I am sometimes asked, “Do I need a copyright for my book?” Although before running Et Alia, I practiced law, this is not legal advice—it’s only intended to give a beginning glimpse and to try to help you from falling into trouble with spammy sites.

By virtue of writing your manuscript and saving it on your computer, and certainly by going through the layout and publishing processes, you have established a copyright in your work. So, you can feel free to write your first and last name and the current year, and don the copyright symbol on the copyright page to declare it yours. (Note, to make the copyright symbol in Word, use an open paren, the letter c, and a closed paren. When you space it should create the symbol (c)).

This act alone lends your manuscript or book many protections.

However, taking the extra step to register your copyright is a smart idea. It lends extra protections and allows recovery for attorney’s fees and statutory damages in the case of infringement (versus just recovery of actual damages if it is not registered). So often, if attorney’s fees can’t be recovered, it becomes “just not worth it,” to pursue a case even though technically you are totally right and whomever has pirated your intellectual property is totally wrong.

It’s only about $50 to register and it makes good business sense at that price to get all the protections you can for your work.

There are a LOT of spammy businesses out there trying to get you to pay them to do it for you, but you can always look at uspto.gov and copyright.gov for trustworthy information.

Start here to learn copyright basics and what extra protections registration allows: https://www.uspto.gov/ip-policy/copyright-policy/copyright-basics
Then you can look here to learn how to register: https://www.copyright.gov/