Reader Question: Should I Copyright My Articles Or Not?

The choice is completely up to you, and you do have the option to include a copyright statement when you submit articles through our article submission service, SubmitYOURArticle.com.

If you want our advice though, we recommend that you leave the copyright statement turned off to maximize the effectiveness of your article submissions, because there are a some publishers who don't like it. So, not including a copyright statement increases the exposure your articles receive.

Let's be clear about something–not including a copyright statement does not mean that you relinquish ownership of your articles–you own your article content whether a copyright statement is listed or not.

As the author, you own the copyright to all of your articles, so publishers are not permitted to change your articles, other than basic formatting to suit their web site.

Leaving the copyright off does not donate the content to the public domain, although of course by using article marketing you do allow others to reprint your articles with your author name and resource box attached. Publishers cannot however, take the content and attach their own name as the author.

So, you do have the option to include a copyright statement if you like, but we recommend leaving the copyright off because you want your article to be picked up by as many publishers as possible (always with your name listed as the author and with your full resource box included). To be honest, I really think that those who are unscrupulous enough to steal content would not be deterred by a copyright statement anyway.  

But again, the choice is up to you.