When to copyright?

Tim Murray

Through space, time and dimension
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I made the mistake of copywriting my first book in a poorly written manuscript form. The quality of the work has improved over the last few years. It has no cover art and is poorly represented across the board. Not a good impression for those on a general search. Not much I can do about it now.

When is the best time to pursue a copyright to best represent your work? Can you update what the Library of Congress has on record?
 
I'm not sure but here is an interesting document about legalities that may or may not help clear this up.

http://www.rbs2.com/cmusic2.pdf

I have both my books that published through Xlibris copyrighted and even have certificates I can hang somewhere. But the importance of that might only come into effect if someone blatantly plagiarize and I seek to pursue it. In the US this gives me a document to wave around when I do; but not much help in legal representation. I still have to foot the bill and go through the motions.

Looking at the document:
It calls out the ISBN of the copy they have which is the Hardcover copy in this instance- they usually require the highest quality copy.
It also contains a line that states the date of first publication.


No clue yet whether they have the first or second published edition of the second book; which did undergo one change after publication.

I would guess that if your changes are grammar punctuation and spelling that that would not necessitate sending a new edition ; but substantial editing changes might warrant, though it's unclear that you would want to replace the other because it might be that the new copyright covers only the changes made. I suppose though you could alter the name and use a new ISBN and submit it as a separate work. Though I have no idea if they might do some sort of search that would yield evidence that you plagiarized your own work. My limited understanding is that such a search might only take place if someone does file a suit and that might be to establish which copyright came first.
 
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I forgot on Inish and only did it this week....

Anyhow - legally you don't have to do anything to gain copyright - it is there automatically. I'd have thought on publishing was ideal.
 
Just to be clear, as Jo says, copyright is inherent -- as soon as you write something, it is copyrighted; you don't have to do a thing.

Disputes over out and out copyright theft would usually surround who wrote what first. Accordingly it's sensible to have a clear trail of your work -- if you can prove your first draft was written in 2010 you would (well, should...) still win an action if someone stole that draft and published it in 2011 even if you didn't publish your final version until 2012.

In English law there's no need to register anything anywhere. However, from the little I've gleaned of US law, I think the formal registration of copyright is required if you want to seek damages (ie financial compensation) from the copyright thief. Since that means taking legal action to try to get the money, I'm not sure that in reality it's a step many people would take.

And never forget there's no copyright in ideas, only in the execution. There's nothing to stop someone taking the basic plot of your novel, even some of the very original SF ideas, and building his novel upon them. Copyright is there to prevent someone lifting whole passages of prose from your work and making only minimal changes. Though even then, it goes on, see this thread.
 
However, from the little I've gleaned of US law, I think the formal registration of copyright is required if you want to seek damages (ie financial compensation) from the copyright thief.

I believe you can also claim statutory damages if you register US copyright within a certain time (six months?) after publishing, rather than having to prove a loss to claim damages. But, yes, few people would have the money to justify suing them, unless they'd stolen someone's book and it became a bestseller.
 

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