{"id":56,"date":"2011-05-26T22:23:06","date_gmt":"2011-05-27T05:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/martymartins.com\/martysblog\/?p=56"},"modified":"2011-05-26T22:29:33","modified_gmt":"2011-05-27T05:29:33","slug":"copyright-and-isbn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/martymartins.com\/martysblog\/?p=56","title":{"rendered":"Copyright and ISBN"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Constitution grants the government the power to grant copyrights.\u00a0 A copyright provides certain legal rights to a creative work, in our case, a book.\u00a0 \u00a0The copyright will last for seventy years after<\/em> your death.\u00a0 You can get more information from the U.S. Copyright Office website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So, what exactly does the mean?\u00a0 Does having a copyright mean no one can steal or plagiarize your work?\u00a0 No!\u00a0 The world is full of cheaters and crooks who might try that.\u00a0 A friend of mine authored a textbook that has been the bible of his industry for over 25 years and someone recently published a similar book containing obvious material lifted from his work.\u00a0 A copyright only gives you a sword to use if you decide to spend the money to protect your book (or other creative work) in court.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, you still want to have your book copyrighted.\u00a0 It might deter some plagiarists and, more importantly, it makes your book look more “real” and authentic.\u00a0 After all, you want publishers and other authors to take you seriously, right?\u00a0 But having a copyright is more than just putting the date and a “c” inside a circle at the front-piece of your book (although you want to be sure to do that, too!), you have to register <\/strong>it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you register your book electronically (you will still\u00a0mail them\u00a0a hard copy of your book), your application will be processed more quickly and\u00a0will cost $35, a $15 savings then if you use the slower, paper registration.\u00a0 The multi-page electronic process is a bit complicated and once you advance from certain pages, you can’t go back.\u00a0 The only option is to\u00a0“trash” it and start over.\u00a0\u00a0I recommend going through the eCO PowerPoint\u00a0tutorial offered\u00a0by the Library of Congress once, so at least you’ll know what the pages will look like and what you’re supposed to do.<\/p>\n

When you’ve finished the electronic registration process, don’t\u00a0forget to print out the form that needs to be sent in with <\/strong>your book to the Copyright Office.<\/p>\n

International Standard Book Number<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just like the name says, your ISBN is the number that your book can be tracked in any library or bookstore in the world.\u00a0 You need a different ISBN for every format in which your book will be published.\u00a0 For example, you’ll need one for the printed copy and\u00a0another one for the e-book (well, at least for Amazon’s Kindle; right now it is not required for Barnes & Noble’s Nook).\u00a0 If you intend to have an audio version at some point, it will need its own ISBN.<\/p>\n

If you are fortunate enough to have been picked up by a major publisher, they will provide your ISBN.\u00a0 If you are self-publishing like I did, you can either get your own ISBNs or purchase them as part of the package from the company that is compiling and printing your book.\u00a0 If you buy your own,\u00a0you get them from Bowker<\/a>, the official ISBN agency for the United States, which is\u00a0exclusively responsible for the assignment of the ISBN prefix to those publishers with a residence or office in the U.S.\u00a0 (Don’t forget, if you’re self-publishing, you are not just the author, you’re also the publisher!)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like most things,\u00a0Bowker gives\u00a0a volume discount.\u00a0 The more you buy, the lower the unit price is for each number.<\/p>\n

A Warning<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you decide to go with Createspace for your design and printing work, buy your ISBN from them.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because you hope your book will be carried in brick and mortar\u00a0bookstores at some point and Createspace won’t let bookstores order from them if the book doesn’t have an ISBN purchased through them.\u00a0 This was probably my biggest disappointment with my otherwise good experience with Createspace.\u00a0 They let me slap my own ISBN on my book and never said a word, like, “Oh, by the way, Marty, did you know bookstores won’t be able to order your book from us if you do that.”<\/p>\n

Next time, I will “talk” more about my experience with Createspace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Constitution grants the government the power to grant copyrights.\u00a0 A copyright provides certain legal rights to a creative work, in our case, a book.\u00a0 \u00a0The copyright will last for seventy years after your death.\u00a0 You can get more … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8,11,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-copyright","category-e-book","category-isbn","category-self-publishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/martymartins.com\/martysblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/martymartins.com\/martysblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/martymartins.com\/martysblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martymartins.com\/martysblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martymartins.com\/martysblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/martymartins.com\/martysblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/martymartins.com\/martysblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martymartins.com\/martysblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martymartins.com\/martysblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}