The Copyright Office's processing speed

I filed back in November for the Ferret Tarot, the copyright office cashed my check at the end of March, and I just got the paperwork back yesterday--a full 8 months from start to finish. It used to be a 2 month turn around, but after 9/11 when they started not accepting packages delivered to the main office & had everything routed instead through a separate building (bombs, poison, threats all caused this), their processing time slowed way down & apparently hasn't increased appreciably in the last 2 years.

Just a note to everyone--expect at least an 8 month processing proceedure for anything out of the US Copyright Office.

Thanks, Hudson Gray. I was sending my deck in this weekend, but now I think I'll wait until after I've moved - if we're talking about 8 months, then no way would the final response get forwarded to the new address after all that time.

As ever, your comments are incredibly useful.

I have to admit that I read this as "The Copyright Office's processing spread" and wondered if they are now doing everything by divination!

Er hem, yes, well, anyway, then I read it properly...

it is very useful, although here in Europe we don't register for copyright in the same way.

Wondering:

Should one register for copyright before contacting a publisher?

Re: Wondering:

danubhe said:

Should one register for copyright before contacting a publisher?

Click to expand...

Ixnay. What they will want to copyright is the final form of the deck as published - and I suspect they're much, much more likely to get a fast response from the Copyright people for one or another reason. Publishers are fanatical about respecting your copyright, if that's what's worrying you - their lawyers make certain of that.

That's about what I thought,

but I can't claim any definite knowledge of the copyright process - thanks for clearing that up!