As an author, you'll be asking do I need to copyright my self-published book? Well, Copyright is a form of protection for your books. Find out why it is important for self-published books.
The first question you are going to be wondering is whether someone is stealing from you. Perhaps you are getting ready to publish a book. You're worried that maybe somebody else is going to take your hard-earned efforts of creating the book.
They will either start making money or maybe even distributing it for free. It is a real scenario that does happen, not necessarily all the time but it definitely happens. Check out my free Self-Publishing Secrets Checklist which will help you get started with your self-publishing journey.
How would you stop people from stealing the book that you have with all the work that you've done? This is a common thing, books of many authors are stolen from where the books are.
Check out this related article: How To Write A Self Publishing Copyright Page?
Either taken directly out of the e-version or scanned and posted as PDFs or Kindle books out on the internet on sharing sites of BitTorrent or other sites.
So then, the question was, how exactly do you protect yourself? This is also one of the big challenges. Though the answer is no, you don't need to do anything specific to copyright your books.
What You Should Do
The moment you publish the book and put it on the market onto Amazon, at that point it is already copyright protected. But that doesn't mean that you can relax because nothing is going to happen to you. Or you shouldn't have the copyright page.
In fact, you should use the copyright symbol and the standard text around it. The text should be saying, this work cannot be copied except short versions without approval from the author and such.
You can find that in almost any book and you should include it in your books. So that it is fully clear to everyone that you are declaring your books are copyright protected.
If you do it with Amazon, they are going to assign an ISBN officially on the document. That way it is easier for you to inform Amazon and other publishers when somebody is violating your copyright. They have specific channels for this and they will take down that other author for using copyrighted material.
Check out this related article: What Are The Legal Steps To Publish A Book About Music It Would Include My Own Transcriptions Of Copyrighted Songs
On a side note, if you are paying other people to do the writing for you, do a scan of the books themselves. It is for you to make sure that all of the writing is not stolen from someone else. Before you release it onto the market so that there will be no problem in the future.
What You Get By Having A Copyright
If you have properly done your book, it will also involve lead generation. You will be asking people to subscribe to your newsletter or giving them something for free. Those free postings can lead to getting more traffic and more people to read your book.
Usually, the types of people who would be going and trying to find your books for free are not going to buy your books anyways. So you are not losing much money off of them. The biggest thing is that this is not something to worry about. Because it is not going to change the amount of money you are making.
Check out this related article: How Much Do Self Publishing Authors Make?
The second you publish the book and add the copyright page, you are making it look more professional. Making it clear to anybody who wants to steal from you that your works are protected.
So what about you, what have you found? Have you found that your books have ever been taken or stolen by somebody else or maybe you are worried about losing money as a result of your books being given out for free?