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How do I protect my copyright if I publish under a pen name?
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Hi Geoff
It’s a good question. Under UK law you are automatically the copyright owner of the work that you create yourself, and whether it is published under a pseudonym or not doesn’t make a difference to this.
If you are happy to share your real name, then you could add this in to the copyright page at the beginning of the book.
In terms of how CompletelyNovel copes with this, you should use whatever name you want to write under as your name on the website. So, if your pseudonym is something other than Geoff Hughes, you should head to the ‘Account’ link at the top of the page and change your profile name.
We will always contact you by your email address so that must be your genuine email address. I’d also advise that you put both your real name and your pseudonym in any correspondence that you have with us, particularly relating to royalty payments so that we can verify your identity if needed. (That also has the benefit of enabling us to help confirm your identity if someone should infringe your copyright).
Hope that helps!
Anna
Anna, it helps tremendously. Thank you. I’ve done as you recommend – and it works, except that the books (editions of the same book) are still shown as written by Geoff Hughes. How do I change that – or will it be changed as the amended name filters through the system?
Hi Wil,
I recently did a sneaky name change on the site so can help you here! To complete the change you need to click on ‘Account’ at the top of the page to edit your profile and then scroll down on the ‘my profile’ tab and click on the link under ‘my writer profile’. Then you can enter in your new name and it will come up.However, you will still need to change your book cover (if you have one) and re-publish. Re-pblishing will also make sure that the new author name filters through to the ISBN database (if you’ve bought an ISBN), as that information is extracted from the book ‘manage’ pages which will have had the old name listed.
P.s, I am pretty sure it is my browser playing up, but for some reason I had to enter the new name twice as it didn’t seem to take the first time. So do try again if you think it hasn’t worked!
I think that is accurate. One thing to note is that there may be some areas on CompletelyNovel which don’t update immediately so although the name in your profile, author profile and book listings will change there may be some news which still has your old name.
- Oliver 30 Mar 20:36I was massively impressed with how easy it is to update your profile with a pseudonym.
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