Best Business Practices for Photographers [157]
You may submit an application and payment in eCO and then create and print a shipping slip to be attached to the hard copy(ies) of your work for delivery to the Copyright Office via mail/courier.
You should see a Payment Confirmation screen upon completion of payment
(if not, refer to the Troubleshooting section). Click the "Submit your work" button toward the top of the page.
Click the Send by Mail link in the Deposit Submission table.
Click the Shipping Slip link that appears in the Attachments table to generate a shipping slip to be attached to your work(s).
The shipping slip includes the correct mailing address and zip code for the class of work(s) being registered. To avoid misrouting, please be sure to attach a shipping slip directly to each work or set of works that you submit.
Eventually, programs such as Adobe Lightroom, Apple's Aperture, Microsoft's Expression Media, and others will all have plug-ins that will allow you to submit your registration from within the application, and the software will handle the uploads. Once that situation arises, I can see myself and many others fully embracing the eCO.
As the eCO continues to evolve, I want to encourage you to visit www.copyright.gov/eco/index.html. There you will find the main page for the eCO website. Near the top of the page, you will find an eCO Tutorial PDF that will show you the most current capabilities, as well as step-by-step instructions for exactly how to use the eCO system.
Registration: How to Register Your Work Systematically
This section provides an example of how we register my work using the Form VA. I encourage you to consider whether this registration method will be similar to yours, because this system might demystify the problems photographers have with filling out the forms. This system and the thoughts behind it will easily translate to the new eCO in terms of file naming, registration titles, and so on. For a vast majority of registrants who shoot on assignment, Figure 17.1 shows approximately the way the front side of your Form VA will look. You can download this version at my website: www.Best-Business-Practices.com/form_va_sample.pdf.
The document also includes comments as a form of "stickies" that will give you guidance as to how to enter the fields.
Figure 17.1
Figure 17.2 shows the first field you'll enter (and this is one that will change with each registration—more on that later in this chapter). This field is for the title of your work. Here's mine. I will go into detail as to why I've titled the work this way later in the chapter.
Figure 17.2
Figure 17.3 shows the second field you'll enter—the nature of the work. Technically, you'd just need to write "Photographs"; however, if you are doing a group registration (that is, a registration of works published on more than one day) and using this form, copyright regulations require that you'll need to use the two words "Group Registration" at some point within this Section 1. I have chosen this area of Section 1 because it makes the most sense. I have also chosen to include the quantity of images I am registering. Note that although I refer to them as "images," the copyright office best recognizes the word "photographs." The one caveat is that you'll need to modify the PDF that the copyright office makes available to allow for two lines—one for that text and then a second line that indicates the quantity and type, if you choose to do that. To do this, you'll only need to open the blank PDF once and change the field information. I have done this already, and you can download it from the aforementioned link.
Figure 17.3
Fig 17.4 is fairly straightforward—type your name.Figure 17.5 is also fairly straightforward.
Figure 17.4