Legal Question in Intellectual Property in New Mexico

Re: Do I need to file for copyright?

You are referring to the "poor man's" copyright. Actually under modern copyright law, you are protected from the moment your written work is reduced to a form that can be read either by the eye or with the aid of a machine, e.g., a computer. It is not necessary to mail the materials as you described to get "protection," however, it will serve as objective evidence of the date of creation of the material in the event it is ever called into question by someone else. You should consider registering your works with the copyright office. It is relatively easy to do and the filing fee is only $30. Not all written material can be registered or even protected by copyright law such as mere ideas, recipes, formulas, short phrases and the like. However, narrative text usually has no problem. You should also consider putting a notice of copyright on your material to cut off an "innocent infringement" defense. The copyright notice would be the letter "C" in a circle, your name and the year.