When Edgar Rice Burroughs published The Princess of Mars in 1917, the copyright belonged to the publisher and made absolutely no mention of the author’s name.
In essence, Edgar Rice Burroughs lost the copyright the moment that book was published.
Copyright law has changed a lot since 1917, but the lesson here remains the same.
You need to pay attention to your copyright page.
Even if you don’t copyright your book, your copyright page should still exist (yes, you can have one without the other).
And while technically all you need is a mention of copyright, your name, and the year of publication, that’s not going to get you out of any legal trouble that arises.
For example, we’ve all probably heard the fiction disclaimer that goes something like this:
“This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.”
Well, did you know the story behind that?
Turns out MGM created a film in 1932 called Rasputin and the Empress, based on the story of Rasputin’s murder. The murderer in question, an exiled Russian prince named Felix Yusupov, saw the film and sued MGM for misrepresentation.
MGM had to pay a fine of £25,000 pounds, which is about half a million pounds in today’s money.
Furthermore, they had to take the film out of circulation and remove the offending scenes.
And most elements of a copyright page have a story like this behind them. They’re written in the blood of those who messed up.
We don’t want to be those people.
So, to help with this, I created the ultimate resource for creating a copyright page, complete with templates for fiction, nonfiction, and free books.
Guide to Writing a Book Copyright Page (with 6 templates)
https://kindlepreneur.com/book-copyright-page-examples-ebook/
I hope that is helpful for you the next time you’re writing a book on Rasputin’s murder.
When Dave Chesson’s not sipping tea with princesses or lightsaber dueling with little Jedi, he’s a book marketing nut. Having consulted multiple publishing companies and NYT best-selling authors, he created Kindlepreneur to help authors sell more books. He’s even been called “The Kindlepreneur” by Amazon publicly.