I am really worried when someone commented in one of the chapters of my book saying that he liked it and even asked permission to copy it with some alterations and post it on wattpad.
I have burned my midnight candles in writing it, only to be copied so easily and publish it as his own?
What shall I do? How can I protect my work? How would I know or trace if it has really been copied and published ?
babyljaie46 That's messed up. I'm sorry you experienced that. What you can do so far is simply tell the commenter NO; that as the author of the story, only you have the right to choose where and when to publish it. Also, you worked so hard for that and there's no reason for him/her to copy and paste your story.
As for protecting your work, make sure not to delete any files you have of your drafts; if you have hard copies keep them too. Start adding copyright notices to your uploaded chapters.
Hmm, tracing is doable but time-consuming because unless you're willing to pay for a company that combs the internet for illegal copies of your work, you have no other choice but to do a search on your own. That is, to copy and paste parts of your work into Google or any other search engines and see if it will come up on other sites. Then file a DCMA takedown notice. Wattpad in particular is helpful with that.
Dr_Zombie I forgot Google Alerts. That can also help but sometimes, what happens is that some people will change words or character names... little tweaks here and there.
Dr_Zombie , thank you so much for replying. I will do as you suggested.
Pixiepercent , thank you so much for the reply. I will do as you say and have it hard - copied once completed.
