As a freelance writer, ideas are your bread and butter. Getting a commission means revealing your idea for a great article to an editor or someone else. There's no way around it, but how can you prevent people from ripping you off? Here's what you need to know about UK copyright law.

In the UK, copyright is an automatic and unregistered right. That means there's no need to apply specially or fill in any forms. Copyright takes effect as soon as certain works (this term applies to all copyright protected material) are created and there are nine types of work that enjoy this automatic protection. These are literary work (including newspaper articles), dramatic, musical, artistic (photos, drawings, diagrams, maps etc), sound recordings, films, broadcasts, cable programmes and published editions of works. All of these are known as intellectual property. Intellectual property is a bit like real estate - it can be bought, sold, transferred and inherited, though only with your written permission.

The key thing to remember as a writer is that ideas themselves are not protected but the way ideas are expressed is protected. So if you think of an idea for an article, that isn't protected; when you write it, it is. It's the information you select and the way you arrange that information that makes it unique.

In order for material to have copyright protection it has to result from independent intellectual effort. In other words, you must have put some work into it. You'll need to be able to prove this if challenged, so although it's not obligatory, you can protect yourself by sending a copy of your work to yourself by recorded delivery and leaving it unopened. Recorded delivery post is date stamped so you'll be able to prove that your work existed on a particular date.

Copyright lasts for the duration of the author?s life plus 70 years for literary, dramatic or musical works. Different periods apply for films (70 years after the last to die of the director, screenplay authors and musical director), sound recordings (50 years) and published editions (25 years). People are allowed to publish excerpts from your copyrighted work for the purpose of news, review or criticism. This is known as fair dealing. Works used in this way should be properly acknowledged.

When you give someone the right to publish your work, you are assigning that right temporarily (a bit like renting out your house). As a writer, you'll want to avoid signing away any of your rights permanently. Instead, be clear on what rights you are assigning. First serial rights are normal. This gives the publisher the right to publish your material first in whatever country or region (for example, the UK or US) the rights apply to. Once the material has been published, all rights revert to you. Some publishers will also request online rights and the right to keep your work in an online archive. You'll want to make sure these rights are for a limited period or are non-exclusive, so you can make the most of your material.

A key term to be aware of is moral right. This is the right to be credited as the author (have a byline) and to object to alterations or errors which might damage your reputation (known as derogatory treatment of your work). It also includes the right not to have work falsely attributed to you. In other words, no one should say you wrote something if you didn't.

So what do you do if someone tries to pass off something you've written as their own work? If your copyright has been breached you can take the infringer to court but beware. There are two things that could damage your case. The first is if the person commits innocent infringement, which means the person genuinely didn't know you owned the copyright; the second is if you have previously allowed someone to use copyrighted work without complaint. This is known as acquiescence.

Summary

So there you have it: the lowdown on UK copyright law. In essence, freelance writers need to be aware that their written work enjoys automatic copyright protection, that they are entitled to be credited as the author of any work they right, that they should only assign limited rights to their work and that they have the right to sue if their copyright is infringed.

Sharon Hurley Hall is a freelance writer, ghostwriter and editor. Sharon worked in publishing for 18 years, writing articles and editing and designing books and magazines. She has also lectured on journalism. For more information or to contact Sharon, visit http://www.doublehdesign.com/

Sharon Hurley Hall may be contacted at http://www.doublehdesign.com

Children's Gate
by J.L. Bailey

Nathan Adams and his younger brother Jared and twin sisters Jenna and Sophia are your typical small town children. That is, until they are abducted by an evil wizard and brought to another world where magic rules. This family has something of value, something that could prove to be fatal to all of them, and they must discover what it is and find a way to escape before it is too late.

With the help of some interesting new friends they meet along the way the children begin to uncover clues as to why they were brought to this world in the first place, and the major role they are playing in the war between good and evil. Children's Gate is a coming of age story that takes you back to the insecurities and fears of childhood and the joy of pure imagination that resides within all of us!

Secrets of the North Table
by Alan Hafer

When Adam Roberts decides to find out if his nightmares are connected to his past, he returns to his childhood home. He never suspects he will find bodies buried in a secret tomb, learn everything he has been told about his family's history was a lie, and discover hidden secrets so explosive his own relatives will kill to keep them buried. Thus begins a quest that leads Adam and the woman he loves into a web of lies spun for more than one hundred years. But finding out what's in the family closet could prove fatal.

Understanding himself means he must uncover the past his family had buried. Instead of an immigrant farmer, his grandfather had been the son of a legendary outlaw leader of the Old West. His grandmother, a quiet woman whose kitchen had always smelled of freshly baked bread, had been suspected by her husband of being a murderess. And then Adam discovers he has a granduncle he never knew existed who will stop at nothing to keep him from learning any more about the murders.

Following the Flame
by Greg Lautenslager

I had run around this track hundreds of times - in my mind…

In only minutes, a gunshot would send me onto the footsteps of Steve Prefontaine. My spikes would touch the same holes he made in this surface en route to an American Record and touching off a thunderous chant of "Pre! Pre! Pre!" heard from the surrounding green hills to the rocky Oregon coast.

I took a breath and closed my eyes as I reached the starting line. For a moment, I felt like I was home.

Jonny Langenfelder will do whatever it takes to make the Olympics. He will run 150 miles per week through duststorms or snowstorms, endure the torment of crazed coaches and bizarre teammates, flip burgers, wash dishes, and live in a van or a basement or with the two people who tell him he is wasting his time - his parents. Follow Jonny on a whirlwind journey that will take you around the world and into the locker rooms, hotels, stadiums, bars, and training ground of some great and not-so-great athletes, and inside the mind of a high-spirited runner who battles to stay on the straight path - no matter what temptation or tragedy threatens to keep him from reaching his goal.

This study guide is the academic companion to Brian Connolly's Wolf Journal.

Set in the Allegheny Mountains of northern Pennsylvania, farm boy Jimmy Warren finds wolf tracks in the snow — even though no wolves have been in these woods for a hundred years. The tracks lead him deeper into his passion for nature guided by Hawk, an old Susquehannock storyteller.

Along the way, Jimmy falls in love with the beautiful Sherry Woolman who shares his love of the wild. As a school project, Jimmy keeps a journal on wolves. In order to protect the wolf he discovered, Jimmy writes about him as if he is fiction. The Tanner brothers, a derelict pair of would-be bounty hunters, threaten to destroy the perfect balance of nature that Jimmy has found. "Wolf Journal" is a journey into the natural world where intricate details, like the imprint of a wing in snow, tell a larger story — one of endangered species, an endangered planet, and the human spirit that strives to understand and protect.

This is the story of a young girl growing up during World War II. Her experiences begin in Estonia occupied by the Soviet Union and their German liberation. We follow her along her flight from her homeland into Czechoslovakia, then further still after the Russian takeover of Eastern Europe. This is a story of coming to grips with the facts of life, as Mia is severed from her beloved homeland, her family, and her lovers.

It is year 142 of the German World Empire as reckoned from 1933 when Adolf Hitler became German Chancellor and the vilified Nazi regime was born. Dr. James Silverthorne is also a seasoned time traveler vetted to conduct retrotemporal research in selective epochs of the past. James plays the key role in a desperate conspiracy designed to obliterate Deutschesweltanreich in retrospect via a clandestine return to wartime Berlin to locate and hopefully thwart the efforts of Nazi hero of heroes Erich Lustmann, a former SS officer sent back to 1939 decades after the war by Odessa SS exiles in Argentina.

A postwar "secret weapon" unknown to the allies, the Lebe Technique developed by a Nazi theoretical physicist permits Lustmann's successful dispatch into the past. Armed with prescient knowledge of wartime events, he somehow influences and rectifies the action-decisions of the Nazi hierarchy, and thus enables the Third Reich to become the World War II victor, not the vanquished. Fearing his "mission impossible" is precisely that, Silverthorne nevertheless pursues his world-changing crusade in an exciting time travel adventure that is grand in scope as well as purpose.

This work is an account of one who was born in the 1930s, saddled with a surging libido, and who, in the winter of his life, looks back fondly. Confessions is a story that will cause the reader to laugh out loud at both the joy and the foibles of man's unbridled pursuit of sex. Except for locations and times, men and women across generations will be able to identify with the story.

The main character, in this story, is guided through life by his most private part, to which he refers as 'Little Willie.' Our hero's Mother, redneck Father, and the Reverend Gavin serve to temper only slightly the ache in our hero's groin. This could be viewed as a poor man's Passages, designed to tickle ones funny bone and to expose the vagaries of an oversupply of testosterone. In the prose of Arthur Elmo's Formative years, Southern dialect serves to validate the events and the culture of that era.

Have you ever known someone who has been sexually abused? Do you think they’d be conscious of the effects these childhood perversions might have on adult behavior? Do you ever question what could possibly motivate the bizarre acts you learn about your friends and neighbors who appear so normal? Then you'll want to meet Corky!

Fear grips Seattle! It's clear a deranged serial killer is on the loose in Seattle, but the police are stumped when MO patterns just don't jive. There are few clues, except a possibility the perpetrator drives a dirty white van. Who is committing these heinous acts?

Detective Frank Murphy gets the nod to head up the task force. Vulnerable and unnerved by the reminiscence of his own daughter's death, his life is going to hell in a hand basket anyway, but if he can get this killer off the streets it might give him some closure.

At the end of each yoga class, the students lie in Shavasana, the Corpse Pose. "Practice being dead," the teacher says. But what if they actually ARE dead? Is it the all too powerful Power Yoga that kills the students of this eccentric little Yoga Studio in San Francisco one by one?

After her yoga teacher gets arrested, Lily, a not completely assimilated Swiss immigrant, investigates. Not only the mystery of the deadly Corpse Pose, but also her own history, brought to her in an urn by a man she hardly knows - her father.