How to protect your creative work

Part 2 of 3

(2) What is the difference between someone stealing your ideas and stealing your book?

It's important to understand that your book manuscript is not the same as your unique ideas.

Ideas cannot be copyrighted. Even if you think your idea is unique. So if you and I both have the same idea, there is no problem with copyright. Because ideas can't be protected by copyright.

What can be protected?

We can only protect the expression of our ideas. What we write, the words we choose and the order we put them in, that is the expression which can be protected. Our expression is automatically copyrighted whenever we write things down.

Not the ideas themselves, but the expression - in other words, the word choices and the order in which you have put them down.

How does this affect me as a self-publisher?

In my opinion, what's important is just getting your words down in writing, and publishing first.

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But what if somebody steals my manuscript?

That would be a nightmare of course. Nobody wants their manuscript to be stolen or ripped off.

So that's where it's important to work with people you can trust.

Let's do an exercise:

Worst-case scenario.

Let's say somebody comes along and steals your stuff. They put their name on your manuscript and start selling it as their own for example. Horrible to consider, but we're just thinking of ways to protect ourselves.

Now, do you have the money required to take somebody to court? Do you have the time and energy to go through an expensive trial process to get somebody to stop ripping you off?

Personally, I want to choose to live a happy life. I want to spend my time doing what is important to me, and what is fulfilling to me.

So, depending on the situation, I'm thinking the best bet might be to just move on.

I've faced times in my life where I've considered going to court over various things that bothered me. Where I felt wronged somehow. But in all of these cases, in the end, I realized that I have better things to do.

As for me: I have way more ideas than I have time in this world. So I just want to do what I think is important in this life. I want to focus on what is fun, artistic, and can benefit the world.

That is my personal goal. If you're spending a lot of time worrying about the possibility of somebody stealing your manuscript, well, then you're just spinning your wheels. Instead, you could be doing something that contributes to the world, such as writing something new.

click for how to protect your creative work part 3...

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