How to copyrighting your book in India is an important thing to know. It is simple yet critical. I learnt this from a workshop participant. 

I met Maahir (name changed on request) at a publishing workshop I was hosting. He told me a non-fiction horror story about how his Manuscript was copied. He hadn’t copyrighted his book in India. 

Maahir had been working on an Indian historical fiction novel. A Delhi-based literary agent he knew requested him to send the “work in progress” manuscript to him. Trusting the agent, Maahir sent across some 75 pages of his book to the agent. Over time the literary agent became less and less responsive, and the whole thing seemed to fizzle out. Maahir was in a full-time job and also didn’t follow up as diligently as required. 

A year later, while browsing in a bookstore, he came across a novel which had specific research references that were in the excerpt he had submitted. Some of these were not in the public domain, and he had visited libraries in various Indian Universities to scrape out this information physically.

It seemed too big a co-incidence to Maahir. On digging further Maahir discovered that the novel in question was also represented by the same agent. He is now convinced it was not a co-incidence.

Maahir’s was convinced the agent had enabled the plagiarism of his book. He was kicking himself for not copyrighting his book before sending it. His question to me during the workshop was “How can I safeguard against my next book getting plagiarized? Can you tell me how to copyright my book In India?”

I was saddened by the story, and fervently hoped it was just an unlikely coincidence. As an optimist who believes in human honesty and kindness, I would really like to believe that the industry is trustworthy. That we all live by an unwritten code of ethics, and follow it with integrity. 

But as the saying goes “Trust is nice, control is better”. 

Another person at the same workshop was from the world of films – a scriptwriter named Shaunak. Shaunak shared how one of his early screenplays had suffered a similar fate.  He went on to explain that copyrighting a book in India was a simple process, and an industry norm now in the world of films and web-series.

Intrigued, I decided to give it a shot myself. My better half is also a published author, and she co-founded The Himalayan Writing Retreat with me. She has just completed a book where she had interviewed some 40 odd people who had left the mainstream to follow a non-traditional path, just like we had. 

She had taken the essence of the experiences and stories of the people she had spoken to and just completed her manuscript. The working title of her book was “Against the tide” and she has just sent it out to her Literary agent. (More about literary agents in India here). Great timing.

I had decided to write this article on How to copyright your book in India. I decided to learn by doing, and we went ahead to copyright the book Vandita had written.

---

---

The steps to copyright a book in India are as follows. The steps are the same to copyright a story as well.

Step 1 : Go to https://copyright.gov.in/ and you’ll get this screen:

Step 2: Click on Registration of Copyright (form (XIV) at the top left), select “new user registration” and you’ll get this form. Fill this out (one-time) and after that the same login / PW will work for future.

If you’re an individual user, select general user, not society. 

Step 3: 

On completion it gives this screen, and asks you to login using your brand new Username & password. 

Step 4:

You login and click on the first tab in the menu on the left “efiling of application” and you’ll get this screen. (Don’t click upload work and documents):

Step 5: Follow the steps on the main screen

1. “Complete the Form XIV, then press SAVE button to Save entered details, and press Step 2 to move to the Next Step.

1. Fillup the Statement of Particulars, and then press SAVE button to Save entered details, and press Step 3 to move to the Next Step.
2. Fillup the Statement of Further particulars.(This form is applicable for “LITERARY, DRAMATIC, MUSICAL ,ARTISTIC AND SOFTWARE”
   works), and then press SAVE button to Save entered details, press Step 4 to move to Step 4.
3. Fillup the Payment Details (presently through DD/Banker’s Cheque/E-Payment),

So note that while the Copyright filing is online there are major offline components. Even the payment is not online. 

Step 6: Fill the Application

These four steps can be a little unclear. For one I was not sure if this meant I have to send hard copies of my work. Turns out we do have to turn in two hard copies of the draft of the book to the copyright authority by registered mail. Along with that a scan of your signature also has to be uploaded. The other steps are quite clear. 

On the next page make sure you will come to the “Create a patent” dropdown. Select “Literature Works” under that. 

This is where we have reached in our application process so far. We are told that it can take up to 45 days for the government to acknowledge receipt of the hard copies. 

We will update this blog post with subsequent updates as we complete the process of copyrighting the book.  At that time we will also add the following:

Time taken for each step: 

Total Cost : 

We also spoke to a couple of lawyers who said they would charge INR 20,000 for the same service. 

A company named quickcompany.in also offers this service online. They will help with copyrighting your self-published book. 

We don’t want anyone to misuse our original work. The way to use a book copyright as a deterrent is to publicly announce that the MS is copyrighted. 

Maybe the first page of the MS should mention the date and details of the copyrighting. Or maybe you can let it slip casually when chatting with your agent that the book is copyrighted. The safest bet: do both.

Remember, an idea cannot be copyrighted – only a finished work. Occasionally a writer will come to me, and express concern about sharing their story in a class full of writers because they are afraid of someone else stealing it. My response is “Ideas are cheap. Two people can have the same idea, but that doesn’t mean you’ll write the same book. That is where the craft comes in.”

I truly believe that. Imagine Anthony Doerr telling a bunch of people “I have a book idea, it is set in the second world war, and has a blind French girl, and a young German boy who is a radio operator, and how the war brings them together in the least likely ways….” And so on. Do you think anyone else could write a book that could even come close to “All the Light we cannot see” ?

So yes, I suggest you worry about copyrighting your work, but I also suggest you do that only when the work is complete and substantial – not just an idea.   

A few more points about how to use the copyright of your book.

• Should I add a Copyright section to my book?

Although adding a rights page to your book may not offer additional protection, it can function as a notification to readers that your work is subject to copyright. This may discourage potential infringers from reproducing your material. The copyright section should comprise your name, the year of publication, an ISBN number, a statement reserving your rights, the book version, the trademark symbol, and a disclaimer warning that any information or advice in the book is at the reader’s sole discretion.

• Can a copyright really protect my book?

For authors, copyright protection is crucial to protect their creative work. It prevents bookstores from duplicating and selling copies without the author’s consent. When a person purchases a book, they are not just acquiring a physical product, but also the author’s intellectual property, such as the plot, characters, and settings.

The type of copyright protection a book receives is based on its content. For instance, a phone book has minimal copyrighted material, but it may contain a substantial list of information. On the other hand, a crime novel or a murder mystery may have copyrights that encompass the storyline sequence, characters, or elements of the fictional world created in the book.

You may also want to check out our posts about ‘How to pick the right literary agent & approach one’ and the ‘Top 13 Literary Agents in India’.