How to Protect Your Copyright
Saul Bottcher & Nas Hedron, IndieBookLauncher.com—Updated 5 July 2013
Note: This article is provided as general information and is not intended as legal advice. If you have questions about your individual legal situation, please consult a qualified lawyer in your jurisdiction.
Copyright is like the lock on your front door: you can leave it open if you like, but eventually somebody will walk away with your stuff. Being diligent about protecting your copyright is an important part of securing your future income.
This article describes some measures you can take to protect your copyright. We also touch on casual infringement and explain how to personalize your copyright messages to get your point across while remaining reader-friendly.
- Establish Authorship and Date of Publication
- Include a Copyright Notice
- Maximize the Availability of Your Book
- Make a Decision on DRM
- Have a Clear Stance on Fan-Made Derivative Works
- Treat Contracts With Care
- Treat Work-For-Hire With Care
- Secure Licenses for Included Content
Establish Authorship and Date of Publication
In the event that your copyright is ever questioned in court, you’ll need believable evidence showing your authorship and the date of publication.
Depending on the country where you publish, there are different procedures for establishing authorship and publication date. Some countries have national copyright registries, while others recommend you deposit a copy with a lawyer or mail one to yourself by registered mail and leave the envelope unopened.
See our article Copyright 101 For Indie Authors for the appropriate registration process for your country.
Include a Copyright Notice
Under the Berne Convention, you are not required to include a copyright notice to secure your copyright. However, it costs nothing to include one, and there are several benefits:
- The notice informs people that you are the copyright holder. If somebody is interested in licensing or optioning your work, this helps them contact the correct person to arrange a legal license.
- The notice informs people that you reserve your rights. In the U.S.A., this prevents an infringer from using the “innocent infringement” defense. (Preventing that defense ensures that you are able to receive the maximum damages if you are involved in a serious infringement case.) In other countries, a copyright notice may or may not improve your legal standing (check your local laws).
- The notice gives you an opportunity to communicate with your readers on a personal level. By adding a personal message alongside the normal copyright notice, you can explain why it is important for readers to compensate you for your work. This makes the idea of copyright less confrontational, which may decrease person-to-person copying or increase subsequent purchases or patronage.
A typical copyright notice looks like this (though there are several valid forms):
© 2013 Jane Doe
Here is a template for a copyright notice accompanied by a personal message:
© 2013 Jane Doe
Dear Reader: By selling copies of this book, I earn the income necessary to fund the writing of future books. If you have obtained this book for free and you find you enjoy it, please consider purchasing a copy so that I can bring you more of my work in the future.
You should be aware that no matter how touching and sincere your personal message might be, you will still experience person-to-person copying of your book. Your personal message is an inexpensive way to influence a small minority of readers, and is therefore worthwhile, but it’s not a solve-all.
Maximize the Availability of Your Book
One of the reasons that people infringe copyright by downloading free copies of your book is because your book is either unavailable or very difficult for them to purchase.
By maximizing the availability of your book, you avoid creating a difficult situation for honest fans of your work, and you remove an incentive for casual infringement.
While respecting the boundaries of any business or legal arrangements you’ve made, you should try to do the following:
- Make your book available in all common e-book formats (as a start, EPUB, Kindle, HTML, and plain text)
- Make your book avaialble in as many online stores as possible
- Make your book available in as many countries as possible
- Accept as many payment methods as possible
- Make it clear that you have done these things by posting as much information as possible about alternatives wherever your book is sold.
The first time you address these points, it will take some effort, and you may be underwhelmed by the numer of sales you receive from smaller channels. However, you will find it much easier to repeat the process for subsequent works, and even a few sales will compensate you for the time and effort required.
Make a Decision on DRM
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is an umbrella term for anti-copying systems built into some e-reading systems. When you publish your e-book, some sellers allow you to choose whether or not to activate DRM.
DRM has limited effectiveness. It will prevent casual copying by a non-technical person, but most DRM technology is easily defeated by a tech-savvy person. DRM also carries the disadvantage that it can interfere with legitimate uses of an e-book or e-reading system, making the reading experience worse for your paying customers.
The debate over DRM is heated, but the overall trend is moving away from DRM. It has never been proven to be a net positive for sales or revenue, but its ability to create frustration for legitimate customers is well-established.
Before you publish, make sure you’ve thought through the implications of activating or not activating DRM on your book.
Have a Clear Stance on Fan-Made Derivative Works
The sharing of fan fiction, tribute art, and other fan-made derivative works has become commonplace on the internet. These activities are usually non-commercial. On rare occasions, fans may attempt to profit from derivative works, often because they are not aware of the fact that this is an infringement of your copyright.
Some authors dislike fan-made works. These authors may feel that the fan-made works misrepresents their original work, that their creative control is eroded, or that fans should be concentrating on developing their own original ideas.
Other authors view fan-made work as a positive. These authors may feel that fan-made works expose the author’s original work to new audiences, that fan-made works allow fans to be a part of the author’s work, or that fan-made works strengthen the connection between the author and their audience.
Whatever your stance on fan-made works, the important thing is to make it clear up front. Your fans are lay people, not copyright experts, and many of them may not understand your rights or realize that their actions are infringements.
You might choose to include a statement such as the following:
To my readers: While I am flattered that many of you choose to create your own stories, illustrations, and other work featuring my characters and universe, I respectfully ask that you do not distribute these works over the internet. It is important to me that I maintain creative control over the ideas in my books and that there is no confusion as to the canon of my books. By all means, share these works among your close friends and family. But please refrain from posting them publicly. To develop as an artist or writer, you should focus on creating your own original work and sharing that with the world.
Or, to express the opposite stance:
To my readers: I am flattered that many of you choose to create your own stories, illustrations, and other work featuring my characters and universe. I invite you to share these works freely over the internet and with the public, but I respectfully ask that you include a reference to my name and the title of the book whenever you share them. I also ask that you do not use these works for commercial gain, either by selling them or by including them in advertising for any business. If you are an established creator who would like to collaborate on a creative project, or if you would like to license my work for commercial purposes, please contact me to discuss it personally.
Either of these notices can be combined with the personal copyright notice discussed above to create a complete and personal statement about your rights.
Treat Contracts With Care
As a rule, you should have a lawyer review any contract before you sign it. You should also scrutinize the contract yourself and do your best to understand how it operates.
License-Based Contracts
When you work with business partners, such as distributors, promoters, and service providers, it is common to sign a contract that grants them a license to work with your copyrighted material in the course of delivering their services.
When you sign a contract that grants a license to another party, look for the following:
- A clause explicitly stating that your copyright is not transferred to the other party. (The contract should only grant them a license to access the material.)
- A limited duration. The contract should contain a date or a trigger that ends the license, typically when the service is completed or concludes.
- Limits on the scope of the license. (For example, if you contract to have a distributor sell your pre-made e-book files, there is no reason to grant them a license to create derivative works.)
- Limits on the context of the license. (For example, if you grant a license for a service provider to creative derivative works so they can convert your e-book to other file formats, there is no reason for them to use that license to create any other derivate work.)
- A statement on who owns any derivative works that are created (normally you).
This is not an exhaustive list. Have your lawyer review each clause of a contract to make sure you are properly protected.
Assignment-Based Contracts
In traditional publishing, it was common to “assign” (transfer) most of your rights to the publisher for the full duration of the copyright. This allowed them to exclusively profit from your economic rights, while paying you a percentage royalty on their sales.
By assigning your rights to another party, you give up control over the details of how the book is published and promoted. For instance, most authors working with traditional publishers would have little or no say regarding cover art, retail price, or number of copies printed.
For an independent author, this type of contract is inappropriate. None of your service providers should be asking for an assignment-based contract, because it would give them power they don't need, and deprive you of your creative and business control. If a service provider proposes an assigment-based contract, you should strongly question their reasons for doing so.
As always, a lawyer can help you to protect yourself by reviewing and explaining the full impact of any contract you are considering signing.
Treat Work-For-Hire With Care
Work-for-hire is a legal arrangement in which creative works that you create while performing your duties for an employer become the property of your employer, meaning that you lose your economic rights to those works.
Work-for-hire can be a problem in a number of circumstances:
- Your creative work is closely related to your employment duties. (For example, you write a book about a technology that your employer develops or sells.)
- You spend time on your creative work while at your place of employment or while on-duty for your employer.
- Your employment contract contains a work-for-hire clause that is excessively broad.
Before publishing any work, you should have a clear understanding of your work-for-hire status, and ensure that you will have clear ownership of your copyright. Check your local laws and employment contract, and consult with a lawyer as necessary.
For maximum protection, you can ask your employer to sign a document stating that your book is not a work-for-hire, and that they waive any claim to the copyright of your book. Most employers should have no objection to such a document, assuming it has been properly prepared by a lawyer.
If your book is unrelated to your work and you have never worked on your book while on-duty or on-premises, you probably don’t need to go to these lengths, but it’s best to consult a lawyer to be sure.
Secure Licenses for Included Content
Most books incorporate the creative work of other people, such as cover art, illustrations, interior design, or quoted texts or lyrics.
To protect the copyright of your own work, you should ensure that you have secured the necessary licenses (or copyright transfers) to fully clear your use of the materials you have incorporated. (A discussion of licensing details is beyond the scope of this article. Please speak to an intellectual property lawyer to determine what is needed.)
If you fail to secure licenses, you risk a number of complications, including having to re-issue your book, being sued for infringement or royalties, or having your public reputation damaged.
Do you have a question about protecting your copyright?
E-mail us at
freehelp@indiebooklauncher.com
and we’ll help you find the answer.