Can your novel be stolen?

[akitsukino]

Obviously the answer is yes, but I wanted to ask about more than that.

Something cool I'd like to do when the first draft of my novel is done is make a printed version. Not a technically 'published' version, just a paper and ink version of my manuscript. I also thought that it might be nice to give a copy out to other people just for sentimental reasons. But that made me a little worried. It's not like I don't trust these people, but you never know who else's hands it could end up end up in.

I keep hearing mixed messages on this . Some say post nothing until you get a copyright some say you don't have anything to really worry about. Thoughts?

[nostalgicroxas]

How to upload and purchase copyright

A small guide I made for myself that walks you through the basic of US purchasing of copyright. It does cost money.

When you print your version, make sure you make a copyright page and include the date you filed such as: Copyright (C) 2019 July. Include your legal name in this line.
Then include the company that printed the book. I include lulu.com since that's who I use.
You can flip open books you own to take a look at their copyright pages to see what is an example to use.

You can also copyright things that are in progress, but I am less familiar with that.
In the case of court you can also cite copyright claims as your own so long as they're on a website that takes a screenshot of copyright time - such as DeviantArt all have copyright dates for when they're uploaded. I'm not sure if these would hold up as strongly in court, but you would be able to claim that your material was released before the stolen version was. To really cover your butt though in the case of paranoia, get it properly filed and documented.

[Zaboem]

The answer to both questions is yes.

Yes, you may get your manuscript copyrighted. In current U.S. law, a copyright occurs automatically at the moment of publishing (and Tapas is a publusher), but you may manually submit a document (or a song on CD) to the U.S. Copyright Office with an application. It costs about 30 bucks the last time I looked into it. The purpose of filing would be to make you feel better about it and to a much lesser extent legal documentation. 30 bucks and half an hour of work might be worth it to you for that peace of mind.

Yes, it is not a big deal. As an editor, I have worked with writers who are paranoid about a mysterious someone stealing their story. They won't send a copy to a reviewer because it might get plagiarized. They won't send it to a publisher or a printing company company. They won't send a copy to the copyright office because they don't want it in the public records. They don't want me to read it without offering some proof that I will not do something nefarious -- and they don't know what such proof would look like. When I encounter these writers, I walk away. Let them keep their manuscripts in a locked drawer where no one will ever see it, and everyone will be happier that way.

Meanwhile my wife has written six books, and we've only gotten five people in the world to read them. She would be tickled pink of someone would try to plagerize a story of hers.

When I wrote my Alien Fiction books, I simply released them with a Creative Commons license. Yeah, I'm giving them away. There's still nobody interested in copying my story even with my permission to do it.

I'm not a copyright lawyer, but I play one on tv.meme

[nostalgicroxas]

They don't want me to read it without offering some proof that I will not do something nefarious

To that end, there are lots of contract templates you can find online to draw up for both parties. Artists who work with companies in China and such making metal charms, acrylic charms and the like, are usually required to sign some basic contract that says "I will not take this and attempt to make profit off of it without the written consent of the owner, who this document outlines." It's more legal jargon than that, of course, but I know from the Artist International Network that pretty much having one of the companies that do this sort of work, it's entirely commonplace and you should not be worried to draw one up and have a potential editor or the like sign it, nor should you be offended to be requested to sign one.

Just another tidbit of advice if you're looking for editors or the like, @akitsukino

[Croik]

There's a big to-do in the romance genre right now over a plagiarist who was cobbling together people's romance novels and selling them on Amazon. It definitely happens. But it's really not something most of us needs to worry about, for two reasons:

1) Plagiarists are looking for a quick buck. If someone steals a printed book, they have to retype the entire thing before they can do anything with it. Much easier to steal a digital book.

2) Plagiarists today have no trouble stealing from accomplished professionals (see the recent scandal) so the odds of a big name pro thief stealing a manuscript from an unpublished author and making something big out of it are crazy small. Why would they put that effort on an unproven book when there are plenty of already well-selling books they can steal?

If it's a small time thief who just happens to get your book, thinks it's good, and decides to try to publish it, it's going to take an extreme effort on their part to get noticed by querying/self publishing and marketing. It's much more likely they'd just toss it on Kindle Unlimited and no one would ever know it was there.

The moment you post or print your book, you're protected by copyright whether or not you pay to register. And if you put the little © on your book, a potential thief isn't going to know whether you've paid or not and is not a deterrent. The benefit to registering is that it proves the date you created your work, which can then be used in court if you eventually need to sue a thief. But if you've been posting on Tapas all this time, every chapter already has a date stamp, so it might not be necessary.