In a world the place sharing paperwork is commonplace, do you give a thought to easy methods to safeguard your manuscript earlier than you publish your guide?

In contrast to a report or an article draft, your guide manuscript is months, and even years, within the making. You might be most likely cautious to guard your manuscript by making common backups and saving it in a number of places, corresponding to cloud drives.

Nonetheless, sharing your laborious work on-line poses dangers. Try to be very cautious about controlling who has entry to or receives a duplicate of your manuscript.

Manuscript theft and copying may not be prime of thoughts for you, however it may well occur. That’s why studying easy methods to shield your manuscript is simply as essential as enhancing or formatting it.

Why safeguarding your manuscript issues

On the point of publish your new guide, particularly for first-time authors, is an thrilling time.

Nonetheless, among the steps concerned can include dangers. Maybe it is advisable to present a duplicate to an editor, proofreader, or potential writer. Fairly often, you may ship a number of copies to ARC (advance reader’s copy) readers.

You may additionally share copies with contacts on social media to behave as beta readers that can assist you get suggestions earlier than you publish.

Whereas all this sharing is with good intentions, the necessity for collaboration and sending your manuscript to strangers can include severe downsides.

Even for essentially the most cautious authors, working on-line opens the door to threats.

It’s really easy now for these with lower than good intent to repeat, plagiarize, and even publish the work of others.

You may not notice that trusting the improper beta reader or posting pattern chapters in on-line boards can result in bother.

On-line sharing has definitely made it simpler for authors to collaborate, but it surely has additionally launched potential pitfalls.

It’s a lot better to take just a few precautions to scale back the potential of your manuscript ending up within the improper palms.

You don’t must go overboard, however being conscious of the dangers will help you decrease the probabilities of your manuscript being copied or stolen.

 

Sensible suggestions for protected manuscript sharing

You possibly can’t lock your self away if you’re working on-line to get your guide prepared for publishing.

Nonetheless, you generally is a little extra cautious in how you’re employed and take precautions to assist restrict any doable misuse to maintain your manuscript protected.

Nothing is really 100% safe on the Web, however as a result of it’s now how all of us work, taking just a few further safety measures can scale back many dangers.

Listed here are some easy methods to safeguard your manuscript and maintain it protected whereas nonetheless collaborating on-line.

 

1. Keep away from e mail attachments

Though it’s handy, e mail is essentially the most insecure methodology of sharing precious paperwork.

It’s really easy to make a mistake and ship it to the improper individual, and even to a number of addresses. Additionally, the recipient can ahead your attachment to anybody.

A a lot better method is to make use of a safe file switch service. You’ll find many of those companies on-line, each free and paid.

I take advantage of a free, safe service for all my file transfers, and it really works completely.

 

2. Restrict who sees your work

If doable, it’s best to solely share your manuscript with folks you may belief. However that’s not at all times the case in case you want beta readers or critique companions.

The easiest way to handle the doable dangers is to maintain an correct file of everybody who you grant entry to your manuscript.

You can use a easy spreadsheet to maintain a file of the names, e mail addresses, and dates.

However at all times be in your guard, and keep away from giving full drafts, particularly in DOCX format, to anybody who you aren’t certain about.

Another choice is to arrange your manuscript in EPUB (or MOBI) book format. Then, beta readers don’t have the simple choice of copying a phrase processor file.

 

3. Use safe platforms

If you happen to use cloud storage companies, you may often management who can entry your paperwork.

Companies like Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive are most likely the preferred.

It’s a handy method to limit who can view or obtain your manuscript.

You may as well discover specialised manuscript-sharing companies on-line; nonetheless, these are not often free.

 

4. Set permissions and passwords

At any time when you may, limit downloading, printing, or enhancing of your doc.

You may as well password-protect to safe your manuscript. Most phrase processors have this feature.

If you happen to’re sending copies of your guide in PDF, you would add a watermark to each web page together with your identify to discourage unauthorized sharing.

You may additionally add model numbers that can assist you observe who has a selected draft.

 

5. Keep away from public oversharing

By no means publish full chapters or in depth sections of your manuscript on-line, even in writing communities or boards.

Sharing excerpts or summaries shouldn’t be actually an issue, however chapters may be copied or distributed with out your realizing.

Social media is by far essentially the most dangerous, so be very cautious about what you publish.

 

Manuscript theft can occur

Whereas it’s not one thing that happens typically on a big scale, it may well occur.

One such story concerned a former worker of Simon & Schuster who used a classy e mail phishing technique to steal over 1,000 unpublished manuscripts of many well-known authors.

Right here’s a quote from an article within the Guardian in 2023.

“At some point, I created a spoof e mail tackle for somebody I knew of within the publishing trade, and I despatched an e mail to another person that I knew of asking for a pre-publication manuscript,” Bernardini stated in his assertion. “I wrote within the model and utilizing the language that my former colleagues had used. When that request was profitable, from that second on, this behaviour grew to become an obsession, a compulsive behaviour.”

It’s some time in the past, however in 2015 the manuscript for the Fifty Shades of Gray prequel was stolen by burglars.

Extra not too long ago, a Reddit publish highlighted that the hazard of manuscript theft continues to be very actual. Right here’s a partial quote from the publish.

“A mutual of mine, (sic) who writes modern romance, had her guide stolen by an ARC reader, translated into Italian, the ending altered, after which uploaded to Amazon Italy. The thief even created an Instagram account to market the stolen guide—utilizing paintings the creator had commissioned.
So sure, guide theft can occur.”

One other story highlights the safety of your gadgets. The singer-songwriter, Lana Del Rey, had her laptop computer stolen and needed to take fast motion to stop her manuscript from being accessed.

“I needed to remotely wipe the pc that had my 200-page guide for Simon & Schuster, which I didn’t have backed up on a cloud.”

It may not occur to you, however these fast excerpts ought to immediate you to be in your guard to stop manuscript theft.

 

Avoiding the sharing traps

You possibly can comply with all the information I’ve famous above, but it surely’s nonetheless simple to make errors.

The most typical is trusting somebody on-line who you don’t know. You is perhaps so targeted on discovering beta readers that you simply let your guard down.

It solely takes one individual to share your manuscript with out your permission to jeopardize your publishing plans. As I discussed earlier, in case you can ship your beta readers an book copy, it’s safer than an open phrase processor file.

One other lure may be posting too many excerpts on-line, pondering it’s not an enormous deal. Generally, even one or two chapters may be sufficient for plagiarism or to draw shady operators.

With AI immediately, it’s not inconceivable that somebody might use AI to draft a full novel, in your writing model, out of your pattern chapters.

Fundamental safety is usually simple to miss. It’s best to not less than have your manuscript password-protected, even when the one copy is the one in your laptop computer.

Lastly, it’s best to actually keep away from emailing your manuscript, as it’s the best method to lose management. Whether it is unavoidable, not less than ship a password-protected model, and ship the recipient the password through an SMS message.

Taking care to safeguard your manuscript is as a lot about logic as it’s about on-line safety.

All the time test and consider who actually wants entry. Set clear boundaries in your sharing, and if you’re in any doubt, it’s higher to be protected than sorry.

Keep in mind, safeguarding your manuscript is about utilizing logic in addition to safety instruments.

 

Abstract

If you happen to comply with among the precautions I’ve talked about, you may share, collaborate, and get suggestions with out an excessive amount of threat.

However safeguarding your work doesn’t imply it’s best to isolate your self or keep offline.

It solely signifies that it’s best to make deliberate decisions about who can entry your manuscript, and the way and after they can.

Even taking simple, easy steps like password-protecting your information or limiting entry can stop issues and safeguard your manuscript.

You solely must ask your self this query. Do I actually need to share my manuscript with this individual?

 

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