Should I copyright my work?
A good friend of mine said that if I am writing a book, i should get it copyrighted before i post it anywhere. I am not finished, it is an ongoing work, and i post it because i like to hear back from people on how i am doing. But at the same time, i would hate it if someone were to copy my work. What should I do??????
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A writer's work is
A writer's work is copyrighted automatically as soon as he puts it on paper. I would be cautious nonetheless about posting a work in its entirety in a public forum. If someone steals it, you would still have to first find out about it, then sue them, even though you hold the copyright.
- Pat Nelson Childs
"bringing strong gay
characters to Sci-Fi & Fantasy"
http://www.patnelsonchilds.com
http://www.samersguild.com
Um...
I'm not sure Patrick's right... My father is a writer, and so... Um, things aren't automatically copyrighted. I remember when he got his copyright. I think you copyright it... Without an offical copyright, you could easily lose the lawsuit.
~haNa
Well you can believe me or
Well you can believe me or not, but I know for a fact that I'm right.
Just to back me up, here's a quote from legalzoom.com. It's one of many sources that will tell you the same thing:
"Copyright protection exists from the time the work is created in fixed form and immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work. Only the author or those deriving their rights through the author can rightfully claim copyright. "
- Pat Nelson Childs
"bringing strong gay
characters to Sci-Fi & Fantasy"
http://www.patnelsonchilds.com
http://www.samersguild.com
Heh...
I'm even more old school. I think if you're writing a book, don't put it online.
I was a big fan of Anonymous Lawyer, a blog that was a fun read. At some piont, unbeknownst to me, it was revealed that it was a fake blog and the guy was turning the blog into a book. I kept reading it as though it was probably not entirely true, but still amusing.
When I figured it all out, and the book was released, it just seemed like edited versions of something I read already, so it was hard for it to hold my attention.
I think it is much harder to keep it all to yourself. I mean, no one but me has ever or will ever read the currently 740-page document on my hard drive until I think it cannot be humanly improved by me.
My other issue is that when you start telling people a story, they start guessing where it might go, almost always incorrectly, but I think that sort of premature feedback took the wind out of my sails a bit. It wasn't feedback I really wanted. At that point, the work wasn't really ready for theoutside world yet, so I felt it hadn't had its appropriate gestation period.
So, I think posting online as you go has short term gain (look, I'm writing!), but long term it didn't seem like I would get any benefit from it (You want me to pay for a book of something I already online for free?).
As for copyright, I was always far more concerned that I was writing something worth stealing than caring if that would happen. Plus, I have DVDs from several years ago with me reading it at events, etc., so I figured that would cover it on the odd chance anything happened.
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"Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there." -- Josh Billings.
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I also don't like posting my
I also don't like posting my work in progress for the general public to read, and for those same reasons. I have my critiquer who tells me what I'm doing wrong in terms of flow and other technical things, but she knows better than to try and guess at where the plot is going or, even worse, trying to suggest things to me before I've finished a full draft.
- Pat Nelson Childs
"bringing strong gay
characters to Sci-Fi & Fantasy"
http://www.patnelsonchilds.com
http://www.samersguild.com
There's also the copyleft direction
Sadly that's not plausible for many people yet... But I fully believe that Creative Commons licensed works have more cultural impact than copyrighted works.
If you do manage to find a publisher who is hip to it, licensing and distributing your book online via a CC license could lead to more people reading your novel, especially if it gets a mention on Boing Boing or the like.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow licenses most of his novels as CC.
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Adrian
Putting the HEAD back into Hedonism
It's cute how you believe in things. - Slither
Wow, that's alot to think
Wow, that's alot to think about. Didn't consider all the ins and outs of what i was doing. Still, i love to share my work, so would it be smart to say that if you wish to continue reading the story, you can contact me? Or would taht also be foolish?
"What is the purpose of life? It is to live it."
Well alot of it depends on
Well alot of it depends on how much control you want to keep of your own work. As I said, just the fact that you've written it down means you already have all rights to the work, so a copyright is a waste of time and money. However, if you're more interested in just distributing your work and not making money from it, you can go with a more socialistic approach like the CC license or even open source. That essentially allows you to share with others the right to share and distribute your work so long as they credit you. This will mean more people out there will probably see your work, but you won't necessarily make any money from it. Since I am a filthy capitalist, I intend to keep all rights to my work and decide for myself if I want to share it with someone for free.
As to your question, Patch, it really depends on you. Sharing your work online doesn't mean you have given up any rights to it. However since you can't copyright ideas, someone could lift ideas from your work and write stories of their own using them, and there's nothing you could do about it. Some people don't care about that. For some people, sharing work in progress with a large audience is all a part of the creative process for them. If you are such a person, then you'll probably opt to take the calculated risk that someone will unlawfully use your work. The more people you share with, the greater the chances that will happen. If you're serious about writing and perhaps someday publishing what you've written though, I would seriously advise you to be selective about those with whom you share your work. When Adrian fixes the journals so that you can share content selectively, you'll be able to do that. Until that happens, I'd just post excerpts for people to read.
- Pat Nelson Childs
"bringing strong gay
characters to Sci-Fi & Fantasy"
http://www.patnelsonchilds.com
http://www.samersguild.com
Thank you all for your
Thank you all for your comments, I will keep writing but I won't post until the journal system is updated.
"What is the purpose of life? It is to live it."