Poor Man's Copyright and Other Ways to Protect Your Work

Launching right into the header topic, I became wary of enlisting beta readers or ARCs (advance reader copies) of my work right out of the gate.  If not entirely plagiarizing or commandeering your hard work, sometimes you just don't someone to beat you to the punch by using your unique take on an idea before you do.  However, you do need to establish some semblance of trust to gain readers in pre-publishing stages.

If you're going the route of traditional publishing, you can avoid this.  You can toss a polished draft and a book proposal at an agent and negotiate a contract that makes it in their best interests to protect your work.  Your royalties are significantly lower but your chance of snagging readers is higher. This isn't about that route.

If you're going indie for the creative control, you can do something called a PMC or Poor Man's Copyright.  This is where you email yourself a copy of what you plan on distributing or sharing.  Emails are little timestamps that can prove that it was your original work prior to any misuse or leak.  Ideally just securing official ISBN blocks is a good way to lock in your work but can be costly (I believe it's $250 for one ISBN, better deals if bought in blocks of ten, which if you're doing a series is recommended for better visibility).  Purchasing a Copyright prior to sharing is another option.  It's not expensive unless you're broke, which I am.  Hence, the lovely limited use of PMC.

Creative control is tough work.  Outsourcing doesn't exactly make it easier. There is trust that needs to be established in any part of the presentation of your work.  If you do use others to do work you can't or don't want to do, acknowledge them.  It is a rare thing finding those trusted relationships and each contributor should be noted.  Whether or not you contractually obligated them to protect your ideas, their part is still instrumental in your success.  Don't reciprocate your failures and lose those relationships though.  You had the final say prior to release, so if the cover design isn't successful, don't blame the artist.

Personally, I'm curious about seeing how traditional publishing might handle my ideas.  I've heard from many female authors that their publishers tend to advocate less for them, make less successful decisions for them than their male counterparts.  While it would be heinous if this is true, it doesn't seem that a weak campaign would benefit them either unless the only reason they signed you on was to statistically appear more female friendly. I don't know, but you already can't be sure of what will trigger the phenomenon of success in a story. I do know that it is something I will consider in negotiations for contract.  I'm not going to sign on with a publisher where the success of female authors is suspiciously unbalanced or they have a habit of marketing female authors to appeal only to female readers.

  All things considered, ask the questions, value your work.  Don't throw away your hard work for a paycheck.  Learn how to establish trust early and advocate for yourself.  My grandma always told me not to trust people that say they have your best interests at heart.  Keep your own records, evaluate other's actions, and be prepared to change your course.