Copyright for Authors
Many writers worry about how to copyright their work, and there is a good deal of mis-information, and assumption made about copyright.
Under UK law the Intellectual Property rights to any created work automatically belong to the person who created the work. This means that copyright on your writing automatically belongs to you. It is not necessary to register your work to protect it.
Copyright rests with the writer (or work creator) until such time as they assign or sell the rights.
A common misonception, (and a regular hoax!) is that what you post online is no longer copyright. This is not true - the rights to your work still remain yours, but posting online gives many people access, and many of those people assume this means that the work is not copyright, and free to use! Another common misunderstanding is that social networking sites can appropriate your copyright (the hoax that facebook will own your photos is a classic example!)
Copyright automatically belongs to the creator of the work until they have been dead for 70 years (this is known as being in the Public Domain)
However, when you sell your work, you lose some (or all!) of the rights to it. Your contract should be specific about which rights you're selling. Once you've sold your work, those rights belong to the person who bought them, who is then entitled to use them as per the contract. Read contracts carefully, because there are different types of rights, from all rights to print, digital, reprint and publication rights by geographical region. Copyright also protects lending rights, which is why public libraries pay authors for lending their work.
So, how do you protect your work?
1) Post your writing to yourself in a sealed envelope, which can be opened in court. The postmark and seal forms proof of date when the work was created, and helps to establish ownership.
2) Be wary of what you share online or where you share it. Subscription or fee based sites should be paying royalties for your work, and offer some protection from unauthorised use.
3) Use a creative commons license to share your work, but make clear your copyright stance. See here for more info: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/
4) Don't put your work online, unless you're willing to accept the risks.
Copyright is tricky, but you can read accurate information here: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/intellectual-property-office
Jisc also offer some good, straightforward guides: https://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/pdf/little-guide-to-copyright.pdf