Generally, under US laws, the writer automatically has copyright to his or her work from the moment
it is written. US copyright is recognized in most developed countries. However, this copyright can be
lost or at least substantially weakened if you allow the material to be circulated without a copyright
notice and especially if the material is circulated without charge. Freely circulated material that bears
no copyright notice is generally considered to be "in the public domain." Having a dated copy on file
at a national library could help if there is a dispute about copyright. Another important protection is
the inclusion within the book of a copyright assertion statement, for example:
"© copyright 2003 by J. Francis Smith."
Generally this statement appears on the reverse side of the title page along with the CIP data and
Dog Ear Publishing’s contact information. You may expand this with a statement similar to the following:
"All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author. Contact the author at..."
If you wish, you can write "Contact the author in care of Dog Ear Publishing" and we'll forward
any correspondence.
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