: What do I put on my copyright page when self-publishing? The question is pretty much what the title is. I do know that all intellectual property is protected by copyright law from the moment

Are you asking simply about the copyright statement, or about all that stuff that gets put on the copyright page?

If you're just worried about the copyright statement: Put "Copyright 2015 by Fred Smith", filling in whatever the year is that you first publish your book, and your name.

It is a very good idea to register your copyright. As you said you are in the U.S., you do that with the U.S. copyright office, copyright.gov. For a book it costs . You have to fill out a form that's fairly long but not difficult. Mostly it's obvious stuff, like name of the author, title of the book, etc. Unless someone else paid you to write it, it is NOT a "work for hire". If you included material created by someone else -- like you include a quote from George Washington or the lyrics of a pop song -- then whether you got explicit permission, or whether you are relying on the "fair use doctrine", you have to specify just what was created by you that your are claiming copyright to, and what was created by others. Like my last book included a bunch of Bible quotes, so I had to specify that I am not claiming that I wrote the Bible. (Presumably the folks at the copyright office know that, but there are plenty of cases where it would not be so obvious.)

If you mean the whole copyright page: I think the easiest answer is to say, look at copyright pages in other books, and see what sort of things they include. Typically you'll include your own copyright notice, the ISBN and LCCN if you have one, and disclaimers for material you used that you did not write yourself.

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First: I am not a lawyer.
Purchase a copy of the indispensable The Copyright Handbook.
It is very readable and very informative.

On my copyright information pages,
I include four kinds of information:

Publication info
Copyright notices
Warning statement
Fiction disclaimer

Publication Info

I list these items, which identify the publication and publisher:

Book title
Publisher name
Publisher URL
ISBN

Copyright Notices

I include copyright notices for the text, cover design, cover art, and (for paperbacks) interior design.

© 2014 by Dale Hartley Emery

Cover design © 2014 by Driscoll Brook Press

Cover art © Garuti | Dreamstime.com

Warning Statement

Next comes a warning statement:
An explanatory statement about the copyrights:

All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

According to The Copyright Handbook,
that first sentence--all rights reserved--is no longer necessary,
but it's still common.

For ebooks, I insert an additional warning statement above the standard one:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.
If you would like to share this book with another person,
please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.
If you're reading this book and did not purchase it,
or it was not purchased for your use only,
then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy.
Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Fiction Disclaimer

I end the page with this fiction disclaimer:

This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents
are either the products of the author's imagination
or used in a fictitious manner.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events
is purely coincidental.

It is unclear whether such disclaimers have any useful legal effect.

Placement of the Copyright Information Page

For paperbacks,
I place the copyright information page on the back of the title page.

For ebooks,
I include a few copyright details at the bottom of the title page:

Copyright notice for the text.
A link to the full copyright information page.

Then I put the full copyright information page at the end of the book.
The reason I do this is that many book retailers
automatically create samples.
The samples are typically a percentage of the book
(calculated by proprietary algorithms).
The automatically created samples
always start at the beginning of the book.

I don't want readers who sample my books to have to wade through
the copyright details.

And I don't want the copyright page to take up valuable space
in the sample.
Now, for many books,
the copyright page doesn't take much space.
But I often publish standalone stories as short as 3000 words.
The copyright page eats up too much of the sample space for those.
I'd rather have readers reading my thrilling prose.

Variations

Take a look at the copyright pages of a few traditionally published books.
They all include similar kinds of information,
though the specific statements and wording vary considerably.

Again, I don't know the specific legal effects of these variations.

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If you're self-publishing and not doing it through a company, use your real name: "Copyright (C) 2015 John Doe". Under the Berne Convention (which applies in most countries), you own the copyright from the moment of creation until you assign it away. You have no need to assign it away, so you don't need a company there.

You could set up a sole-proprietorship corporation if you want something there that looks like a publishing company instead of a person, but that's a lot of work for little gain. Unless you're setting up such a company anyway for financial reasons, I suggest you just stick with your name. That way it's easier to prove that you're the copyright owner if you're ever involved in a dispute.

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