According to US copyright law, as soon as you write something it's protected by copyright.

You really only need to register a copyright if you have a money-making property (which is why most professional publishers will take care of that for you).

It's a don't do.

I copyrighted my latest novel---a friend who had been reading it passed it on to a writer she had met on the Internet--(against my wishes) but I didn't tell any of the many agents ect that I subed to until after I had an acceptance.

And even more rare for an agent or editor to steal your work. Send without worry. But don't put those copyright marks all over the work or even in one place. They know it's yours.

The thing is, it won't happen if you send your material to professional publishers and editors, and to agents that are members of AAR or listed in LITERARY MARKET PLACE (they have to meet certain standards to be listed there).

No REAL editor or agent is going to steal from someone and risk getting into the kind of trouble that will cost them bundles of money and ruin their reputations.

People usually steal from published writers (and they are stupid people to do it).
Part of being published involves the registration of copyright.

Basically, the advantage you have in a court of law when you have a copyright registered is that then all you have to do is prove your copyright was infringed on and the law has already determined what the punishment will be.

If you don't have your copyright registered and you have to go to court over an infringement, then you also have to prove how damaged you were by the infringement, and the judge gets to decide what the punishment will be.

Also, dig at microsoft--other word processing programs do the same thing. It was not a microsoft invention.

If you are very worried (as in lose sleep or not send your work out) spend the 30 bucks. Get your copyright--keep it to yourself until you have a contract. (Kathleen said this already)

But beware that it can take some time to get that copyright number (it took almost a year for me to get mine), and if you make one small mistake they will bounce it back at you.

Copyright is the only sure way to protect yourself in the event that someone steals your work.

Please remember that registration of copyright (referring to what you get from the Library of Congress as a "copyright" is technically not right, as Kathleen pointed out) is an excellent way to prove that you originated the work, although it's not the only way. In the incredibly unlikely event that a written work is stolen before it's published, you would just need a conclusive way to prove in a court of law that you had the piece first. Obviously, the Library of Congress is a real good witness for you, but there are other possibilities (e.g. notarized and dated statement of authorship should be admissible in a court of law, although not as good as a copyright registration).

But I think all of this that I'm going on about misses the point, to wit: The chance of a work from an unknown writer being stolen before publication, especially by a reputable agent or publisher, is so incredibly unlikely that the time and effort it takes to get a copyright registration is downright wasteful.

Let's say that a stolen work that the stealer actually sells happens once in every 100,000 submissions, which is probably much more often than the actual rate of occurrence. If we imagine that you spend $30 on the registration and then about $30 worth of your own time to get the registration, then we multiply that by the average number of times you'd need to do that before it ever came in handy, we find that you're spending $6,000,000 in time and money to protect one work.

And for that, you could build your own bionic man (ignoring inflation for the moment).

I sent out 67 queiries---no troubles.\

And most writers are so in love with their own idea that they wouldn't bother to take yours, and it is so hard to get a foot in the door that the chance they would then get it published ---well--you get it.

It happens much more for non-fiction than fiction as in accademic works ect.

I DID see in another post the idea that emailing a copy to your self is a wasted effort because of the ease of changing the date that is time-stamped on it. That may be true but...

Has anyone ever heard of the poor man's copyright? That is an old practice of sending yourself a copy of work (art, character design, short story, synopsis, novel, etc.) by way of snail-mail. The U.S. post office then puts their date stamp on it, signifying when it passed through their hands. If you never open it, and the day comes when you need the proof in court, then you have a sealed and stamped envelope that contains your idea and has been recognized by the government. It's better than getting a notary to sign a contract!

BTW: when you pen your return address on the envelope, do so on the back...OVER the seal.

Really though, it is not a thing that happens very often. And when it does it is almost always after the book has been published.

If you really believe that you have written the one and only salable story that you will ever write, then yes, by all means copyright the thing.