Anyone here have experience with self-publishing your work? What’s the process like?
How deep are you looking to go into it? Do you want to sell physical copies of your sheet music?
I have a very simple setup using Paypal. They let you create buttons for whatever items you want to sell and then you just put the code into you website and it just works. There’s lots of options on how to charge or even let people enter in their own amounts (like for donations) and different kinds of buttons and/or links. I found it pretty easy and they handle all the security stuff.
Anything more complicated than that and I have no experience with it.
I think Paypal is a viable option regarding payment. In terms of copyright through, do you slap your own copyright on the bottom of your music? Do you go through ASCAP? Do you submit your work for publishing through another entity? I want to protect my intellectual property, but I also want to make my music accessible to groups who want to play it (I write primarily for concert band). And as someone who is “just coming out of the woodwork,” I am looking to just get my stuff out there.
If you are in the US (and this most likely applies to most countries outside the US), you already have a copyright on anything you create. But yes, you can drive the point home by putting a copyright notice on the sheet music which isn’t strictly necessary but everyone does it so you might as well. I do this as does everyone I know. It’s easy and legal though it doesn’t provide any extra protection (except maybe to discourage someone from thinking you’ve released the work to the public domain).
If you ever need to sue someone for actual money, then you need to register your sheet music with the US Copyright office. If you are planning on making money from your sheet music, this is probably a good idea.
I do not work with ASCAP or any other performance rights organizations. My music is is more in the avant-garde style of classical so I’m not really concerned with performances plus I license my music with a very liberal Creative Commons license so no one would have to pay royalties anyway. All that to say, I don’t really have any advice for that side of things.
Thank you for sharing your process.