Office (eCO) Registration System. The site will ask you to register as a new user, then you can click Register a Work (Standard Application). You’ll then enter information about your book and how to contact you. At the end of the process, you can review your submission, pay the fee, then submit an electronic copy of your work (for electronic-only books). The website is clunky, but here’s the video they created to walk you through it.

There, done! At the time of this post, the fee for registering my book using their electronic system was $45, plus two copies of my hardcover edition.

Wait what?

Mandatory Deposit

When registering your work, you are subject to an old law (Title 17, Chapter 4, Section 407) referred to as Mandatory Deposit. This law requires you to submit two copies of your “best edition” work within 3 months of publication. The Library of Congress oversees the Copyright Office, and they add the copies you send to the library’s collection.

Technically, US law requires mandatory deposit for all published works (including works published in foreign countries but sold in the United States!!), but unless you’re registering your copyright, they don’t enforce it… unless the Library of Congress decides they want your book in their collection.

Best edition means the best quality book you produce. If you only produce a paperback, then your best edition is your paperback. If you have a hardcover and a premium hardcover, your best edition is your premium hardcover.

Have you registered your books with the Copyright Office?

Header Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash