The question is pretty much what the title is. I do know that all intellectual property is protected by copyright law from the moment of it's creation. I have backed up my work with several methods, some of which are fairly paranoid. On every book there is a copyright page and usually it says:
"Copyright C #### by blah blah blah inc."
Since I am self-publishing I need to know what I should put on my copyright page.
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:
I list these items, which identify the publication and publisher:
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
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
Legally, in the US that page is unnecessary.
Since April 1 1989 the copyright notice has become obsolete in the US and you no longer need to register your copyright. You automatically own the copyright in your work upon creation. Today, the sole purpose of the copyright notice is to tell anyone interested in using your content who they need to contact to ask for permission. Works without copyright notice are still copyrighted. The only difference is that you don't easily know by whom.
In the UK and German speaking countries, the publisher of the book must be given (so that that everyone knows whom to sue if the content is illegal). This "imprint" is not necessary in the US.
From a legal perspective, that page can be blank or contain whatever you please, without any disadvantage to you.
This is what I learned from reading legal advice on the net. It may be wrong. So ask a lawyer. Doing business without legal advice is not recommended.
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 $50. 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.
