Inexpensive and free ways to protect your writing from being plagiarized.

Fortunately in the United States copyright is a simple thing. When we write something and say it is ours, according to copyright law, what we write is automatically copyrighted and protected. However, as nice as this thought is, it’s not something to be relied on in and of itself. There are people out there who will steal your hard work in a heartbeat and claim it for themselves. If you don’t do what you can to protect your original work, then you leave yourself open to those unsavory characters whom I refer to as information thieves.

Here are seven free ways you can protect what you’ve written:

*Keep several copies on disk as well as your hard drive, and hide some copies, make sure you are the only one who knows where they are, and that they are dated. This way if somehow your working copy disappears, and miraculously appears under someone else’s name you have proof that it is indeed “your copy, and your original writing.”

*Send each chapter as you complete it to a trusted friend who then saves it to more than one disk and keeps them safe for you. (Make sure this is someone you’d trust with your child or your dog)

*Once you’ve completed your final version print out a copy and mail it to yourself, then don’t open the envelope, just keep it put away. If you don’t want to waste ink, and paper you can save it to disk and mail the disk to yourself. The key point here is don’t open the envelope when you receive it. This is your proof you wrote the book, novella whatever.

*Under no circumstances, unless you totally and completely trust the person (ie with your child or dog) should you give out copies of your book or copies of chapters of your book in Microsoft Word, or Word Perfect. To do so opens up the temptation for a person to make some changes and then call your work theirs.

*Whether or not you are going the traditional publishing route (You might want someone to read it before it comes out) or POD, e-book whatever, you should create a copyright page for your book. You can look at a copyright page in any book and modify it to fit your needs. Then add it to the front of your book, novella or whatever before you turn your document into a PDF.

*Download a copy of a PDF conversion software. There are several free versions available. I use pdf995, you can download it for free at www.pdf995.com You can then convert your writing into PDF format and thus prevent any changes by anyone else.

*One final note is to make sure if you post any of your writing on your website that you put a copyright note at the bottom of each page. This way there is no way for someone to say “but it wasn’t copyrighted.” While it’s true that the same as if you write something and say it’s yours, legally it’s yours, this is also true of the internet. However, why take chances? The internet is international (and your writing may not be automatically protected under copyright laws in other countries), I think it’s better to be safe than sorry later on. Also many writers post exerpts of their writing to writer’s groups, boards etc. Make sure you put a copyright notice at the bottom of the exerpt, you don’t know who might be surfing the boards, or signed up for your writer’s group. Again, why take chances?

These are only a few ideas to protect your writing and they are of course free. You can also opt to pay the fee to protect what you write through the US Copyright office, http://www.copyright.gov/ for $30 which I highly recommend.

However, if like me you are struggling writer trying to make ends meet and begin your career, the above tips will work just fine until you can afford the fee. It’s also important to remember that whether you actually pay the fee to copyright through the US Copyright office or not, your writing is protected by copyright law. So…that being said, Happy Writing, and please do everything you can to protect your work! You’ll be glad you did.