Shelley Hitz explains that U.S. authors own copyright automatically when they write, but can register with the Copyright Office for extra legal protection. Registration costs about $45, takes roughly nine months to process, and should happen after your final draft is complete.
Questions this episode answers
As soon as you write your book (upon fixation).
As soon as your final draft is finished (after editing and adding front/back matter).
At the U.S. Copyright Office website: copyright.gov.
About $45 (at the time of the recording).
About nine months (she notes it may be six to thirteen months).
Chapters
How do you copyright a book? Hi, my name is Shelly Hitz and I help aspiring authors self publish their books in multiple formats using my publishing map and step by step system. So you can write words that outlive you and self publish books that fulfill your calling. So I received this question, at what point do I copyright my book and how do I go about it? This is a really common question and from first of all, I just want to say that as soon as you start writing your book, you own the copyright. And so you technically don't have to actually do anything legally, you own the copyright if you live in the United States. Now I'm not a lawyer and I'm not giving legal advice. You need to seek your own legal advice. And if you're in a country outside of the United States, then you'll need to see what the copyright laws are in your country. But you legally own the copyright as soon as you write your book. So that is a relief to know. But you can take this extra step to register your copyright. So when do you want to register the copyright? Well, you want to register it as soon as your final draft is finished. So we lead you through a kingdom writer's path. The first step is your first first draft. Getting that ugly, messy first draft out of your head and onto paper. The second step is your final draft and this is where you self edited it. You get professional editing, you add all of your references, your front matter, your back matter. We walk you through all of these steps inside ChristianBookAcademy.com but once you have that final draft, so you've done all the editing, everything's ready, I mean this is the way the book is going to look once it's formatted. Then you submit it to the copyright office. It's really simple to do. You go to copyright.gov and right now it's about a $45 fee for a book. Now the thing is, you don't have to wait to get the copyright back in order to publish your book. You can go ahead and publish your book, you already have the copyright and then it takes typically will take about nine months to get that process completed. It may be six, maybe 13 months. But that way you're not just on hold waiting to publish your book because you're waiting for your copyright, because like I said, you already own the copyright, you are just now registering it. And so you don't have to wait to get that official copyright notice to publish your book, but you do need to wait until you, you have that final draft to submit it to the copyright office and you can just go to copyright.gov and that's where you do it. And I hope that this has helped you. I think there's just a lot of misconceptions and a lot of things around copyright, and it can be very easy. And so I hope this has helped you. And we would love to walk beside you as you write, self publish and market your books. And so we'd love to invite you to join us@christianbookacademy.com.