Copyrights are your only way to defend your artwork against infringement by any other entity. Ex, copyrighting your book can stop other authors from copying or plagiarizing your work and can stop the bookstore from selling their own copies of your artwork to make a profit.

The ownership of your work starts from the moment you start writing it, but this doesn’t deny the fact stating the need of registering your copyrights if you later need to take action against copyright infringement.