the Intellectual Property Rights Office has estimated that thousands of writers every year are unwittingly handing their work over to con-men posing as literary agents, book publishers, and competition organizers. Amazingly, the vast majority appear to be doing so without taking out any copyright protection for their work, leaving the material in which they have invested so much of their time and effort at the mercy of crooks and fraudsters.
That writers are willing to treat their work so flippantly will be surprising to many. A successful book can be worth millions or even tens of millions of dollars to its author – and even short stories sometimes form the basis of movies that can gross millions at the box office.
For an author, creating a good piece of writing can be like filling out a winning lottery ticket, but while most people would expect to clutch such a ticket tightly to their chest, many writers seem happy to share their work with as many agents, publishers, and competitions as they can find addresses for. This clearly isn't because they doubt the value of their work – to go to the lengths of completing it and submitting it for publication they must believe it is capable of being a success and making money – but whereas no inventor would share the plans for their invention without first taking out a patent, and no company would invest money promoting a brand without first taking out trade mark protection, many writers seem content to risk losing their work to a con-artist, rather than take the simple step of registering it for copyright protection.
This is particularly surprising following the launch in 2006 of the Copyright Registration Service website, which makes the whole process of registering works for copyright protection far quicker and easier than using paper forms and postage. Creative works can be uploaded online and registration can be complete within minutes (writers who would like to register their work should click here).
The reason that many writers fail to protect their work properly is perhaps because they assume that in order to become a literary agent or run a publishing business a person must obtain some kind of licence or register with some kind of official body. This isn't the case, however. Anyone can call themselves a literary agent, set up a publishing business, or run a writing competition, regardless of their qualifications or their history. They could have no experience whatsoever of writing or publishing, and could even have a criminal record.
The internet is full of supposed agencies and publishers, who prey upon vulnerable writers and often advertise extensively on Google and other search engines. Their primary motivation is usually to extort money from writers, rather than steal their work, but sending a potentially valuable work of literature to unscrupulous characters without even protecting its copyright can hardly be advisable. If your work has the potential to be the next Harry Potter and one of these crooks recognizes that, then it seems unlikely that they would pass on the opportunity to claim it as their own.
What's worse is that, if one of these con-artists did take your work and publish it under their name, there's probably very little you could do about it if you hadn't registered your work before sending it to them. The work would be assumed to be theirs, unless you could prove otherwise – and doing so would be very difficult. Dates on computer files can easily be forged (no particular computer knowledge is required, you simply need to manually alter the time and date on your computer), so these carry no weight; and any friends or family you had shown the work to would not be judged to be impartial in court (particularly if you stood to benefit financially from the case – a benefit which they might share in). The only reliable way to prove your case would be the independent verification offered by copyright registration – and if you hadn't taken out copyright protection before sending the work, you could find yourself in serious difficulties.
It is therefore advisable for all writers to take out copyright protection for their work as soon as it is finished, and on all accounts before sending it or showing it to anyone. The chances of a writer's work actually being stolen are very slim – but the better the work is, the more likely it is to happen. And if it does happen, the losses would dwarf the cost of registration.
Copyright protection is therefore like any sensible insurance policy against unlikely but devastating events: for a minimal cost of less that US$12 a year (less than GBP£7 a year) writers can gain protection for their work and peace of mind for themselves, knowing that if their work does gross millions of dollars, that money will be in the pockets of its rightful owner, not an opportunistic con-artist.
Ultimately, if a writer believes their work has value and could make money, they should take the same precautions that anyone with an invention or a valuable logo would, and protect it. And the good news for writers? The registration fees for protecting copyright are only a fraction of what it costs to register patents or trade marks.
If you would like to register a work, click here.
If you have further unanswered questions about registering work for copyright protection, see the FAQ section.
