How to Create a Copyright Page in 5 Minutes (with Template)

How to Create a Copyright Page in 5 Minutes (with Template) The Self-Publisher's Guide to the Copyright Page (with Template) Imagine the day of your book release. Your book is selling fast online, your book reviews are glowing, and your scheduled book promotions are up and running. In fact, everything’s going swimmingly in your plan to conquer the world with your self-published book  until you wake up in a cold sweat - realizing that you forgot to include a copyright page.Is it the end of the world? Not quite. There’s no book police that’s going to punish you for not writing one up. But there are great reasons for making sure that you include one in every title you publish.That, and it’s super easy to create one: we give you everything that you need. In this post, you can pick between two templates:Do you prefer a basic copyright page? Jump to this template.Do you want an extended copyright page with more bells and whistles? Go this way.Then we give you a third option: if you want something that writes it  for you (and professionally typesets your whole book), you can use t he Reedsy Book Editor, our free formatting tool. The Editor automatically generates a copyright page and places it in the right place in the front matter of your book.If you’re not sure which option  is for you, that’s what the rest of this post is for! Together, we’ll de-mystify the topic entirely. But before we get to that, let's quickly clear something up: is one really mandatory?Do you need a copyright page?In a word? No. First Edition First Edition: January 2018 This paperback edition first published in 2018Publisher DetailsPublishers never waste a chance to promote themselves! You’ll find their details on the copyright page of a traditionally-published book, which will include the publisher’s:NameAddressWebsiteIf you’re self-publishing, you should know that the publisher is you (not KDP or IngramSpark, for example.) As for the address, if you don’t want to make it public, that’s perfectly fine. Simply provide the URL to your website and give readers another method of contacting you.If you’re using the Reedsy Book Editor: The RBE makes this easy (though currently you can’t use it to print disclaimers - that feature is coming soon). Head over to the â€Å"Book Settings† tab again and fill out the relevant fields so that the RBE can create an ‘extended’ page for you.Frequently Asked QuestionsWhere should the copyright page go in a book?In general, the copyright page goes in one of two places: the front or the back of the book.The most common approach is to put it on the verso (the reverse side) of the title page. If you’re uploading a PDF to KDP, that means that you should make sure that it comes right after the title page and just before the table of contents.Alternatively, you might decide to save the best for the end. If you go this route, it will be the final page of your book. Asked and answered: all you ever wanted to know about the copyright page in this post #selfpub How do you copyright a book?You might already own the copyright to your work the minute you create it, but registering that copyright is a different story altogether (and strongly recommended).To register your copyright, you’ll need to go to copyright.gov. For more details, read our guide that’s dedicated exclusively to guiding you through the copyright registration process.What else might you see on the copyright page?The information in our copyright page templates is specific to self-publishers. But if you’re morbidly curious about everything that goes onto the page in a traditionally published book, we can give you the nitty-gritty:Printer’s key: This is the mysterious string of numbers. But (sorry to disappoint) it’s not going to be the riddle of the Sphinx: the printing numbers simply point to the print run. The smallest number that you see indicates the printing. For example: if the smallest number is â€Å"3,† then that’s the th ird printing of that edition.CIP data: Otherwise known as Cataloguing-in-Publication data, this is the Library of Congress’ bibliographic record for a book. It’s not available to self-publishers - so it’s one thing that you don’t need to worry about.However you choose to write up this page is up to you. It all depends on what information you want to put out there for safe-keeping. That should be a breath of relief - there's no wrong way to go about it. That said, if you've got more questions about the subject, please give us a shout in the comments!Have additional questions about copyright? Leave us a comment. We'll answer straightaway.