Erlang error when spawning a process

I start a process as follows

start() ->
register (dist_erlang, spawn(?MODULE, loop, [])),
ok.

But get the following error when trying to run start().

Error in process <0.62.0> with exit value: {undef,[{dist_erlang,loop,[]}]}

The module is called dist_erlang.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks