On Writing : Curious question... by Lauren Hackney

Register a copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office (copyright.gov). Although not a legal requirement, it will protect you against any attempt to get to the underlying rights you acquire naturally through creating the written expression of your idea. Copyright registration is the definitive proof courts will accept that you own the underlying rights to the written expression of your idea. If you're looking for a publishing deal only, get an agent (a literary agent). They will seek out a publishing deal on your behalf. The publishing payout will be an advance in expectation of sales. Royalties will be earned once the publisher's advance is recouped. Self-publish if your intention is an eventual adaptation. Seek a film agent/adaptation agent for that. NEVER pay a publisher for anything., and never initiate communication with a publisher. Use your agent.In all likelihood, a publishing deal will force you to relinquish the rights. That's the key difference. Hybrid Publishing/Vanity Press are the entities out to take away your self-published rights. They cannot do this without your written consent if you approach them with a registered copyright in place, and if you do approach them at that point, they will likely refuse to help you get published. You will be devoured alive if you believe you can get an adaptation without a film agent or obtain a publishing deal without a literary agent. Don't collaborate with anyone without a registered copyright in place, including reputable agents.

Fantastic Jeff Gregory Make sure you put info like this in lounge posts so others can see it too. When you make a post it will go out to anyone who clicks on that lounge but not everyone see's the responses to this post unless they actively look for it. You have lots of valuable information - I'm sure the whole community would like to hear what you say! Thank you so much for always going into such detail with your responses. Glad to have you in this lounge!

I've had around 70 books published, from major publishers including Simon & Schuster (the one that's published more of my books than anyone else), HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Macmillan--together, the monsters of book publishing. I've also published with medium-sized and small presses, including DarkFuse (now defunct), WordFire Press, Wolfpack Publishing, and several others. And I've published a handful myself. In the comics world, I've been published by DC Comics, IDW Publishing, Image Comics, among others, and have also held staff jobs at some. At a couple of those I was responsible to all IP duties (working directly with an IP lawyer), including filing for copyrights and trademarks. I've also, for what it's worth, worked at, managed, and owned bookstores, so I've been around the book biz from every angle.

The advantage of traditional publishing--with the major houses, anyway--is that you get paid, up front. As Jeff G said, it's an advance against royalties, which are sales that start being counted AFTER you've earned back the advance. In other words, if you get a $10K advance against 5% royalties, until the publisher has banked $10K in sales (after deducting for some of their expenses), you'll start getting 5% of any future sales. Less whatever's held back when returns start coming in, because the major publishers sell to bookstores on a returnable basis, so when those stores start sending back unsold copies, your royalties can shift from a positive number to a negative one, depending on how many come back.

Medium-sized and smaller presses pay smaller (sometimes much smaller, sometimes nonexistent advances). The advantage there is that you can start earning royalties that much sooner. The disadvantage is that you didn't get that nice big payout from a major press, so you're waiting for dime one. And those houses don't have the distribution muscle that the majors do, so your book will be listed on Amazon, Bookshop.org, B&N, and other online bookselling sites, but maybe won't appear in brick and mortar bookstores unless you show up in person and persuade the book buyer that your book is worth carrying. Then you'll likely have to place it on a consignment basis, so you still don't get paid until after the books sell.

To break into the big houses, you pretty much need an agent (although some imprints at those houses sometimes have open periods during which you can submit without an agent). Medium-to-small presses usually don't have that requirement. The agent, of course, takes 15% of everything the book makes, but because the majors are generally so much more lucrative, that's often a fair tradeoff.

Contrary to what Jeff G said, I have never copyrighted anything until after it's published, and that's still the standard. The copyright office will now copyright unpublished materials. But you don't know, until you have a publishing deal or a plan to self-publish, whether your book will ever be published. You also don't know what editorial changes might be requested, which can be substantial (and very, very helpful, especially to new writers). So by copyrighting before submission, you might be spending time and money to copyright something that will never be published or will be substantially different from what is published--leaving the published work unprotected unless you copyright it again. When you sell to the majors, they will, in most cases, copyright the work for you, in your name and at their expense. Reputable agents and major publishers have no interests in stealing your manuscript--if it's worth risking criminal charges, they'll buy publishing rights and publish it on the up and up. They're too busy and handling too many manuscripts to think there's an advantage in stealing something that they then can't publish without great risk to their reputations and possible criminal penalties.

Jeff G is right to warn against "vanity" presses, though they're generally not as looked down upon as they used to be, before the small press/self-publishing revolution. They'll take your money to publish your work--but then often they won't do anything to promote it or place it in bookstores. Often they'll require you to buy copies of your own book so that you can hand-carry it to bookstores or book events yourself, which will be the only way you'll ever sell it. Meanwhile, you'll have paid them for services--copy editing, book design, cover design--that you could have farmed out to freelancers for considerably less $$ and/or done yourself. The WriterBeware site (https://writerbeware.blog/) keeps a sharp eye out for publishing scams, and if you're approached by or interested in a particular pay-for-play publisher, it's a good idea to check there to see if you'll really get what you're paying for.

That's a lot of stuff I've learned, which might or might not be helpful. To answer your actual question, Lauren, I like publishing with specialty presses. A horror publisher for a horror novel, a Western publisher for a Western, etc. Those houses are small enough that your book can get personal attention without being lost in the shuffle, and the people working there know their audience in a way that's hard for anyone at the major houses to do. They go to conventions and fan shows, where they meet the hardcore readership face-to-face. They're trusted by the readers who love that genre. And they're thrilled to publish good books.

If there's anything I can do to help, or any questions you'd like to throw at me, post 'em here or message me directly,

Excellent post, Jeffrey J. Mariotte. Copyright registration is not required to become published, but if publishing without a registered copyright, you have five years to register a copyright; otherwise, your published work becomes public domain, correct?

Great question Lauren Hackney and I did enjoy reading the literary journey of Jeffrey J. Mariotte. DC Comics...wow. I'm a comic nerd so again...wow.

I've only been published by a small press and that was for my first graphic novel (Haven of Dante). It was pretty much like Jeffrey said...no money up front. Diamond was the big distributor at the time and they obviously had a preference for the big two (DC/Marvel) so it was a tough sell. I published the prose version as an indie. After years of trying to land an agent, it was the only route I could take. It wasn't until I started writing screenplays that things started looking up.

Jeff Gregory, you're not actually required to file for copyright protection--just by creating the material, you're somewhat covered. But to SUE for infringement, you do need to file (and that will allow you to recover statutory damages and attorney's fees). It also makes winning the suit far more likely.

That said, the Internet and the tech world have shown us time and time again that even statutory protection isn't real protection. I've had my books stolen more times than I can count, because of the ease of duplicating text from one format to another. I file DMCA takedown notices when I can, but it could become a full-time job if I let it.

And then there are the big guys, like Meta and Anthropic, who have trained their AI on material taken from pirate sites rather than paying the authors for their work. After a lawsuit, Anthropic will pay out something, but in comparison to what they'll make from the AI they trained on stolen work, it's a slap on the wrist. When I looked at the list of works they stole from me, there were 80-some listed. Some were work-for-hire, so I don't own the copyrights. Some were duplicates, presumably taken from multiple pirate sites, and I can only recover once for each work. In the end, with all the restrictions, I think I'll get paid for 7 or 8 stolen books--if Anthropic ever actually pays.

So nothing you can do protects you totally, but copyright registration is the most immediate and effective step you can take.

@Leonardo Ramirez, it's true that most comics retailers looked first at the listings for Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, IDW, and a few other large publishers when placing their Diamond orders. The Diamond catalog was so huge--hundreds of pages every month, with every kind of merchandise in it, and comics retailers tend to be conservative in their initial orders anyway, so it's hard for anything indie to break through. Congrats on getting your GN published, though! I'm glad screenplay writing is proving more successful.

Thanks Jeffrey J. Mariotte. I think there's a bigger distributor nowadays. Can't remember who it is but it's not Diamond anymore. And yes, you're right - their catalog was monstrous. That was over a decade ago and I'm still friends with the comic shop that stayed faithful to the release. I still love comics and if I could go back and write another, I would. But I don't know that I'd do it as an indie. Comics feels like "the one that got away" in my heart. Someday though...

Correct, Jeffrey J. Mariotte. My question was that if you publish first and do not follow up with a registered copyright within five years, the published work essentially becomes public domain, since the originator cannot initiate litigation for copyright infringement.

Jeff Gregory, no, that's not the case. To double-check myself I looked at an intellectual property law outline I edited early last year, when I was doing a lot of editing of educational materials for lawyers and law students. An original work created on or after 1978 has copyright protection for the author's life plus 70 years, even if it wasn't registered (but as I said, your protections are much stronger if it is registered). You can still sue after five years, but without registration your potential victory and damages are much less certain. But the same is true after one year. Registration gives the strongest protection by far, but the five-year thing doesn't exist. Even under the 1909 copyright act, unregistered, published material was protected for 28 years. Registered material's protection could be renewed for a second 28-year stretch. That was extended to 47 years by a much later act of Congress.

Leonardo, there's nobody as big as Diamond now. There are a bunch of smaller distributors vying for retailer dollars, and there is a company that has bought most of Diamond's assets and might become bigger in time. But a lot of the publishers that went with Diamond because they were the biggest have already moved to other outlets. It's really much more work now for retailers to place their monthly orders than it was before Diamond's bankruptcy, and a lot of publishers are still out considerable sums of money that Diamond owed but the company that bought its assets isn't paying.

That makes sense Jeffrey J. Mariotte. I thought Lunar was catching up.

Jeffrey J. Mariotte, I thought one cannot initiate any litigation for copyright infringement until a copyright is registered, pursuant to a summary at https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2019/03/supreme-court-res... (March 4, 2019). Publishing and waiting five years to register the copyright invalidates the ability to launch any copyright infringement litigation.

Jeffrey J. Mariotte thank you so much for all the information. I think you should absolutely share these as lounge posts for the community to see. More information the better. You have so much knowledge and years of experience, so many members would benefit from your wisdom. Thank you for going into so much detail on this post

I'm not published yet, but so far all signs seem to point to indie. I definitely sent out at least 200 queries to literary agents because I was deadset on tradpub, and got almost as many rejections. I'm admittedly not terribly excited about going indie (it's a lot of extra work I don't really want to do), but I imagine it's the best setup for remaining true to my voice. Whatever allows me to also do my own cover art and in-book illustrations :)

I've been publishing a WIP novel as a serial on Substack. It's crickets, mostly. http://Marolitango.substack.com

hi Lauren Hackney

Jeff Gregory, yes, to sue for copyright infringement there must be a registration. But registration is not necessary for a copyright to exist--all that's necessary is for a work to be "fixed in a tangible medium of expression." You can take somebody to court for stealing something you have published--you have what's been called a "common-law copyright"--but you can't claim "copyright infringement" or get attorney's fees without registration.

Banafsheh Esmailzadeh, traditional publishing doesn't prevent you from being true to your voice. Publishers don't buy your work unless they think your voice can find readers; they're not interested in changing your voice. Cover and interior illustrations are a little trickier, because they have to feel that the illustrations are just as strong as the text (or the text as strong as the illustrations). If a book is weak in either area it'll be harder to sell--and slush pile readers might not be the best judges of art quality. It's true that by publishing yourself you can do both, but it's possible that your desire to do both hampered the book's reception with the agents you submitted to. Plenty of great authors have been rejected hundreds of times before they eventually were published, so although it's frustrating, it doesn't mean your book isn't brilliant. Best of luck with it!

Thank you Jeffrey J. Mariotte, I definitely still want to get trad published but by gosh did perseverating get bad for my nerves after rejection #150-ish lol. But I see what you mean, in-book illustrations are pretty rare here, and mainly the issue I had was the novel I was pitching ended up not being to many agents' tastes, which is fair. I might get back to querying with another novel, though that might not be for several more years with the way I'm going lol

Jeffrey J. Mariotte, ahhh, common-law copyright...that's the expression I've been missing.