Back in grad school—many moons ago (ha), one of my creative writing professors regularly shared his unpublished work with our class. When a student once asked if he worried about someone stealing his writing, he laughed and said, “Steal it, please. And if you can get anyone to pay for it, tell me how you did it.”

At the time, I didn’t fully understand what he meant. Years later, after my own work was published, I realized the truth behind his words: writing a book is only half the climb. Getting readers to actually buy it is like scaling Everest after you’ve already conquered K2. And if you want to build a loyal readership, you need your own authentic voice—something no one can fake or sustain if it’s stolen.

As if sharing early drafts of a manuscript isn’t hard enough, authors also have to worry about theft and copyright infringement. Fortunately, theft of a manuscript isn’t as common as one may think, but it still happens occasionally, and those stories spread through the writing community like wildfire, so I often have writers ask me if they should ask their beta readers to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). On the surface, it might seem like the safest way to protect your work, but the answer is a little more nuanced.