Fill in your book's details and copy a clean, conventional copyright page for the front matter of your self-published book. Below it, a second tool answers the question that trips up anthologists and quoters: is that older work in the US public domain yet?
Your copyright page
Untitled Copyright © 2026 Author Name All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Self-published by the author. First edition
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Quoting or adapting an older work? Enter its US publication year. Rules follow the Cornell (Hirtle) copyright term chart.
This is general information, not legal advice. Rules shown are for works published in the United States; unpublished works, sound recordings and foreign works follow different rules. When money or reputation is on the line, consult a publishing attorney.
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The core is one line: the word copyright or the symbol, the year of first publication and the owner's name. US copyright exists automatically from the moment you fix the work in tangible form, so the page does not create your rights; it declares them and tells the world who to ask for permission. The customary extras are the all-rights-reserved statement, a review-quotes exception so critics can quote you without writing in, the fiction disclaimer that fends off "that character is clearly my ex" letters, the publisher imprint, the ISBN and the edition line.
The rules are taken from the Cornell University LibraryCopyright Term and the Public Domain chart(the Hirtle chart), the standard reference librarians use. For works published in the United States:
General information, not legal advice. Unpublished works, sound recordings and works first published abroad follow different rules; see the Cornell chart for the full matrix.
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