Ask the Author: How do I share my work without having it stolen?

Dear Mandy,

How do I share my work without having it stolen?

The question isn’t really, how do I share my work without having it stolen? The real question is: What makes you think anyone wants to steal your work?

My answer: Oh, precious. Do you really think the word vomit you’ve dumped into your Google Doc is worth stealing?

Probably not. My rough drafts aren’t worth stealing either. As plenty of famous authors have said over the years, first drafts are garbage. (Or, to quote them more accurately, they’re shit.) You’re going to spend a long time revising that manuscript if you hope to make it worth reading. And if you’re sharing it with critique partners or beta readers, chances are you’ll be sharing it with several people who can all attest that the work is yours.

I mostly hear this concern from new writers who have heard urban legends about someone’s Great American Novel being stolen and published by somebody else who gets rich in their place. Personally, I don’t believe this happens nearly as often as people seem to think.

Look, writing a novel is a massive undertaking. I wouldn’t recommend handing your completed manuscript to random strangers on the internet. Have some common sense. But at the same time, I highly doubt someone is going to read your novel and think, “Excellent. I’ll spend the next year revising this, querying agents, signing contracts, and pretending I wrote it.” That’s a lot of work when they could just write their own book.

Could someone “steal” your idea? Sure. Sometimes it even happens completely by accident.

For example, I wrote a novel about a cat that’s a witch. The first time I brought a chapter to my writing workshop, one of the members was genuinely upset because he thought I’d stolen his idea. A few years earlier, he’d shared chapters from a novel he was writing about a cat that was a witch, and I’d completely forgotten about it. As far as he knew, I’d taken his premise and run with it.

After we talked, though, it became obvious that we were writing two entirely different books. His story and mine shared a surface-level concept, but everything else—the characters, plot, tone, and themes—was completely different. We were able to move past it. And by the way, you should read his novel. It’s pretty good.

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The truth is, ideas are cheap. Execution is what matters. In fact, my writing group has been playing with writing prompts for the past few months. More than once, two people have started with the exact same prompt and ended up writing stories that were completely unrecognizable from one another. Same seed. Totally different plants.

Can an idea legally be stolen? Not really. You can’t copyright an idea. Copyright protects the specific expression of an idea—not the concept itself. And honestly, even if you could copyright an idea, why would you want to? Two writers can start with the exact same premise and create stories that don’t resemble each other in the slightest. There are only so many plots in the world anyway. What makes your novel yours isn’t the premise—it’s your voice.

If you’re still genuinely worried about someone stealing your manuscript, there’s one simple thing you can do. Email yourself the latest draft. That’s it. Save the email. Now you have a timestamp showing you possessed that version of the manuscript on that date. It’s not magical legal protection, but it’s a simple way to document your work if you ever needed to establish a timeline.

Beyond that, writing requires trust. Choose critique partners carefully. Join reputable groups. Don’t hand your manuscript to every random person who asks for it. But don’t let fear keep you from getting the feedback you need, either.

Because here’s the thing: if you never share your writing, your book is far more likely to die on your hard drive than it is to be stolen. And that’s a much bigger tragedy.

This column is part of an ongoing Ask the Author series, where I answer questions from writers and readers about reading, writing, storytelling, and the creative process. If you have a question you’d like me to tackle in a future post, you can submit it through my contact page.

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