“There’s nothing new under the Sun.”
– King Solomon

The short answer to your question is that spending alot of time worrying about how to protect your book concept is a waste of time.

It would be easy to recommend the use of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) or NDNCAs and having people sign them each time you share your book concept. It would make people liable if they shared or used your concept without your permission. On the real, I wouldn’t bother with that approach. You’ll probably come off like you’re suffering from delusions of grandeur if you did.

For what it’s worth, it seems like the lurking fear of the Dastardly Idea Snatcher is almost always connected to writers who either (1) have been writing (with the intention of getting published) for less than a year, (2) haven’t finished their first book/novel yet or (3) haven’t ever had their work picked up by a paying publisher. The times that I’ve had writers submit manuscripts for my review and they were rabidly paranoid about ‘theft’, more often than not their concept was structurally unusable, the story was a slice of their life thinly disguised as fiction, or their writing was straight up garbage and it’d be too expensive to pay some editors to fix it.

Here are some down-n-dirty truths about book concepts:

• No matter how fantastic you might think your book concept is, the reality is that 99.98% of the serious writers you tell about it won’t try to steal it. It’s not because everyone is honest and well-meaning. More often than not, it’s because they really don’t care. They might pretend to care or they’re listening only because they care about you and what you have to say. When it comes to book concepts, every seasoned writer has at least several of them swimming around in their heads that they plan to turn into a book one day, not including the concepts they’ve already started writing or put down in notes form. Whether they say so or not, most writers like to believe that their book ideas are better than almost everyone else’s. In their minds stealing your concept would be like a diamond miner trying to steal a cubic zirconia. Aside from that, on the occasions where writers seek to copy book concepts its usually due to the fact that a certain book or story type has enjoyed huge commercial success and they want to cash in on some of that money. The music industry does the same thing, hence the reason why it seems like everytime a Beyonce hits the scene and skyrockets up the charts, at least two or three Rhiannas and Ciarras will pop up with the same style songs and videos, all from competing record labels.
• Another reality is that if you’re spending alot of time describing very intimate details of your book concept to friends/family/other writers, you’re not spending enough time actually writing it. There’s a reason that writing is a very solitary kind of activity and it’s not because writers have to be anti-social. Writing a book is nowhere near as much fun as the emotional high of bragging about the story you’re writing. Also, talking about ideas over and over again have a way of taking the magic and creative steam out of your drive to put in the work to make it happen, especially if you’re discussing it with people that don’t believe in you or don’t really know what it is to write a book. When asked about a book you’re working on, unless you’re talking to an agent or acquisitions editor, keep the talk pretty general and minimal, no matter how much you want to tell the world about your master work in progress. Think about it like this — don’t spend much time talking about your book because it has no dollar value until the manuscript is finished.
• Your book concept is your vision. If you’re meant to write it, no one is going to write the story like you’re going to write it.
• “The Poor Man’s Copyright” (mailing a copy to yourself) does NOT work so don’t even bother doing it. When you finish your manuscript and it’s edited, go to http://www.copyright.gov, download Form TX, fill it out, put a copy of the manuscript along with the $45 dollar registration fee in an Express Mail envelope and send it in. The Copyright is legally binding as of the postmark of when it’s mailed; 4-6 weeks later you’ll get the copyright form back with a certification seal on it. Again, a complete waste of time to think about until you’ve FINISHED a manuscript because you can’t copyright or trademark a book concept.
• And as far as the worry about being sued because of inspiration, stop worrying about silly stuff — finish the book first. An editor can always help you go back in later to clean things up.

Good luck on the quest…

– Max Nomad

(Originally written as a response I posted to the Publish-L email list)

> I’m putting my head up over the
> trench and risking being shot down again. We all prepare Business
> Plans which we spend a lot of time and money on.
> …snip…
> The original loan applicant can be
> turned away but the plans (or a copy) stay in the files. They are a
> valuable asset to the right person and that person is the one who
> will pay a handsome kickback for the information. This could be your
> book marketing plan and details of its unique plot and characters.
> Maybe even a complete manuscript.

First and foremost, I don’t know international law, I’m definitely not a lawyer, and you should seek legal counsel in your area for specifics. With all those disclaimers out of the way, here in the U.S. there are several ways to protect yourself from something like this although this kind of theft is pretty uncommon with banks.

1. A Non-Disclosure Non-Circumvention Agreement (NDNCA). For anyone that is unfamiliar with this, a Non-Disclosure basically a document between two or more parties that is used to give the owner/preparer legal recourse if the other party doesn’t keep what is seen or read confidential. The Non-Circumvention addition keeps the same party from “going around you” to use this information.
2. Although the NDNCA is usually presented as a separate document it is also possible to tie it directly into your Business Plan. At the advice of a Corporate Attorney that had retired from AT&T, we added a “Restricted Use” page right after the Title Page where we placed all the Non-Disclosure/Non-Circumvention verbiage. We then placed a disclaimer in the footer of every page basically stating that all content on that page was subject to what was set down in the Restricted Use page.

As far as banks stealing business ideas from the average Loan Applicant, I won’t say it can’t happen — but it’s a long shot. For starters, and this is going to sound pretty warped, but banks here in the U.S. generally won’t loan a small business money UNLESS IT DOESN’T NEED IT.

Yes, you read that right. According to a friend of a friend, a Loan Officer who took pity on me once upon a time, explained it best:

• The average small business loan applicant might prepare a Business Plan that is decent (or even above average) but, more often than not, their Financial spreadsheets fall woefully short.
• Thinking that a smaller loan is better to ask for, the average applicant will request an amount of money for a startup that would get it classified as “undercapitalized” which, from a bank’s standpoint means two things: (1) the venture stands a better chance of failure and (2) they won’t make any money off the interest. This is why many of your larger banks have shyed away from doing micro-loans.
• Many loan applicants are coming to the bank with a business that has no financial track-record. As a result, in order to be considered for the loan the business owner would have to have adequate personal assets to put up as collateral. A house. Cars. Boats. First born children.

As far as bank managers stealing business concepts, the reality is that most business plans are just high-level descriptions of what’s going to happen and how, who is going to be involved, and some early growth milestones toward profitability. They don’t tell HOW to make a product or how to adequately manage a service’s day-to-day operations. They might discuss trends in an industry but they don’t show how to spot and navigate the business through them. Simply put, just because you give an Astronomer a set of plans that doesn’t mean s/he can become a successful Astronaut.

And last but not least, to tie it into the Publishing Game, according to that associate I mentioned earlier, many lending institutions (at least here in the U.S.) tend to have very little regard for Small Publishers. Every book is a gamble. Profit these days is just a numbers game. Because we don’t need to have our own printing presses or distribution vehicles to be successful, our liquid assets are a joke — basically some used office furniture, computers, software, books, archives of digital media, unsold inventory, and maybe a website. If the average small publisher goes out of business there’s nothing for a bank to use to recoup for losses. In many cases there isn’t even enough worth selling to pay for someone to take the remaining assets to auction.

Just some more food for thought…

–  Max Nomad

When it comes to growing a small business, “Branding” is much like that elusive Great American Novel – people love to talk about writing a book one day, some even learn a little about wthe mechanics of good writing, but no one knows how many untold stories remain lofty goals compared to those that actually make it into print.

Ask a 3-year old boy to recite the alphabet and he may miss a letter here and there — but ask him to pick out Spongebob Squarepants or Dora the Explorer and he’ll get it right every time. Ask a 26-year old man to name four people he voted for in the last election and he probably can’t tell you; ask him to name a social website he uses these days and he’ll probably say Facebook, Twitter or Myspace without a second thought. Ask a 52-year old Business Owner to give you the name of an off-the-shelf Accounting program and s/he will probably say Quickbooks or Peachtree. Whether a consumer is 4 or 84-years old, everyone living in modern civilization is conditioned to live in a branded world. One of the biggest mistakes small businesses make is believing that somehow branding doesn’t apply to them or their products and services. This plays a huge part in why many of them fail.

Throughout my Graphic Design career I’ve worked with many types of businesses ranging in size from a startup Ostrich farm to car dealership chains to Fortune 1000 companies. Along the way I’ve seen how giants can be taken down by mosquitoes, misfits can become moguls, and smart design — along with strategic marketing — can turn water to wine, even on a shoestring budget.

A brand, by definition, is an identifiable entity that makes specific promises of value.

• Identifiable — can be easily picked out from similar things. Typically this is done with something visual like a symbol (a logo).
• Entity — something with a separate, distinct existence.
• Specific Promises — the claims that a product or service makes, such as FedEx with their on-time delivery, Altoids “œcuriously strong” breath mints, etc. These claims are promises to the consumer.

At the start of every client logo design project I stare at a blank sheet — whether it is a piece of paper or a blank drawing board on my screen — then visualize myself in the Arena Scenario: I imagine that I’m one of my client’s typical customers standing in the middle of an arena packed with thousands of people. They’re all from companies that provide the same products and services that my client does. All of them are reaching out to me and calling my name. Who do I go to — and why?

As strange as it may seem, I consider it a sort of 21st century Zen Koan, a question or riddle intended to open mental perceptions to new truths behind the everyday images of reality. It may take years to arrive at a single possible answer because koans don’t have right or wrong answers. With the Arena Scenario, each creative project always determines how I visualize it. For example, if I’m creating a logo design, color scheme, and motif for a client’s company image, I picture myself as standing in the middle of that arena completely deaf and illiterate, solely relying on what images and symbols I see. If I am writing copy for a corporate profile or a website, I am blindfolded and mute, relying on the power of the words I hear. I use this method because it helps me abstract my thinking enough to connect with many of those things that help the client connect with their customer base.

Ancient Egyptian, Greek and Israeli pottery artisans used it. Feudal Japanese swordsmiths used it. Blacksmiths throughout Europe and Colonial America used it. Cattle breeders throughout the Wild West right on up to Henry Ford and the early car manufacturers used it. Why? Because branding creates an emotional bond between products and services to those who sell them. It also creates a feeling of involvement with a sense of higher intangible qualities that surround the brand name and logo. To put it into beter perspective, think of it as that same feeling we usually get when we see familiar (but unknown) faces in our favorite spot and finally get an opportunity to introduce ourselves to each other. Suddenly what was just an overlooked part of the scenery has become a real person, someone worth getting to know better. In this context, the rest is up to us to keep making great impressions each time we meet. That, my friends, is the point most small businesses overlook — familiar, trustworthy relationships — the simple secret behind why branding has worked for thousands of years.

(more to come on this later)

– Max Nomad