For authors
Protect a manuscript before you submit it
A manuscript sent to ten houses lives on ten machines, in hands you did not choose. Incipite anchors your file's fingerprint on the Bitcoin blockchain in thirty seconds and issues a dated certificate — solid prior art evidence, verifiable by anyone, without your text ever leaving your computer.
What you are actually exposed to
- A submitted manuscript is a circulating manuscript. Reading committees, interns, external readers: your file lives on machines you know nothing about.
- The rejection, then the resemblance. A rejected text, and a neighbouring book published two years later. With no enforceable date, you have only your memory.
- Self-publishing protects nothing retroactively. Going online establishes a publication date, not a writing date — and the first is almost always long after the second.
- Co-writing and ghostwriting. Who wrote which version, and when, before the collaboration ended badly.
Scenario
Rachel spent three years writing her first novel. She is about to submit it to a dozen agents and publishers. She wants proof that this manuscript is hers before her files start circulating — not in two years, when it will be too late to create it.
What people usually do, and what it really covers
The advice circulating in publishing is not bad. Two pieces of it simply no longer hold, and a third gets expensive to repeat.
| Method | Cost | What it proves | The limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emailing the manuscript to yourself | Free | A mail server's timestamp | The old classic, often called poor man's copyright. The timestamp belongs to the sending server, and an attachment's metadata can be edited. It has never carried weight on its own. |
| Deposit with an authors' society | Charged per deposit | A text existed at a date | Solid and recognised in the trade. The cost is per deposit and per version: for a text rewritten several times the arithmetic adds up fast. |
| US Copyright Office | $45 | Permanent registration | The only route that unlocks an infringement action in the US, and statutory damages. Incipite does not replace it. Average processing time observed: about four months. |
| Depositing with a notary | Varies, often substantial | A certain date | High evidentiary weight. The cost and the appointment make it a solution for one text, not for a writing process. |
| Incipite | A couple of pounds | The exact file, to the second | A fingerprint anchored in the Bitcoin blockchain, with no expiry, verifiable by a third party without going through us. Cheap enough to date every version, not only the last one. |
The right moment is before the first submission
Prior art evidence is only worth something if it predates what it has to settle. Created after a dispute, it merely proves you held the file that day — which is far weaker. The useful gesture takes thirty seconds and happens once, before you click send for the first time.
How it works, in three steps
- 1Export the manuscript you are about to submit. A PDF, a .docx, an .odt: the format is irrelevant. Certify the very file you will send.
- 2Drop it on Incipite. The SHA-256 fingerprint is computed inside your browser — the text never travels to our servers. Only the fingerprint is transmitted.
- 3Keep the certificate with your manuscript. You get a one-page PDF naming the work, its type, its version, the UTC date and the fingerprint, with a public verification link.
What Incipite does not do
- It does not replace a contract. Assigning rights to a publisher is settled in writing. The certificate documents anteriority; it says nothing about what you assigned.
- It does not prove you wrote the text. It proves one exact file existed at one exact date and that you had it in hand. That is a different thing — and in practice it is most of what was missing.
- It is not a copyright registration. In Europe copyright arises from creation itself. In the US, registration with the Copyright Office remains what conditions an infringement action.
- It does not protect a plot. A pitch, a theme, a premise are not protectable. Their expression is — so your text, as written.
Where the law stands
Article 41(1) of the EU eIDAS Regulation forbids a court from dismissing an electronic time stamp on the sole ground that it is electronic: it must be assessed on its merits. In March 2025 the Marseille court held that blockchain timestamps were admissible and sufficient to establish copyright ownership. The case law in detail →
Frequently asked
+Is emailing myself the manuscript really not enough?
No. The timestamp belongs to a server you do not control, and an attachment's metadata can be edited. It is a trace, not enforceable evidence — which is why so-called poor man's copyright has never held up on its own.
+Should I certify every version?
No. Certify the ones that matter: the version sent to agents, the one handed to a publisher, the one following a substantial rewrite. A series of dated deposits also documents a writing process over time.
+Do you read my manuscript?
We never receive it. The SHA-256 fingerprint is computed inside your browser; sixty-four hexadecimal characters are all that reaches us. We could not reconstruct a sentence of your text.
+I already self-published. Is it too late?
No, though earlier is always better. A publication date establishes that the text existed then; certifying your earlier working files, if you kept them, strengthens the whole picture considerably.
+What if Incipite disappears?
Your proof survives. It rests on OpenTimestamps, an open protocol in use since 2016. The .ots receipt you download verifies with the official client, without us.
3 free certifications for life · No credit card · File stays 100% local
Protect my manuscript →Solid prior art evidence — not a substitute for a copyright registration.
Related crafts