Your Work Is Not Safe | What you should know before self publishing

3 🛑 So What Now?

So I trust you have gone and googled your works, or the works of an author you know.

And you have identified that your work has been plagiarised in some shape way or form?

Well, We have two categories.
Here is the first:

If you have been a gem and done the searching for an author you might frequent, or perhaps you have stumbled across a work you know is from elsewhere.

If the site has the option, I would report the work.

However many don't have this function, or conveniently, the site will ask you to create an account, to do so. This is just me, but I would NOT recommend doing this, as it only supports them, and makes it harder for sites to be taken down.

There is one thing you MUST do, and that is:

If you find works, please reach out to that writer, and provide them the details of which one of their works are affected, and where they can find the offending material.

This is the best thing you can do, as action must be taken, and that must be done by the person of whom the content belongs to, or by an authorised person that the author appoints (in writing).

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First of all, I'm so sorry. I know how sick you feel. I am going to try and make this as smooth as I can for you.

Step 1, will be to take a deep breath. This process will not be rectified in an hour, or even a day. Let's just start with what we can do, before we can get to the reporting stage.

1 | Identify what Copyright you used in your work

I don't know much about the other kinds of copyright, but this is what I'm hoping yours states:

© All Rights Reserved

You can check this by either going into your story and looking at the Edit Story tab in your editing profile:

Or, by looking at the bottom of the published outline of your book, under the blurb, and above the tags.

2 | Identify where the violation has occurred

Has another user on Wattpad (or another platform that matches the one you originally posted on) breached your copyright?

Or have you found your work on another site entirely?

This is very important, as it will determine which avenue you will be able to take in (hopefully) getting your problem rectified.

3 | Take Dated Screenshots For Evidence

Navigate to your piece of stolen content, and take as many screenshots that have a date either in the photo, or with a date of when it was taken, as evidence. This is a very legal area, and god knows, you can't have too little. Look, just cover your ass. Less is not more. The more you have, the more chance you will have at not missing anything in future.

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Try to include the extent of how much has been taken (i.e., which chapters [eg. in the book I have been using as an example, I had a total of 173 chapters reposted, so I screenshotted the table of contents showing all chapters, and the date that said it had been uploaded 11 months ago], also include the person who uploaded it, and include screenshots of your legitimen works on Wattpad or corresponding site. Include the same information. The dates you posted, your access to these, and anything else your paranoid self wonders if might be relevant).

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God-o. *sigh*

Okay, now that we have determined these things, let's move on to how we can start taking action.

Eve~
♡

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