How do you copyright your work?

How do you copyright your work?
After spending countless hours upon hours of sleepless nights working and laboring intensely over their craft, writers and artists alike have one question top of their list above all others: how do you copyright your work? The answer to this question may be simpler than you think.

If you live in a country where Berne Convention standards apply (USA is one of them), all you need to do is meet the following requirements:

1. Your work must be original
2. It must be in a tangible form (paper, computer file, digital art, tape recording, etc.)

Then presto-- you’ve got yourself a copyright. As the original creator of the art you own your copyright until you die-- and even 50 or 70 years after that! [1]

Why register?

Some artists and writers want additional guarantee against copyright infringement, so they register their work. It cost money but it is iron-clad proof that the work is indeed yours.

Poor man’s copyright:

If you can not afford to register but you want additional protection afforded by an official date, put everything pertaining to your work in a sealed envelope and mail it to yourself. The post mark will provide valid proof of when you wrote the work which you will be able to use in court if you ever have an infringement suit. Keep this sealed and safe— you never know when you’ll need it. At the very least it could serve as a back up just incase your computer crashes and you lose all of your files.

Beware— even though you may be the original author, you can always sell or give away your rights. This is why it is essential that you make sure you read everything BEFORE you sign. Publishers will always try to get as many rights as possible for the least amount of money. The world of selling rights and negotiation is pretty complex— which is why so many people recommend that writers get Agents or at least have a literary Lawyer review their contracts before signing— but that is a topic for another post.

You can find out more about this at Wikipedia.org