The US Copyright Office raises most of its fees on 11 November 2026, when the 120-day congressional review of its new schedule runs out. If you have a published book you have not registered, the cheapest moment to do it is this week.
New Copyright Application Fees Breakdown
Here are the two fees that matter for a novel, filed online. The Single Application, for one work by one author who is also the sole owner, rises from $45 to $55. The Standard Application, which you need if the claimant is anyone other than that sole author (for example a publishing company the author has assigned rights to, or co-authors), rises from $65 to $85. Paper filing goes from $125 to $185, which is a reason not to file on paper.
For a single book, the increase is $10 or $20. It adds up across a list. A small press releasing three novels a year under the Standard Application will pay $255 instead of $195, an extra $60 a year. An author filing three books under the Single Application pays $165 instead of $135.
The Critical 3-Month Window (17 U.S.C. § 412)
The more important number is not the fee. It is the three-month window. Under 17 U.S.C. section 412, statutory damages and attorney's fees are only available for infringement of a published work if you registered within three months of first publication, or before the infringement began. Miss that window and you are generally limited to proving actual damages.
The math on that difference is stark. Statutory damages under section 504(c) run from $750 to $30,000 per work, and up to $150,000 per work where infringement is willful. Actual damages from a pirated ebook are much harder to show. Suppose a pirate site logs 2,000 downloads of a $4.99 ebook. At a 70 percent royalty, that is about $6,986 in theoretical lost income, and you would have to prove each download was a lost sale, which courts rarely accept. Without attorney's fees, the cost of bringing the case usually exceeds anything you could recover. Registration is what makes enforcement worth attempting at all.
Statutory vs. Actual Damages: Doing the Math
So the realistic choice for most independent publishers is not "register or save $55." It is "pay $55 to $85 once, within three months of publication, or accept that pursuing an infringer will cost more than it returns." Make registration part of the launch checklist, alongside the ISBN and the retailer uploads, rather than something you do after a problem appears.
Two caveats. These fee figures come from trade reporting on the final schedule, and copyright.gov's own fee page should be checked before filing. And nothing here is legal advice; questions about ownership, work for hire or co-authorship belong with an attorney.
Map's Edge Media puts these numbers together so the business side of publishing is easier to see clearly.
