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If you're going consolidation loan stafford student self-publish, it would be prudent to become at least a bit familiar with copyright laws and procedures. Copyrighting your work provides you some protection against someone taking your work and claiming it as their own - though in the free-for-all culture that's developed over the years, it seems that a simple copyright may not be worth much anymore. Anyway... for what it's worth, here are a couple of ways to go about obtaining a copyright.

The first is to actually register your work with the Library of Congress. This is a simple process. The law states that to copyright a piece it must be "original works of authorship," including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. To put it more plainly, it's gotta be your work. To file for an official copyright here's what you need to do:

• Go to the Library of Congress Website and determine what form you need. Simply do a search on Library of Congress Copyright. The first non-sponsored hit should be the one you want.
• Fill out the form and return it with the filing fee of $45. Register your work online for a $10 discount.
• Though it isn't necessary to send the Library of Congress a copy of the work with the application, they will eventually want one on file.
• Depending on how busy the Library of Congress is, you should receive your certificate of copyright within four to five months.

The second way to copyright your work is to simply declare it so. This means that after you've written a book, an article, a piece of music, software, or other work you just attach the copyright symbol to it along with your name and date of creation. It would look like this: The Skinny on Copyrighting Your Work 2008 Charles Steed. That's it.

The question comes up, "is this smart?" In other words, does a simple declaration offer as much protection as the official copyright from the Library of Congress? The answer is, probably not. Registering your work with the Library of Congress provides you with a public record of the actual date of your copyright. This might be useful should there ever be a dispute regarding your claim to the work.

One way to back up a declaration of copyright is, once it's complete, to send it to yourself complete with your copyright declaration in a registered letter. This establishes an official date of record for the work. When you receive it, leave it unopened and keep it in a safe place. This is called the "Poor Man's Copyright."

According to several attorneys I've spoken to about this technique, it's called the poor man's method for a reason. If there is ever a question about the work ends up being decided in court, the user of this dubious method could end up a poor man. I don't know if they were simply trying to hustle some business of if their concern was genuine. For the maximum protection under the law, its best to register with the Library of Congress.

Can a title be copyrighted?

The answer to this is a simple no. That is why you sometimes see more than one work with the same title. This is common with songs, movies, book, articles and other works. If you feel you have a killer title, the best protection for it is probably getting a trademark.

With nearly 15 years as a healthcare professional and another 10 years as a successful real estate entrepreneur, Charles took to the pen. He's written four books, several ebooks and numerous articles for publication. He's now enjoying life in Southwest Florida and working as a freelance writer. www.prosewiz.comhttp://www.prosewiz.com