Any way 2 copyright poems, etc. on a budget?

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I really REALLY want to distribute my poetry zine as I have quite a few successful poems together in my awesome first collection...however it would cost quite a bit and really eat away at my efficient distribution progress to send about 9 poems at a time to congress to get a trademark...so my question is (and you're at an advantage, of course, if you have zine or copyright rules savvy): is it true that one of the way less costly and more efficient ways to copyright is to send your poetry back to yourself as copyrighted material (which really doesn't make sense to me, but could be possible) so that you have an advantage in case of a lawsuit, or is there another possible way to mass-copyright poetry that is more efficient and less costly? hopefully it is true that you can mail poems back to yourself as proof that you copyrighted them, so that for once my graphic design professor who came up with said thought, made one of his few proclamations of complete genius.

thanks
chelsea

The idea behind mailing them to yourself is that the envelope will be date stamped by the post office. The copies inside will remain in the sealed envelope, and if you ever have someone take you work or acuse you of taking theirs you have a sealed, date stamped envelope with the poems inside as proof these were your work and the date you created them or sent them out at least.

As a rule, anything you create is your intellectual property, so if you have written it on the computer the file will have a date. Just keep a copy of everything you write on a flash drive or burn a disk and the date you created it will be there in the file properties. This is your "poor mans copyright" . If you put out a book of your work you will always have the files you originally created and the date to combat any copyright infringements.

thanks so much! i wish i'd known that stuff all along, but at least now it's all being clarified to me. I have some questions already rising about this but I'm sure as long as I burn a disc with the date that everything was being burned and saved, distributing the zine should be easy.

I'm not a lawyer, but I've studied copyright issues quite a bit as part of my music studies (it included studying the music business, particularly the legal aspects). Even though my focus was on copyrighting music, the basic principles should still apply.

First, anytime you "fix" your work, it's copyrighted. For example, if you write it down, or save it on a CD-ROM, its copyrighted.

Second, the "poor man's" copyright, where you mail it to yourself, doesn't stand up in court. You'd be better off being able to produce witnesses who could testify in court that they read (or heard) your work on a particular day and time.

Third, the best protection you can have is to register your work with the US Copyright Office. The Office doesn't certify your work as original, but it does provide a legally-binding certificate that says you submitted your work and registered it on such-and-such a date. Further, if there is legal action against you from someone claiming you stole their work, under US copyright law they would have to pay all of your legal expenses if they lose.

Fourth, there is a way to get your work copyrighted somewhat inexpensively. What you do is take all of your work, put it together, and give it a title (such as "Collected Works, Volume I"), and register it. You pay one fee, fill out one registration form, and get one certificate, but it covers everything contained in the work you registered. It doesn't matter if you have 1 poem or 9,999 poems, they're all protected.

I should provide a caveat, that it has been a few years since I've been on top of copyright law issues, but I believe the basic principles should still apply.

Here's a link to their website for more info: http://www.copyright.gov/

I hope this is at least somewhat useful to you.

$10, for any amount of work, plus two copies, the form, a cover letter on each lot, bound with a rubber band or two. Postage, proof of mailing, return reciept postcard, which is date stamped, numbered, and returned.

That goes with the third copy of everything that is in your files.

It helps to number your pages, so you can say, on page 43 of my Copyright work, is this.

Copyright action starts with giving notice, this is mine, I think you infringed.

While copyright starts with creation, defense starts with registered copyright.