irradiated books?

Last year I self-published some books with Lulu. I found out there's a "mandatory deposit" requirement with the Library of Congress for anything with a copyright symbol. So I looked up everything I could find about copyrights, and decided the simplest and safest approach might be to officially file for each of the books and pay all the fees. So that's what I did.

In December I filled in the online forms and paid my money. And in January I sent two "best copies" of each book to the Copyright Office. All in all, an expensive process--and a slow one.

Yesterday I got two letters back at last! Yes, it is midway through May. Still, two out of three's not bad, I thought. But the letters weren't exactly what I was hoping for...

"We recently received your copyright claim," they said, "...after it had been irradiated..."--a Postal Service precaution instituted after the anthrax scare in 2001. Unfortunately "The irradiation level is strong enough to damage some materials beyond our ability to process them..."

So now I need to resend the books. But at least they say they'll only need one copy this time.

Meanwhile, I wonder what happened to the third book...

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