I’m doing a bunch of research about publishing industry ins and outs, and I thought I’d share this quote I found:

On of the most frequent questions I get is, “How can I prevent the evil publishing world from stealing my idea?” I’m not a lawyer, but I believe the answer is, “You can’t.” The expanded answer is, “You don’t have to.” The publishing industry isn’t out there waiting for fresh ideas to steal. When they want to steal an idea, they steal a stale one which has enough of a track record that they know it sells. Ideas are not copywriteable, patentable, or protectable in the sense that many first-time authors believe. The best way I know of to protect a book idea is to actually write the whole book, at which point if a publisher wants to steal some of the ideas they have to hire somebody to reword it in such a way as to protect themselves from plagiarism charges. At that point it would be cheaper for them to just buy your book, and in fact,that happens to be the business most publisher are in.

Here’s where that came from. This guy’s website has ton of great information.