Writer's Resources

Protecting your writing:
Give yourself credit

Prepared by the ASJA Contracts Committee

When you distribute tearsheets--as samples of your freelance work or as a courtesy to article subjects--or post your writing on the Internet, what can you do to help protect your rights?

Fortunately, U.S. law is on your side. As a freelance, unless you transfer your rights to a publisher or another party, you own the copyright in your work from the moment of creation. It's your property, and you have the right to control and charge for its use. Without your permission--

• If a company reprints your article in its employee newsletter, or makes copies to hand out to customers, that is illegal.

• If a publicist photocopies your article for press kits, that is illegal.

• If a copy shop combines your article with others into a "coursepack" to be sold to students, that is illegal.

• If a fan reproduces your article on a homemade World Wide Web page, that is illegal.

• If your magazine publisher approves a request for the reuse of your article, even though you never signed over more than one-time rights, that is illegal too.

The law does not say your work must bear a copyright notice--a label announcing your ownership--but a notice warns those who may not know the law, so no one can claim "innocent infringement."

While books almost always include a copyright notice in the author's name, magazines and newspapers rarely note ownership of individual articles. (The blanket copyright notice in periodicals covers the publisher's own copyright in the issue as a whole--the "collective work" copyright--not your copyright in your own piece of that whole.) But when you're in control--such as when making photocopies, posting on the Internet or circulating an unpublished manuscript--you can add your own notice, such as:

COPYRIGHT 1997 YOUR NAME
(Or your agent, your writers' organization, etc.)
With such a notice you warn, "This is my property. Don't use it without permission." You bring potential reuse customers directly to you, saving them the extra step of tracking you down through a publisher. And you lessen the chance that your publisher may authorize reuse when that is properly your right.