copyrighting a picture book concept if you haven't finished the art
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i have created a graphic picture book concept, i know the story inside and out, the progression of the story, and all the characters. i haven't gotten this published yet, nor have i finished the art...i'm in the redesigning phase and so i'm wondering, can you copyright a picture book concept, or does it need to be finished and ready for submission to be copyrighted?
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@jennmaynard73 my guess would be no, I don’t think you can copyright an idea. But if you’re mum about it you shouldn’t have a problem. That being said people come with ideas they think are original only to find about a dozen others just like it, that doesn’t mean you should throw it out though. So if you’re worried that someone else might finish something similar first, there’s nothing really, I think, that can be done about it unfortunately.
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A work is automatically copyrighted once it’s made. However, that doesn’t stop anyone from copying or creating something similar. Just look at the music industry
I remember Jake mentioning on a previous episode of the podcast what @Asyas_illos touched on — you can indeed write a book about, say, a 13 year old girl who finds out her parents are wizards and goes to a wizard academy and ends up fighting evil wizards pent up on ruling the world. You just can’t name your book Harry Potter or name the school Hogwarts.
In other words, there have been a few times in my life when I fleshed out what I thought was a really cool and original idea for my own book… only to find out that same idea was published! I never told anyone or drew my idea. I kid you not, I once developed a character long before I saw any Batman movie and voila, I had developed a very similar family back story to Batman.
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The US Copyright Office allows for registration of scripts and synopsis. You can learn more here: https://www.creativecontractconsulting.com/c3blog/2019/2/2/how-do-you-register-a-copyright-for-your-comic
