Quote:
Originally Posted by EileenG
In the event of a legal dispute, what will work is your early drafts. Even if, by some fluke, someone managed to steal a copy of your story and registered it with the copyright office, you have the early drafts which you can use to show a court how you developed the ideas, what changes you made, how you edited etc. The other person can't do that.
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Quoting this to make sure it doesn't get missed in all the other discussion. This is something that every writer can and should do. Make backups regularly, and don't delete the old ones (or not all of them, keep archive copies). Being able to show the development of the work over time is serious proof that would be very difficult to simulate in any convincing way.
The second form of proof you can offer is some non-family member that has reviewed an early draft of your work - let them keep their copy as proof if it becomes needed. If you become famous it could even become valuable to them.
These things are easy to do, and much less likely to run you into trouble than, for example, trying to get contracts signed before an agent/publisher has seen the full work, and you don't have to wait 90 days (or more) just to have your proof established.
Added to all this is needed a touch of realism. Don't panic about reputable agents and publishers. Your work would need to be seriously good to tempt people whose business it is to agent and publish books. And what is seriously good anyway? It's not like the people that rejected the first Harry Potter book knew what it was they were losing out on. If someone looks at some bright idea and likes it so much they want to use it, then use it they can and copyright won't help you. Much safer for someone (who knows what they're doing) to write their own version of an idea than to risk stealing the work of another - especially when they are not to know just what proof of copyright the true owner already has.