All writers should understand the fundamentals of copyright law. It’s the only way to protect what you write before you sign all your rights away. It is, in all honesty, a straightforward matter to copyright anything you write, be it a poem, a short story, essay or a full-on novel or non-fiction book. It doesn’t matter whether your work is on paper or on the internet, so long as it is in a physical format that other people can read, it has automatic copyright protection. These words you read now – they are copyrighted and they have been since the minute they were saved and/or printed. For creative writers everywhere, copyright protection is one of the biggest bonuses they have and it’s a built-in one.

What is Copyright?

Copyright is protection for any form of original and creative work, including musical, literary, artistic, and many others, so long as that work is fixed in a form of expression that is tangible. All this means is that, regardless of what you have written or created, it is intellectual property and it will be copyright protected as long as it can be communicated or viewed in a fixed format.

Copyright protection is intended for the protection of, among other things, any unpublished or published literary work and gives the author the legal and exclusive right to copy the work and to distribute it. Nobody else, including an editor or a literary agent, has the right to copy it, distribute it, sell it or even display it without your express permission.

What Do I Need to Do?

Nothing. There are those that believe, if they mail a copy of the manuscript they write to themselves, it is protection against theft; that it protects them against anyone stealing their writing. There is a common misconception that if you have an unopened envelope that has a canceled postmark on it, it will provide legal status in a courtroom – sorry, but this is not the case.

Anybody who produces any creative original work can claim copyright but – this is something that doesn’t seem too clear too many writers – you don’t need to do anything to get your work copyright protected. As soon as your words are on paper or have been saved on your computer, i.e. in a tangible form, they are protected automatically and become your property. Anything you write now becomes your property for life and for at least 70 years after.

So why do you need to copyright your work formally when it isn’t necessary? If you file for copyright protection, should you be sued with regards to your work and win the case, you would then be entitled to any legal fees. If you are not concerned about lawsuits, then there is no need to do anything.

If you do want to register your work with the Copyright Office, it’s easy enough to do. You will have to fill out a form (depending on what work you are registering) and you will have to pay a fee and provide a copy of the work. It may well be overkill though.