by Anne R. Allen
Should I pay to copyright my manuscript?
Will a publisher or agent steal my plot from a query?
How can I protect my ideas?
We get asked these questions a lot. Until recently, our standard answer was: “Stop worrying about it. Your work is automatically copyrighted as soon as you type it onto your hard drive.”People who are paranoid about the theft of an unpublished manuscript or who obsess about somebody “stealing their ideas” red-flag themselves as amateurs.
American copyright laws passed in the early 1970s state that anything you write is automatically copyrighted as soon as you type it onto a page (or a hard drive.)
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- You don’t have to mail it to yourself.
- Or put the little © on the title page.
- Or pay a copyright service. It only costs $35 to copyright a manuscript with the US government.
- Never use a copyright “service”. If you want the extra protection of an official copyright, go right to the US Copyright Office—make sure it’s got a .gov address.
But even if you don’t register your work with the government, it is fully copyrighted as soon as you write it down.
But once you register the copyright, unfortunately, you’re setting yourself up as prey for scammy vanity presses. Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware warns that you should NOT register copyright for unpublished work. It’s not only unnecessary, but:
“You may be solicited by questionable companies. Vanity publishers and dodgy literary agents have long used copyright registration lists (and magazine subscription lists) to troll for customers.”
How Do I Keep People from Stealing my Ideas?
I understand that plot theft tends to be on the minds of a lot of new writers. Most writers believe our ideas are unique and glorious.
We need to believe this or we’d never be able to push ourselves through the long, tough slog of actually crafting the ideas into readable prose.
But a raw idea isn’t worth as much as we think. A lot of people over-inflate the value of a plot. These are usually people who don’t understand the hard work involved in turning that plot idea into a book.
You run into these people at parties. They tell you they have a dynamite idea for your next book and if you just “write down the words”, they’ll split the profits with you 50/50.
The Fifty-Fifty Split Offers…
Every writer meets up with this phenomenon at some point. The New Yorker has a spoof of one of these encounters in “Shouts and Murmurs” in this week’s issue, “An Unsolicited Great Idea for Your Next Book“ by Jacob Sager Weinstein. It’s hilarious. Here’s a quote:
“He had become a writer for the same reason anybody did: he was incapable of coming up with ideas of his own, and he longed for a lifetime of being given them at cocktail parties.”
And a few years ago, Victoria Strauss wrote at Writer Beware about some guy who was trying to sell his plot idea on eBay for ten million dollars.
“It can be compared to stories like Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Matrix, Indiana Jones…and will bring in endless fame and money to anyone who takes it.”
He’s not the only starry-eyed doofus who has combined delusions of grandeur with total cluelessness about the effort required to actually write a novel or screenplay and then get it in front of the public.In the thread of the same post at Writer Beware, children’s author Kathleen Duey talked about the unsolicited-plot-idea people who want to share the profits 50/50.
“Try that split on any other kind of business person,” Duey wrote. “‘I think that a colony on Mars would be awesome and I am willing to give a 50% share of all eventual proceeds to anyone who can make it happen.'”She reminds us to run away before one of these idea-people get going, in case you ever write something similar by accident. Delusional folks can be scary.
(I used that situation as a plot device in my comic mystery set at a small UK publishing house, Sherwood Ltd. On sale at Amazon this week. See below.)
Personally, when somebody approaches me with this “proposition,” I say, “the going rate for ghostwriters is $50-$200 an hour. I don’t provide that service, but I can get you a referral.”
Most writers have plenty of story ideas of our own. Our biggest fear is not living long enough to write them all.
So why Can’t you Copyright an Idea?
Here’s what the copyright law says (Section 102(b)) “In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated or embodied in such work.”
Ideas, systems, and concepts come under the laws for patents and trademarks, which usually don’t apply to books.
Copyrights only cover “original works of authorship” that the author puts into a tangible form (paper, hard drive, etc,) That is, it protects your book after it’s written. No one can steal, reprint or profit from your written work without your consent.
So you can’t protect the ideas or plot of your story.
But don’t let that bother you too much. Plots get recycled all the time, and nobody loses. A guy named William Shakespeare lifted every one of his plots from other writers. His history plays are mostly taken from Holinshed’s Chronicles, and he even took storylines from other playwrights. He ripped off Plautus’s Menaechmi to write The Comedy of Errors. And a few centuries later Rogers and Hart stole the same plot to write The Boys from Syracuse.
And you know what? They were all wildly successful. Everybody won.
Can’t I Copyright my Logline?
Yes. You can copyright a logline (a one-sentence summary of a plot, usually used for screenplays) but all somebody has to do is alter a few words and it’s not under the copyright, so that’s pretty pointless.
“There are no new stories, just new ways of telling them.”
Seriously. You may think you’re the first person who ever thought of that storyline, but you probably aren’t. Experts don’t agree on the exact number of narrative plots, but there aren’t many:
- In the 19th century, Georges Polti listed 36 Dramatic Situations.
- In 1993, Ronald Tobias counted 20 Master Plots.
- In 2005, Christopher Booker compressed the list to Seven Basic Plots.
- The legendary agent who used to blog as “Miss Snark” said there were six.
- I found an article in Author Magazine that listed only five.
So the number seems to be shrinking, but everybody agrees it is finite.
But…What About Piracy?
However, there is another issue that has emerged with the rise of ebooks, blogs, and self-publishing: piracy of published books and blogs.
I’m having to deal with this myself. Last week I discovered the content of this blog—lifted in its entirety, all the way back to my first 200-word post in 2009—on a weird Portuguese site that offered two things: this blog and The Bible.
Yup, Ruth and me and the Word of God. Pretty much the same thing, right? Ha!
These pirates are as shameless as they are creepy.
We also contacted Google with a DMCA notice. More on that below. Also, I’ve discovered a new program that removes illegal content from Google. It’s called Blasty. It’s free while it’s still in beta. We hope it will get rid of the blog pirate.
Ebook Counterfeiters
Pirates find indie books an easy target. Independent authors without a big publishing house’s staff of lawyers look like easy prey.
A few months ago some guy took a bunch of ebooks, pasted his own name on the covers over the authors’ names (often not even obscuring the real author) and put his stolen versions on Amazon under his own name. I saw them on a Facebook group page. They looked ridiculous. But the guy must have made enough money siphoning off sales that it was worth his while.
Amazon took the phony books down after a bunch of complaints, but there are thousands of other slightly less lazy pirates out there stealing ebooks right now.
In fact ebook theft seems to be getting worse by the day, as author John Doppler reported in a blogpost titled Kindle Counterfeiting in August.
Erotica authors seem to be the most common targets. Pirates will download books that are on a freebie run, change the title and author name, and upload them to Amazon as their own.
Amazon works hard to fight this kind of piracy, and they will work with the author if you report the theft. There will be a paper trail if Amazon paid royalties to the pirates. Sometimes you can even get the royalties back, according to Mr. Doppler.
Unfortunately registering the book with the copyright office will not do much to deter this kind of pirate. Copyright registration is only useful if you take these people to court, which isn’t easy when the pirates are working out of some cafe in Sri Lanka or Bangladesh.
Update
I’ve just heard of a whole new type of plagiarism I wasn’t aware of. There are people who will steal an author’s book, change the names of the characters (and sometimes their gender) and rewrite a few phrases per page, then publish the novel as their own work. It’s especially happening to romance writers.
Apparently one “author” has even been taking bestselling straight romances, changing them to m/m romances with a few tweaks and making quite a career of it. There’s more about this on Jenny Trout’s blog, Trout Nation.
As soon as the plagiarism was reported to retail sites, the stolen books were taken down. But that’s just one person who was caught. I’m sure there are more out there. Since m/m and straight romances generally have different audiences, people have been getting away with this kind of book theft for a while.
Torrent Pirate Sites
We also have the problem of “torrent” sites. (These are sites that use a protocol called “BitTorrent” for free file sharing.)
These sites seem to be offering your books for free, but they often only deliver the “look inside” 10% of the book that’s already offered free on Amazon. This is because they don’t actually want to make money off stolen books.
They use the “free” books to install malware on the users’ electronic devices.
Of course, some illegal file-sharers steal your stuff just because they think everything should be free and artists don’t deserve to be paid. These people have been ripping off musical artists ever since the Internet began, and the practice has spilled into ebooks.
Sometimes the pirates don’t even have malevolent intentions. In many parts of the world, readers can’t access legitimate ebook stores. Amazon blocks users in most of the African continent, the Middle East and much of Asia.
Torrent sites are the only way readers in those places can access your ebooks unless you get on local sites in their countries through aggregators like Smashwords, D2D and BookBaby.
As Neil Young said several years ago, “piracy is how music gets around these days.” Now piracy is the way ebooks get around. Especially in Asia and Africa.
We probably don’t need to freak out all that much about that kind of piracy. We know freebie runs and perma-free books help build a fan base. Think of these Asian and African pirate sites as a way to build your audience in countries where your book isn’t sold yet… and when your book comes out in translation, or on a legit site, you’ll have a fan base.
Fighting Piracy and Counterfeiters
But in general, content theft is a growing problem, and counterfeiting of the kind Mr. Doppler talked about—your own book sold by someone else on a major retail site—can really cut into an author’s bottom line.
Newer laws have been passed to try to curb intellectual property theft, but they don’t always do much good.The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed in the 1990s to deal with copyright infringement on the Internet. If you find material online that infringes a copyright you hold—whether that copyright has been officially registered or not—you can send the hosting website a DMCA notice. When the hosting website gets it, it MUST remove the material and notify the person who posted it.
Unfortunately, pirates know how to game the law to steal an author’s work and there’s often not much we can do about it.
However, if you are wealthy enough to hire an attorney, you can file a lawsuit. And to file a lawsuit—as opposed to a DMCA notice—you do need to have registered the copyright.
Attorney Helen Sedwick Weighs in
Intellectual property attorney Helen Sedwick has a step-by-step how-to on her blog telling us how to deal with content theft..
She thinks you SHOULD copyright your book in order to fight the pirates.
Sedwick says, “You cannot file a lawsuit unless the work is registered with the US Copyright Office. If you threaten to sue, and the infringer searches copyright records and doesn’t find your registration, they may call your bluff.”
For more on how to register your copyright, see Joel Friedlander’s post How to Copyright Your Book.But another intellectual property attorney, Kathryn Goldman, doesn’t think an individual author has much of a chance with a lawsuit. She addressed the problem on Molly Greene’s blog in a 2-part piece called “Has Your Ebook Been Pirated?”
She says your best way to deal with pirates is contact Google with your DMCA notice to downrank their site so people won’t find it when searching for your book.
“…if you find your book on a torrent site, you can file a Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) removal request with Google and other search engines. Here is Google’s DMCA form. If Google receives a sufficient number of takedown requests for a particular site, their new algorithm may downrank the torrent site in search engine results pages.”
She says, “Suppressing search result rankings may be the best option for an individual author with respect to the problem of work appearing on illegal torrent sites.”
Does Registering your Copyright Protect you from Pirates?
Unfortunately US copyright laws don’t help much against pirates unless 1) you have the money for a pricey court battle, 2) the pirates are under the jurisdiction of US laws.
Here’s the thing: US copyright registration doesn’t do much to fight elusive third-world pirate sites. And it doesn’t always hold weight with Amazon, who will take your book down if anybody claims to have written it—even if you have the registered copyright. At least that’s what happened to author Becca Mills when a pirate sent a DMCA on her own copyrighted book, which was discussed on The Passive Voice blog in March of 2015.
Amazon took it down and refused to put it back. They considered this a “dispute between private parties” even though Becca Mills didn’t even know the identity of the person who sent the DMCA and she had registered the copyright.
Other Ways to Fight the Theft of Ebooks.
If the pirates are reselling your books on Amazon, follow these steps outlined by Jon Doppler
- Assemble a list of the ASINs for each version of your books.
- Search retailers regularly to ensure that only legitimate copies with your ASINs are present.
- File a copyright infringement report immediately when counterfeits are discovered.
He says you shouldn’t bother contacting customer service for copyright issues; go directly to the legal department. Amazon provides an online form for filing a copyright infringement notice, or you can email your own DMCA notice to Amazon’s legal department, via copyright @ amazon.com.
What Should You Do to Protect Yourself?
For Self-Publishers:
- Register your copyright if you want extra protection in case of a lawsuit
- Keep track of your AISNs
- File a DMCA notice with Google and Amazon if you see piracy.
- You might want to download Blasty. (It’s free right now because it’s still in beta.)
For unpublished authors planning to go the traditional route:
- Do NOT register your copyright. You’ll only set yourself up as prey for scammers. Writers have a lot to be wary of these days: scammy vanity publishers, bogus literary agencies, disappearing fly-by-night small presses, fake social media marketers, draconian contracts, trollish critiquers—but plot-purloiners should not be high on the list.
- Never mention copyright in a query, or you’ll look like a paranoid doofus.
Anne R. Allen is the author of ten books, including the bestselling CAMILLA RANDALL MYSTERIES and HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE, co-written with NYT bestseller Catherine Ryan Hyde.
BOOK OF THE WEEK
And in paper for $11.99 from Amazon and Barnes and Noble
My books have been pirated a few times. My publisher goes after who they can. Many are those sites that aren't offering the book, just want money or to install malware.
You, Ruth, and the Bible – what an honor!
Alex–Yup, Ruth and the Almighty and I are getting together later to talk about the pirate problem. Ha! I think the malware sites are more common than actual pirate sites these days. I hope the word gets out that those things are dangerous. If somebody wants a free book, they can ask the author or publisher for a review copy.
Less than a week ago, a neighbor told me he had an insanely great idea, wouldn’t tell me what it was because he was afraid I’d steal it. Then he said he'd split 50/50 if I wrote it. I smiled, allowed as how I was busy but suggested he could hire someone at fiverr. To tell you the truth, I impressed myself with my own diplomatic skills. 😉
Ruth–Suggesting Fiverr was brilliant. I can't even count the number of times that has happened to me. I'll politely ask some stranger at a party where they're from or what they do and they'll clam up and say they can't tell me anything because they know I'll steal their life story and use it in a book. Then they'll do an about face and start to tell me this boring story and while I try to escape they offer me the 50-50 deal. It's hard not to laugh.
Oooops.Forgot to check notifications. Sorry.
What a great post! Lots of excellent information here, especially for those of us who are outside the US (Canada, in my case) yet have books published there. Yes, my books have been on dozens of pirate sites, and my two publishers regularly get involved. I've even been directed to blogs/websites where college kids ask where they can download my books for free. (And following your earlier advice, Anne – I NEVER comment.)
The "I have this great idea" problem is something I get at least twice a year. Your advice about walking away quickly is something I will remember.
Melodie–It helps to have a publisher when dealing with piracy. It's one thing indies have trouble fighting on their own.
And why do people think ebooks should be free? People who have no trouble paying $5 for a cup of coffee.
And yes, we have to walk away quickly from those "I've got an idea" folks, or some idiot may sue us. I've heard of that happening.
It's a very important topic, Anne, and to your credit you didn't sugar-coat it. We could get screwed on the money side: indies going in with little to no cash could get ripped off, and that's all. No money for a lawyer (if we had that, what covers we'd buy!) and as for searching AISNs, there's that famous statement about the mathematical relationship between money and time. Frankly, I could be writing. And if I come out of my cave one day and find out that I'm rich and famous, but decided to change my name and move… I guess that will be worth a chuckle.
But let's not get off the topic. You, Ruth and the Bible, fantastic! Wherever you go, I shall go… and what better company could you conceivably be in? Everyone knows it's the Bible, a runaway bestseller since Gutenberg. But now you can claim with a straight face you're be #2 with pirates.
Will–Ha! That's the problem: yes, we can sue the pirates if we have a registered copyright, but when the pirate is a teenager in Sri Lanka, what good will it do us? And lawyers, unlike authors, get paid big bux.
But it's not a big deal to write down your AISN when you publish each book. Even authors with 50+ books can take them down in an hour or so. And that's better protection than spending $35 to register the copyright for each one.
Wow. It's a crazy world. Thanks for another informative post.
CS–Thanks for stopping by!
I love the ghostwriting reply–that one is going in my file banks!
The pirating stinks. I had pages from my site taken before (including a dedication to a family member who had passed away!). The hosting sites were great about taken them down.
Blasty sounds good, but I see a great potential for misuse.
Southpaw–I'm afraid you're right about the potential for misuse. I hesitated about putting in the link, and that's why I was tentative in my recommendation. It would be so easy for malevolent people to target innocent websites and get them taken down. I'd rather deal with pirates.
It's really creepy when they take parts of your blog or website. How very weird they took your memorial page. Awful.
Here's a comment that came via email from David B.
Lot's of great points, Anne.
Regarding theft of blog posts – it's quite common for scripted content theft to be used to create interlinked web sites that up their presence for Google Ads. For the ones who are stealing to provide content, I found simply putting my name at the bottom of the blog content (like a signature but in the actual post content) helped as they couldn't then simple claim the post as theirs. That discouraged a lot but won't discourage the indiscriminate. But having links to other articles inside your content helps bring people back to your site.
Regarding the blog migration – normally, first thing you do is go into WordPress and set the Permalinks (In Dashboard, Settings) to match your current path structure (year, mo, title). Then all existing incoming links will be maintained. Do that BEFORE you import. However, in your case, you have not been using your own domain. I'd still recommend matching the structure as it's easier to update links. But they will change.
For example, you may find your internal links will still point back to the old blog. A simple script can update the domain – again easier with the same path structure – only the first part needs to be updated.
(I cover some of this here: https://fornow.wordpress.com/2014/01/22/wordpress-migration-part-2/)
The change will give your google stats a hit but they'll recover quickly, also helped by having the same link structure.
Good luck with the process!
David–Thanks a bunch for all this info! I'm too much of a cybermoron to do this stuff on my own, so I've got a pro working on the migration. Way, way above my pay grade. 🙂
Thanks for the tip about a signature. Both Ruth and I will do that!
Wonderful and full of great info. Another keeper to be bookmarked for those just in case moments. I had a couple of my books pirated. JMS Books sent me the DMCA they use and the books were removed from the pirated site. At least I think they were. Memory not as good as it used to be. Great post as always. 🙂
Paul–It sure does help to have a publisher when you're dealing with piracy. That's one thing that's a big drawback to self-publishing. Pirates come with the territory.
The Helen Sedgwick link on Book Designer leads to a 404 page. At least as of this posting.
Judith–Well, darn. Joel just moved his blog to another site this week, and all the old links are dead. What a pain. It was a great post and it was there on Friday. But now all Joel's archives are gone. No idea if he'll restore them. Or if it can be done.
We're planning to move our blog soon, too and I sure hope that doesn't happen to us.
Thanks, Anne. you've given us another great post with valuable information. So far as I know, I've never had a book pirated, but I just assume I'm not important enough. But I'd like to have a dollar for everyone who offered a "fabulous plot" if I would then write the story and share the proceeds 50/50. I'll try the "ghost-writer" excuse next time.
Phyllis–We'd all be rich if we had money for every one of those offers of fabulous plots, wouldn't we? The reality of how much a ghostwriter costs usually calms them down fast.
Wow, this is a fantastic and comprehensive article on copyright and piracy. Thank you for this, I'm bookmarking and sharing! As an artist, I've had my artwork posted elsewhere, especially on foreign language sites. Fortunately, I've always had my signatures and (c) over the images, so I let it be. Unfortunately, written work isn't so easy to sign, so I truly thank you for the insight.
I've dealt with other privacy concerns recently on a foreign website, and I emailed the webpage server (godaddy) and within 2 weeks, they had the page taken down. It's very frustrating so I'm glad there are avenues of working around this.
ella–It is definitely harder to protect text than images, but everything does seem to get pirated eventually.
Good tip to send the DMCA notice to the server. That usually works.
Thank you so much for the information! My husband just brought this topic up to me a few days ago, because he's worried about me sending out manuscripts to betas for read-throughs.
Krista–I'm glad this post was timely for you! Let him know he can rest easy. 🙂
It seems like many of us have been approached by people with the 50/50 proposition.
In my day job as a corporate training consultant I had client's employee approach me with a "fabulous idea for a screenplay". He'd give me the idea and I would write it and we'd share the profits 50/50. He offered to proofread my work but he'd have to increase his percentage take because, you know, proofreading takes time and he was a busy guy.
This is a great article and I think probably a lot of applies in Canada. I know the whole "mail it yourself" idea exists up here. Not sure about the automatically copyrighted as soon as you write it down concept. Anyone know?
Brant–Oh, that proofreading guy was a real prize! I think that tops most of my "arrogant doofus" stories.
I was not able to find out whether Canada or the UK have the same laws about automatic copyright as we have in the US. I know some differ. Some things are out of copyright in the UK and Canada, but still under copyright here in the US. I'd love to hear from anybody out there who knows.
I'm not sure I know anyone who hasn't had a book pirated. My publisher watches for this. I feel helpless about it. I do copyright my books through the government but I would never have the money to hire and lawyer and fight a pirate.
Susan–Piracy is certainly a fact of life in the digital age. My publisher doesn't get too worried about it on torrent sites, and so far we haven't been pirated on Amazon. But we're keeping copies of the AISNs in case.
A minor complaint about an annoyance:
At the end of your post you say:
Sherwood Ltd. is only 99c this week on all the Amazons!
also available at iTunes, Inktera, Nook, and Smashwords.
You should say:
…also available at it's regular price at…
I like reading my e-books with the iBooks reader better than the Kindle reader, but when I go to iTunes to get your book at $.99, it's priced at $2.99 and my first thought is that I'm a doofus for missing your sale.
Re-wording your announcement would clarify that. (It wouldn't clarify that I'm not a doofus about other things, however.)
Peter–I apologize! I have changed it now. I left it ambiguous because I didn't know if my publisher would be able to lower the prices at the other sites in time. It's much easier at Amazon. If you'd still like a copy of Sherwood Ltd., send me an email at annerallen dot allen at gmail.com and I'll send you the epub file free of charge.
Peter–Your profile had your email address, so I've just sent the epub file of Sherwood, Ltd. to that address. So sorry for the inconvenience!
Thanks, Anne. I wanted to add two cents I've gathered from other writers:
1. If Hollywood comes knocking, register the copyright *before* you talk to them.
2. Make sure you register in the country where you'd be fighting a lawsuit. I'm Canadian, which meant that I registered it afterward in the U.S.
3. Register the first book in a series.
Feel free to correct me, lawyers, authors, and other experts!
Cheers,
Melissa
Melissa–That sounds like very good advice. If you're self-published protect yourself from the Hollywood sharks before they start feeding.
And it would make sense to register the first book. You wouldn't have to worry about the others so much. Same characters, etc.
Thanks a bunch!
Thank you for all of the valuable information. I have several children's books floating around in the archives at the Library of Congress but I haven't filed for a copyright in years.
Christine–Unless you're self-publishing, you don't have to worry about filing for copyright registration. All that will be taken care of by your publisher, unless it's a very small press.
Florence–Volunteer groups are always plagued by that one nutjob who makes things miserable for everybody, aren't they? That one sounds like a prize.
Piracy is a growing problem, that's for sure. There are even people who for a price will rewrite somebody else's book for you by changing enough sentences for it to get past the piracy-check algorithms.
But registering the copyright doesn't help you in those cases. People know how to game the copyright laws just like everything else. We pretty much have to live with it unless we can afford a lawyer. It's one of the arguments for going with a publisher instead of self-publishing. Big publishers have a legal team who can help.
On the other hand, as Neil Young says, "it's how stuff gets around these days." We have to accept a certain amount of piracy as part of the package.
Anne, a long time ago in another life, I sat and listened to a group of community organizers sharing their ideas for how to best serve the children and families of our neighborhood. One woman's reactions have stayed with me into another life, this life of … Good Golly Miss Molly … will this ever happen.
A very nice woman became paranoid that she could not share her ideas, sure that other people and groups would steal her ideas and grab the golden ring in the next found of proposals issued by the government sector and thereafter using those funds to rip off the kids, the community and the free world.
There are dozens of well known authors who have been ripped-off. The famous case involving Nora Roberts. The modern need for computer geeks to develop a soft ware that searches for sentences and phrases that have already been written by others.
I do not minimize anyone's concern, but I truly believe that if there are those out to rip off someone's work … they would not be hacking into my work. It's like what I tell my friends about identity theft. "Anyone stupid enough to steal my identify, gets what they deserve." Have a good one and thanks for yet another stellar post 🙂
Thanks Anne, for another informative post. There is so much to learn, but my feeling is, in this case, you can always show a paper trail if you need to, as long as you keep your old files (which I do). So I never worry about stuff like this. Also, while I don't condone piracy, of course, I think keeping your sights set on your next project is a good way to keep ahead of the curve. Once the book leaves you, there is little you can do (unless, like you say, you are wealthy). But one thing they can't steal is your imagination. Just keep writing! 🙂
Jan–I even keep old hard copy of my books "just in case". But I think you're wise. Piracy is real and it's annoying, but it's probably not affecting your bottom line that much. We have better things to worry about.
Great blog topic Anne! I recently joined what I thought was a FB group for posting your eBook promos but it turned out to be someone who posts downloads of any book you request (obviously pirated). I don’t understand how this guy can post 87,000 books from his personal library to a FB group. This group was called “free ebook requests” and I can’t believe the pirated authors haven’t taken it down! Have you run into much of this?
Eldonna–Thanks for stopping by! What you’re describing isn’t piracy. It’s kind of like an online library. Usually the owner downloads books when they are on a freebie run and then allows people to “borrow” them. Authors often panic when they run into this, but it’s actually a way of allowing people to sample your work for free, just like they do at the library, or when you offer a free book on freebie run days if you’re in Select. Nobody’s making any money, so it’s not piracy. You can relax. 🙂 You may be reaching new fans.
Anne,
I was in conversation with a friend who is about to publish a book and we got to talking about copyrights.
If I understand this incredibly interesting and informative blog, you wouldn’t necessarily copyright an existing work. I’m thinking of my first self-published work which has an ISBN number.
And if I were so lucky (or unlucky) to have Hollywood knocking on my door, it would behoove me to copyright a manuscript. Am I correct?
Gosh, what an incredible blog. There is so much packed in, I could feast on it for days.
Thanks.
Ken
Ken–Thanks! 🙂 You don’t have to copyright something that’s already been published and has been out there for a while. It would be easy to prove you wrote it before whoever might try to pirate it. But yes, I think if Hollywood people want to read an unpublished manuscript, it would be worthwhile to copyright it.