Copyright Your Book

A Brief History Of Copyright

I've being doing a trawl about copyrighting a book. Anyone who's not  newbie like me is probably well up to speed but I'm writing about it for my own sake.

Copilot was my first port of call. It seems that in 1888 The Bern Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works was signed up to by ten European countries. Since then 181 countries are signed up.

All books are automatically covered without need for registration from the moment the work is "fixed". That means it exists in a physical medium, writing, recorded audio, paint etc.

So that's the good news.

In a book we add a page to claim the copyright, but in theory it's not required, the copyright is already applied as soon as it was written down.

Practical Implementation in the 21st Century

In the USA there is an official body where you can claim your copyright, it has a fee of $65 at the time of writing. In these litigous times if you have any copyright problems and it goes to court, your rights to restitution are different depending whether you registered your copyright claim officially or not. If you didn't register your claim then you aren't allowed to claim costs when you win your claim. See their documentation for full details.

There is no official place to register your claim to copyright in the UK, so it's left to third parties (see below). The Government guidance about copyright hinges on the fact that registration is automatic. So it relies on the ability to prove dates for manuscripts etc.

I found an interesting take on this issue by Sean Dollwet on Youtube.

In these times of digital publishing, companies like KDP sometimes require proof that you own copyright to the book you want to offer through their services. 

Shaun gives details for a website called Protect My Work. It's an instant service that allows you to upload your manuscript and get a certificate of copyright that is apparently acceptable to KDP et al. It's not free though.

I ran the situation in the UK through Copilot with the prompt: UK places to register copyright.

It came back with two options:

• The UK Copyright Service will allow you to upload a manuscript and link it to details. They issue a certificate, but the service is not free.
• Copyright Registration Service allows similar things to the UK Copyright Service. They also issue a certificate but the service is not free, but costs are not clear.

On the Copyright Registration Service website there are links to sites for countries other than the UK.

Please Note: I have provided links to the sites that I found but these are not endorsements, the only information I have at present is their existence. 

Conclusion

When the world plays fair then there is no problem.

When the world is throwing a bit of a strop, there could be problems that needed to be sorted a while ago.

It seems that the USA, has actually got something official sorted out that pre-empts a lot of potential stupidity. Needs must when the lawyers are brought to the table.

Here in the UK, the government relies on everyone being "good chaps", and the world not being in a strop. The other options seem effective but not official.

It looks like this is my next minefield to traverse.