Step-by-step Copyright Registration Process

Great pictures for seeing beforehand on what you need to do and what you're about to get into

This may be a stupid question, but why are you paying $35 and trudging through a long process to register with the US copyright office? It's jaw-droppingly unlikely that you'll ever need it. Most people don't bother.

Parametric said:

This may be a stupid question, but why are you paying $35 and trudging through a long process to register with the US copyright office? It's jaw-droppingly unlikely that you'll ever need it. Most people don't bother.

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Since this is the self-publishing forum, I think it's reasonable to expect that people self-publishing need to know how to register their copyrights. Someone going for commercial publication doesn't need to register, but someone self-publishing does.

I've seen the form, though, and am not sure why someone following the self-publishing route would need instructions to fill it out. If one plans to do all the other complex work associated with self-publishing, surely they should be capable of filling out a fairly straightforward form. Is this thread really designed to drive traffic to a blog?

Parametric said:

This may be a stupid question, but why are you paying $35 and trudging through a long process to register with the US copyright office? It's jaw-droppingly unlikely that you'll ever need it. Most people don't bother.

Click to expand...

Not sure if it's different in the UK, Parametric - but in the US, while just writing something *does* give you copyright protection, actually registering it gives you substantially more rights in a lawsuit. The root differences are that you can sue for statutory monies that are often much higher than the *actual* damages (which are all you can sue for without registration), and you can recover legal fees as well.

I did not feel it was necessary to register the copyright of my book, but I did register it with the Library of Congress and obtained a control number. This was free (you have to register as the publisher, not the author), but I was required to send them 2 copies of the book.
http://pcn.loc.gov/pcn003.html