Does posting work here harm our chances of being published?

even if you remove it, the work can already have been acquired in a crawl, and/or been copied by another member and passed around or posted elsewhere, so this is not good advice, imo...

 

It's really only a problem if you post it on a public site, like your blog or something. Posting something to closed, password-protected forums is not usually a problem. Jane Friedman of writer's digest wrote:

"I find it an utterly archaic sentiment given where the publishing industry is headed.

Here’s why:
1.Test marketing is one of the best things you can do to improve your work and build an audience. Agent Michael Larsen even recommends it in his classic, How to Write a Book Proposal.
2.Getting feedback on your work (whether you’re specifically asking for a critique, or just hoping for reader comments) can be critical to a writer’s development. No writer should ever be discouraged from posting their work online in a critique environment, EVER.
3.No sane agent or editor would disagree with points 1 or 2, since doing these things advance the quality and marketability of your work. Hiding your work in a closet until you feel it is “ready” for a “professional” to consider it? Folly. Hasn’t anyone told you that the gatekeeper era is coming to a swift end?
4.If we’re talking about novel-length works, then sharing pieces of it, or even serializing it, over a long period is NOT going to affect its market value. (Anyone who says it does has a very antiquated view of online media, as well as where traditional publishing is headed.)
5.Offering a work online, whether in serialized format or in an alternate media (e.g., audio), can increase interest and demand for a physical, print product. This is proven out by people like Scott Sigler and Seth Harwood who serialized their work as podcasts, made them absolutely free, and secured traditional book publishing deals after developing a significant following.
People who post their work online can do so in a very smart, strategic, and targeted way that feeds into demand for a traditional book that a publisher would love to produce (or that an agent would love to sign).

How else do you explain the blog-to-book deals that happen?
How else do you explain e-books and self-published books that find an audience online, then go on to be picked up by a traditional press? (See editor Alan Rinzler’s wise advice.)
How else do you explain the success of cell-phone novels in Japan?
Posting your work online is not to be feared."

Jed Hartman wrote on his blog:

"I'm pretty sure most of y'all regular readers know this, but I figure it can't hurt to say it again every now and then, just in case new people wander through.

Every now and then, for various reasons, I Google for an author's name and the title of the story they've just submitted to us.

And a remarkable percentage of the time when I do that, I discover that the author has previously posted the story, in full, on some website. Occasionally it's an online magazine of some sort, whether non-paying or semipro (and in those cases the author really ought to have known better than to send us a reprint without telling us it's a reprint), but more often it's just on the author's LiveJournal, or on any of various sites dedicated to allowing people to freely post their own work publicly.

And unfortunately, we can't consider unsolicited work that's been previously published elsewhere--and, like most sf prozine editors these days, we consider any appearance on a publicly accessible web page to count as publication.

So unfortunately, if you post your latest story in a non-friendslocked blog or LJ entry, you may be making it difficult or impossible to get an sf editor to pay you to publish that story later. No matter how few people read your LJ. (Editors in other fields may feel differently about this; the only editors I've heard weigh in on this question are sf editors.)

So if you're interested in selling your work to a professional sf venue, I strongly recommend that you not post it in a publicly accessible place online.

(Note that posting it for a while and then taking it down when you're ready to submit it is also a bad idea. If it's ever appeared publicly online, we consider it to have been published, whether or not it's currently available online.)

There are all sorts of tricky corner cases to this issue. We at SH are currently taking the position that if a story is password-protected (not accessible to the general public without some kind of logging-in process), then that doesn't count as publication (except in cases where it's clearly intended as publication, like if you sell the story to an online venue that password-protects its content, as some do). Other editors may draw the line in other places.

But at the very least, if you feel you must post your story in your LJ, you should friendslock the post."

 

That is true of any story that has ever been online. Nevertheless, there are markets that will take reprints. So the advice is sound, considering the fact that these markets are aware the work has already appeared online and are still willing to acquire it, so long as you don't have it up someone else concurrently. The risk that someone else has taken it and put it else somewhere else or that it is in an archive exists in both instances. Presumably, these markets have taken that into consideration and made their decision accordingly.

 

This is a good thread. Thanks for sharing.

I started a blog-thing a month ago, and the question has come up in my own head--are the pieces I've put up on my blog considered published. And the answer seems to be, yes. Which makes sense. An editor or publisher doesn't care that my blog has ten readers a month, five of them being family members. They care that it is now, somehow, public info.

So now I weigh what goes on my blog and what I work on for submission elsewhere. It is a kind of catch-22. I want my blog writing to be decent enough to get more traffic to that. . . but not good enough to be put up for nothing. But really? I'm not sure if I really feel that. If I had a decent audience I'd put my best stuff on the website blog-thing, whatever it's called. Tweet.

 

There was a topic i was studding, I was just about to buy this book used for a $1.25 on Amazon, then I did a little bit more research on the author and found he had put the whole book on his website for free, still $1.25 for print is a great price.

I was reading some articles where a blogger condensed his memoirs that he posted on his blog and turned it into a novel, more on the lines of a E book and made some cash, but this person was pretty much on there own, as such the topic discussed in this "thread".

There are other topics on How anybody can create an E book, but on the other hand, there is also reports of bad spelling & grammar.

 

Hi all,
I am a complete novice at this "writing a novel" malarkey and I need to pick a few brains on the subject of posting parts of a story on-line.
I have read this thread and fully understand that posting a novel on a site such as this one, where other folk are invited to read it and pass comment, is a bad idea if you later plan to ask a publisher to consider it.
But what about a run through of the whole story? Does that count?
What I mean would be something like the following ........
The story concerns three men and a dog. The three men get trapped in a snow drift in Northern Canada and the dog sets off to find help. (This goes on for a while about the trials and tribulations of the dog as it battles the elements and the wildlife to get to civilization where help can be found)
Meanwhile, back at the snow drift, the plight of the men and their struggles is told in some detail until, about a month later as they consider their fate, a dog's bark is heard and help arrives.
Obviously, that is to smarmy ever to reach publication but you know what I mean. Would something like that count as being a published story in the eyes of a publisher?
Also, as a secondary question on a totally different subject, what is to stop anyone reading that and taking the idea of the 3 men and a dog story, writing it and getting it published under their own name? (Feel free, BTW, 'cos that isn't the kind of thing that I write)

Cheers m'dears,
Steve

 

1. posting a summary/synopsis of a story/book won't jeopardize its chances of being published in any way...

2. nothing will stop someone else from using the premise or even the entire summary to write their own version of it... but no two writers can possibly write the same story/book in the same way, so it won't be even close to yours, other than in the details you disclosed...

3. it doesn't really happen... writers serious enough to put time and energy into writing and trying to publish stuff come up with their own ideas... anyone who'd take yours and run with it most likely wouldn't be good enough writers to turn out a publishable work anyway...

this can happen with screenplays, which is why screenwriters are more careful with their work, but it doesn't with novels, as far as i know... never heard of such a theft, in any case, though plagiarism of parts of others' published work is common enough...

 

I'm not sure if this has been brought up yet but what if it is documented as a DRAFT?

As an example, in terms of FOIL the DRAFT label does hold weight. Considering most of the documents/stories submitted here are Drafts but authors do not state that they are.

 

'foil'?... meaning what?

it doesn't matter which draft it is, first, middle, or final... if the story is basically the same and the text hasn't changed all that much, the problem remains the same...

and i don't know what you mean by 'documented' either...

 

By documented I mean it states, perhaps in the footer accompanied by the date, that it is a DRAFT.

FOIL - Freedom of Information Law. So if someone or an organization submits a FOIL request to a Government agency those documents labeled DRAFT can't be touched. Only FINAL documentation is released in a FOIL request.

I can understand why a publisher would want to discourage or avoid stories that have been released on the internet if they are FINAL drafts. However, a first DRAFT is far from complete, correct?

 

no, a draft would still be complete, but just not in the book's/story's final form... and since it can be read by any number of people if it's been posted anywhere on the net, that significantly lowers its chances of being published...

the FOIL [ny's version... the federal one is FOIA--'act' instead of 'law'] has nothing to do with creative works... it only applies to governmental agency documents/records...

 

Do you have a legal obligation to inform a publisher that you have posted unfinished versions on the net (I suspect that is part of the contract)? Do publishers generally search for works on the net? What if you used pseudo names and titles?

 

I've scrolled through some of this, and while I agree that the "standards" say material posted online is considered "self-published," I can't imagine any reasonable publisher or agent refusing to recognize a major difference between posting something on one's blog or other medium for general consumption and a work in progress where one is seeking to improve a story, fix a problem or seeks some other form of creative input.

I spoke to my editor at a major publishing house about this very thing and, according to her, significant portions of more than half their catalogue last year was available at least in part online and for free through sites such as this one.

In all honesty, I suspect that anyone who expresses as the reason their work is unpublished by a 'traditional' publisher is simply using such as an excuse to avoid explaining either a.) that the path to publishing is a hairy process fraught with difficulty or b.) is hiding behind that as an excuse for actually doing the work necessary to get their work into publishing shape.

Then again, I could be wrong.

 

In the contract, if you're selling first rights you are probably going to also have to warrant that you do in fact have those rights to sell. If first rights have been extinguished due to prior publication then you could be in breach of contract. Not 'illegal,' but a civil violation for which the publisher could have a cause of action against you.

 

if it's part of the contract, of course you do...

not 'generally' but all you need to be 'found out' is for one you're dickering with to do so... and once caught in a lie, the word could go out that you're not to be trusted... agents/publishers do talk to each other and they don't like to be 'taken'...

as the old russian proberb says, 'you can't hide an awl in a basket'... and 'lies have long legs'... so, if you want to be treated like a pro, you need to act like one...

 

I'm glad I found this thread. Its very informative for me. I had the same question regarding the the differences between self-publishing and an actual publisher and what can be published as a result, but I could never find an actual answer anywhere. This makes me glad that I've been hording my stories - finished or work in-long-term process - away for so long.

 

With the Internet, you can publish anytime.

 

meaning what?

 

thanks

This is a warning on something I hadn't really considered before. I'll have to play my cards close to my chest, but does that defeat the purpose of joining the form?

 

Not really. You can post pieces of writing which you don't intend to try and submit, in order to get general feedback on your writing and how to improve it. And also you can ask various questions or whatever about writing in the forums other than the Writing Workshop.

 

For each paragraph you publish you'll have written thousands.

Just refrain from putting the one in a thousand paragraph in the forum, every other one is just as good for that purpose.

 

posting a single paragraph of anything won't really be a problem... you can post brief excerpts even of works you intend to submit for publication and it won't hurt the whole piece's chances of being accepted...

 

I usually wince at the urge to post a story that I really enjoy, or think that will take me somewhere in the future. I have the same fear of a publisher turning it down if found that it was available online. I usually post old pieces that I don't want to use for people to read online, but if I think a specific piece will take me far, I will never post it. Although sometimes, the urge kills me.

 

If I may, I can offer some insight to the issues of publishing, and submitting material. I am or at least in the past have been a song writer. Here is what I have learned personally about the business.

Now I can't speak specifically to the literary publishing community, but I can tell you that in the "music biz" namely places like Nashville, publishing is a very very small world, meaning that nearly every publisher in the business, knows and frequently has direct contact with the others. Yes they are in competition with each other, but that does not stop them from sharing industry trends, and talking about prospects.
There are several ways to get nearly shut out of the publishing business to the point, finding a publisher to take you serious is nearly impossible. Aside from submitted unsolicited material, or just sending unrequested material, is to send you rough draft. Trust me, publishers have very little time on their hands, and much to get done. So when they take the time to listen or read your material, it had better be worth their time. If you send something to them that you have not gone over and improved, then revamped, then proofread to the point you are about to go crazy, you will more than likely get a bad reputation as amateur artist, who does not want to apply themselves. Trust me, I have heard the comments from some of the pros I have hung around with. Now like I said, that is dealing with the music biz, but I would assume that is pretty close to the literary publishing world as well.
I look at it this way, anything I decide to post on the internet is mostly to satisfy my selfish need to get instant input as to my writing. I would never consider sending anything which I have previously posted on the web, because in all honesty, that would be wasting my time and more importantly the publisher's time.
If you have posted a story or poem, online, look at it like this. That's not the only thing you will ever write. I mean I like to take the old Doritos slogan, "Read all you want, I'll write more."
My two cents only.

 

I haven't read through this whole topic, so apologies if my question was already answered, but:

I like to outline my works before I write them. I've been wanting to write a novel for some time, and I've had one outlined for a while. What I want to do is post my outline here, because I think I really just need to talk to someone about it, but I want to know if I'll still be able to publish the fully written version?

Last time I talked to someone about it it really helped, but I've never been really completely satisfied with it, and as such I thought I could get help here.