How to copyright a book and when should I start the copyright process?
As I’ve written before, as soon as you write something original like a book or even a blog post, you automatically own the copyright to it and it doesn’t need to be registered anywhere. Thanks to the Berne Convention on copyright, this rule protects you in 163 countries including the US, Europe and many more.
This is fine in theory, but if you ever got into a dispute the key factor would be who could prove they were the first person to write and therfore copyright a book.
It would be a “brave” author who would send out their manuscripts to publishers without first having independent proof they were the original author. I would also suggest to any aspiring authors that they begin the process of registering the copyright to a book as early as possible in the writing process. By having independent proof you were the writer of each stage in the books development, you are able to show what they call the “process of a work in progress”, which no-one who has ripped you off will be able to show.
As mentioned before on this blog, there is an online service which can help you to copyright a book (not an affiliate link). ProveMyCopyright.com is a membership service which gives you 5Gb of space on their servers so that you can upload lots of drafts of your book, or several books. Each time you make something new, you simply upload it and they “digitally fingerprint” and timestamp it to show that you were in control of the work at that point in time and as such own the copyright thanks to the Berne Convention…
As an extra added FREE bonus, they also “back up” all your files on their secure server, so that incase disaster ever struck your home computer you would instantly be able to access you important files without any loss. They backup your files for an amazing 10 years if you are a member.
Intellectual Protection 