A Poets View

This question plagues the minds of poets especially if they have never before been published.  As poets and writers we want to protect our work from being copied and plagiarized.

Copyright is a right which gives the writer control over the reproduction, public display, performance and distribution of your poetry and writings.  Your works are automatically protected as soon as they are written or recorded.  As of March 1989 copyright notices are no longer needed to secure your manuscript submission.   Of course you can always include the copyright symbol with your submission which as an example should read like this:  © Joanne Olivieri 2008 First the copyright symbol, your name and year of publication. You may also want to include “All Rights Reserved”  Though, none of this is necessary and in fact many editors see the use of copyright symbols as inexperienced or amateur in regards to the author.  If you are self publishing a book of poetry whether it be completely self published or cooperative publishing then you will need to copyright your works through the Library of Congress.  There is a $45.00 fee to do so but it is needed when publishing a book or chapbook.  You can go to http://www.copyright.gov  for more detailed information and download forms applicable to your situation. Requesting copyright for one poem or one story is really useless as you will be paying a fee for each copyright and as stated above it is not needed.  It is much more beneficial to you as an author to copyright a group of poems or stories together in one compilation or book.  Just remember once your poetry is in tangible form it is automatically copyrighted.