Fried Copyrights

The following is from Dan Poynter - http://www.parapub.com Dan is one of THE gurus in the self-publishing world. His bi-weekly ezine is always full of useful information. Today was no different in that regard. One of the many things was this article I share below, in case you are doing or intend to do any registration business with the Copyright office in the United States.

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COPYRIGHT OFFICE, TURNAROUND TIME and IRRADIATION. On July 20, I mailed one of my publications (not a book) to the Copyright office for registration.

As far as I know, all mail to the Copyright Office still goes to Florida first for Anthrax baking (high-temperature irradiation).

The Copyright Office is the single largest recipient of mail in the Library of Congress. Yesterday (read: nearly four months), we received our charred and sliced cheque back with a note saying the bank had refused the damaged cheque.

The note from the Copyright Office went on to say "The registration process was halted prior to the registration of your work and the case has been closed."
In other words: start over.

Today I made up a new package and sent it to the Copyright Office via UPS, Two-Day Air.I’m told that shipping with private carriers avoids the side trip to Florida due to easy sender traceability.

One report I found said: "The Copyright Office also reported that some of the mail it received was damaged by the irradiation process. So, it appears they are taking some four months to register a copyright.

It will be interesting to compare the time with Postal v UPS routing. Hmmm, and I am curious what the heat might do if you tried to register a CD. One report says: "The irradiation process may damage tapes, videos and film."
So use UPS or FedEx.

--Dan Poynter
www.parapub.com

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Until next time,
Paulette
http://www.tipsbooklets.com