I personally had this question not long ago, with the advent of Hidden on Edisto, book 13 of The Edisto Island Mysteries. With the onset of Anthropic’s $1.5B lawsuit settlement, I realized just how important copyright could be. If I could afford to file for copyright, why not do it?

So I shot off a copyright request for the manuscript of Hidden on Edisto, pre-publication. It was accepted and processed. There, the odds of my work being stolen were less.

But then I wondered. . . how does someone like Anthropic, and the lawyers settling the lawsuit, find an unpublished manuscript? How do they know when it becomes published? Do you refile copyright again? Is there a preference on filing before or after publication?

So I called the US Copyright Office and spoke to a specialist. She stated a copyright was like a chain of title on a piece of real estate. You still own the deed, so even if there are changes on the property, it’s still listed as yours. So if an unpublished manuscript has copyright, then becomes published, there is no need to file again.

The Author’s Guild, however, suggested otherwise. You could get lost in the fray and be accidentally excluded. Without an ISBN, without a copyright of the published book, you can be overlooked. They suggested filing again.

So, the choices are these:

1) File only once the book is published.
2) File only the manuscript and understand the published manuscript is still covered.
3) File twice, before and after.

Yes, that’s $65 a pop. That might assist you in deciding how to play these odds. Or you could file absolutely nothing and go with the old-fashioned (and true) method of being able to prove that you were the first to write the work based on the dates on your computer file. The downside to that is if a lawsuit like that of Anthropic comes along, .you are excluded. The dice is in your hand.