Copyrighting a group of unpublished works

This went live at the Copyright Office this morning: You can now file a group registration for up to 10 unpublished literary works.

I just filed for a group registration this morning. The process is almost exactly the same as One Work by One Author, except of course, you list up to 10 titles instead of just one. You also can digitally upload or send by mail, just the same as other forms of copyright. I called the Copyright Office for verification; he said you are copyrighting the *content* of what you send, so send as much as you’ve got for each work, and that is what is copyrighted.

The fee (I just paid it) is $55. (Weirdly, last night when I put it in the shopping cart, it was $85, but when I went to pay this morning, the fee was $55… so it’s possible (though not likely) that the fee is $85 and somehow their system glitched and I got lucky.

The man I spoke to *also* said that you do not need to re-copyright these works once you publish them. Which made no sense to me, but we weren’t communicating well; I know too little about copyright to use the right catch-phrases so that he’d understand what I was asking. Maybe someone more experienced than me can clarify this?

He said if the title is different when you publish a work, there will be an option to associate the unpublished registration for that work with the new, published title. Also, FYI, the date of the copyright for that work will always be the date of the unpublished registration, not the date that the work was published.

Tweet