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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/28243
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I hear this worry from many beginning writers. Often the question includes something along the lines of "What legal steps can I take to protect my work from being stolen?".

Here's my capsule advice to new authors: Don't worry about it. There are a million would-be authors out there, all competing for attention. Your problem is NOT that someone will steal your work. Your problem is that no one will care about your work. Worry about writing a story good enough that someone would bother to steal it.

I'm not saying that your work isn't any good. I haven't seen anything you've written besides this post. Your work may be brilliant. But agents and publishers just aren't in the business of stealing a writer's work. Almost all first novels by a new author lose money. You have to be an established writer, at least a little bit "famous", before your books are really worth something. The only way a publisher will make money off of you is if you write a series of successful books for them. And you're not likely to do that if they cheat you on your first book. They have far more to lose by stealing someone's work and getting caught than they are likely to make off a stolen story by an unknown writer.

Does it ever happen? Sure. I know someone stole my work at least once: an article I wrote was stolen and offered for sale on one of those "research assistance" web sites, where students can buy someone else's work to submit it as their own as a term paper. I wasn't paid for the original article, so if the thieves sold even one copy, they made more money off of it than I did. Do you know what I did about it? Absolutely nothing. It wasn't worth the trouble.

Original score: 15