The
Photographer's Survival Manual by Edward C. Greenberg and Jack Reznicki is worth the purchase price simply for its walkthrough of the
U.S. Copyright Office's online submission procedure. The procedure can be somewhat confusing to a first time user, but the book steers the reader through the various options until it becomes fairly routine.
This is not the only advantage the books offers. First of all, it's clearly designed for photographers, a group not known for reading long winded dissertations. The writing style is casual and maintains a sense of humor while still managing to stress the underlying importance of the material presented. In addition, the layout is clean and crisp and easy to navigate. There are a number of interesting anecdotes supplied to keep even the reader with the shortest attention span from becoming bogged down while reading explanations of legal rights.
On the technical side, the Photoshop action described by Jack Reznicki does work and is extremely useful in resizing photos, thus allowing a greater number of images to be submitted in a shorter amount of time during an online session with the Copyright Office.
Many photographers who would not hesitate to pick up a guide to the latest photo editing software are reluctant to buy a book that deals with legal issues, primarily because they believe they are already familiar with the information contained therein. That's simply not true. I learned many points of law from reading this book. Very often, the authors' debunking of common copyright myths and fallacies hit too close to home for comfort.
Finally, this book is not a textbook nor should it be used in place of consulting a qualified attorney when the need arises. It is instead a highly readable outline of major legal points that every photographer needs to know if he or she does not want to end up in court. Considering the high cost of litigation and attorney fees, the cost of the book is negligible.
NOTE: I am not an attorney myself and am not qualified to give any legal opinions. The review above is presented for informational purposes only.