Does posting work here harm our chances of being published?

Eh? You're thinking of some scenario here, but I'm not sure what it is.

 

Same with music in the U.S. There are benefits of registering quickly after publication.

 

Registering a copyright doesn't stop you having to go to court.

 

No, but it will only help your case if you do. Of course, some people might prefer to walk in completely empty-handed.

 

In the U.S. you typically need a registration to file suit.

 

Emailing your work to yourself is a easy way to protect yourself. At least you have record of it.

 

For the vast majority of authors it really isn't an issue of being able to prove you wrote the thing first - it's the cost associated with doing anything about it.

I had an entire book plagiarized - thief did a search-and-replace on the names, changed the title and cover and slapped his/her name on it. Did the same thing to a dozen or more other books by other authors. Someone pointed it out, we all contacted Amazon and the other retailers, and they pulled the book from sale without any request for evidence or corroboration. Easy. But in terms of doing more?

Anything more than that would really require legal assistance. We'd be dealing with a multi-jurisdictional case with significant investigative costs (to cut through the plagiarist's pseudonyms and discover real identity, etc.) and then faced with the very real chance that the plagiarist is judgement-proof (no assets available to pay damages). The plagiarist didn't sell many copies, as far as I can tell - the stolen book was in the 200K ranks at Amazon and had only been posted for a couple weeks, so I'm guessing maybe five or ten copies sold? Not enough to earn me significant compensation, even assuming the plagiarist would pay. So it's very likely that I'd have spent a lot of money in order to get nothing in return but the satisfaction of a court document telling me what I already know - the book was mine and someone else stole it.

So, sure, register your copyright if it makes you feel better. But be aware that the most significant barrier to a successful lawsuit will likely be something other than proof the book is yours.

 

I don't know about posting here, but I posted my novel as a WIP on LiveJournal and disclosed that fact to the publisher I submitted the finished work to. They accepted it with no qualms; though I did eventually have to take the free version down, it was still live when they sent me the acceptance letter.

 

What a scary thread, damn.

 

So if you want to write a chapter or one short story that you want to be part of a book, this would not affect it being published by a publisher ?

 

Short answer? Almost certainly not, as long as it's a small portion of the complete work.

Long answer? Read the whole thread.

 

I'm new to this site, so unaware of how you can post up your entire manuscript. I've been in publishing for 7 years and this has NEVER come up as an issue - in fact we scoured places like Wattpad and Amazon Self Publishing to see if there were any hits (rarely found anything good, mind), we could consider for publication. So in my humble opinion, from what I know, posting here wouldn't be an issue, first as I can't see how you could post the entire book and second, your book is likely to be subject to a fair amount of change before publication. The only time that my publishing house was worried about copies being around, was when it was someone like Lee Child or Jamie Oliver and black market pdfs might harm sales or deflate a promotion. I've seen 3-4 previously self published books taken in by the publishing house, based on the community/sales the author had managed to get.

 

Can you elaborate on how your company found books for publication? If they worked with Lee Child and Jamie Oliver I'm guessing you were part of the Random Penguin? They must have gotten a lot of submissions from agents--what was the rationale for skipping over these and going to search through self-published stuff instead? And do you know how the search was carried out? Did they refine via sales numbers or positive reviews or...?

 

Basically they/ we would look at Top of the Charts and then assessing whether the ms was any good. I don't think looking at the self published stuff meant that Agents' materials were looked over, I think it's just an additional source to check. Also, the good agents tend to be on top of the self-published side of things, so often the self-published work came from agents themselves.

Another reason for checking online platforms, even if it's not regularly, is FOMO - Fear of Missing Out. Editors are in competition with each other to spot the best books and publishing houses are in competition with each other to publish bestsellers.

 

I think I remember reading that you can't publish something if it's been posted publicly, such as Reddit or a website. Is this correct?

Edit: Doh! Thanks for moving my post mods, this is probably were I read it originally!

 

Interesting. Good thing I found this thread before I've had the chance to post any of my stories! I do, however, have a question as to this. I'm making a collection of short horror stories; my initial idea is ten stories of about 1500-3000 words. What if I post only some of the stories? I understand publishers wouldn't want to touch a collection that's wholly available online, but if there's some content never before seen by anyone not me, how would said collection generally be classified?

 

I'm so glad I read this, I will be careful about doing this.

 

I know this post is several months old now, but since nobody answered... I've seen advice to keep the part posted online under 10%. But I think it's one of those things that doesn't have a single answer: some publishers (usually smaller ones) will accept works that have been free in their entirety. Others wouldn't want more than a tiny teaser available online.

 

Sounds reasonable, a small amount posted would allow someone to learn a little but still allow them to publish.
Still how would they determine that the other 90% is suitable for submission?
Also I always thought that forums such as this had the facility to allow people to post their work but still retain first publishing rights. They have a protected section - I know of one site that has this and was told this forum had that facility as well.
I`m still not sure how they would ever find a story that may once have been uploaded to a site, let`s say (as an example), but was never posted on a forum (or anywhere else for that matter). It may have been published because it once existed online but if a publisher can`t find it how would they ever know?

 

I was talking about public sites like Wattpad, where people upload their writing and anybody can see it (and, more pertinently, google it).

They would evaluate the whole manuscript in the usual way. It's not like a publisher or agent is going to read an excerpt online and ask the author for the rest. Well, maybe it happens, but not with any regularity...

 

Right, I got you, a lot of people do use Wattpad and such, and it certainly appears to be unprotected, and google-able. I did read that one girl got a book deal from posting her book on Wattpad so it can`t be that bad or that much of an issue. It was about vampires and YA, so about right for the market at the time I guess.

 

Absolutely, I enjoy the critiquing side of things and reading others work is definitely a way to improve my own work.
It`s odd about what you`ve just said about a "display site" as it was on the news here that a well known publisher gave a writer on Wattpad a book deal after she posted her book there. Perhaps you are right, a very unusual occurrence, and I think the only one I know of. I wouldn`t do it myself anyway, Wattpad is well know to favour certain genres.

 

The editors don't have to go looking for your work online because you sign a contract that it has never been in print or online "in any form." The contracts I've seen don't elaborate on that and I think it's because it's pretty clear what they mean. I don't know how you get around that without lying if you post something password or no password. After all, you need to be a member and have a Facebook account and password to log on, but even if your page is set to private, it still counts from what I understand. So, if you post in workshop and then have to sign a contract like this for the story to run and you get paid, how do you get around that? Personally, I'm not looking for a way around it, but at the same time I think it could put someone in a sticky situation and possibly lose the chance to publish with who they were (almost) working with.