Copyright

Copyright

I’d always been told that the “poor man’s copyright” worked. That you could carefully wrap up, stamp up, and mail a hardcopy of your work to yourself. Then, in the midst of a courtroom struggle you could present this bomb right on the stand. “Let the record reflect…” RIIPPPP “that the package dated last year contains a copy of the word in question, posted by the author, sent to the author!”

Nice fantasy, anyway.

A couple of weeks ago, the newspaper (remember those, kiddies? Better google it) had a piece about copyright and how the poor man copyright didn’t mean squat. And since I’m shipping Indigo about and getting ready to self-publish Early ReTyrement, I figured I’d better get a real, honest-to-goodness copyright. Its not like the publishing industry has every screwed me, right?

It does take a bit of research – I pulled down the copyright office’s PowerPoint presentation and studied it. Tonight I went in and had a go. Didn’t know how far I’d get (there are about a dozen steps) but with the instructions, it really went pretty smooth. Got both titles copyrighted, $35 bucks apiece.

So that’s done.

On to self-publishing.