So I read the thread about posting work is considered 'self publishing' and we shouldn't share our work online for that reason. What about beta readers? How do you share your masterpiece with them electronically without it being 'published'? In an email with a link to your document? I feel so protective of my WIP but I want to start exploring beta readers and will probably have to use a stranger from a forum.
Sharing privately via email isn't publishing. Posting publicly on a forum is. The risk is that a beta reader will then go and post your manuscript online. Very unlikely that someone would do that, but that's why you share with beta readers you trust.
Wait wait. Even if we're posting here for critique, someone can take our work and spread it around since it's "published" on the site?
Yep. But if it's an established member of the forum who's beta read for others without going rogue, you can probably take the risk. I'm happily going to send my manuscript to several forum members when it's ready. But you only post short extracts for critique, which is okay. If you posted too much on the site it would be considered published, whether it was you or anyone else who put it on here.
So, excerpts aren't considered published work, is that correct? If I posted the entire story, it would be available for poaching? Just wanna confirm and seal and make sure I understand this.
Well, they are published when you put them on here for critique, but if you only "publish", say, 2,000 words of an 80,000 word novel, it's probably not going to worry a publisher. It's still available for poaching - everything you post publicly is available for poaching. Just to make sure you haven't misunderstood, I'm not saying someone can poach your work and get away with it. Just that if they take your 2,000 words and post them elsewhere, it's not going to cause you problems with publishers. If the whole manuscript is published online, that's a different story.
OOh, you have to read the post about this. It's long, but worth it. https://www.writingforums.org/threads/does-posting-work-here-harm-our-chances-of-being-published.23612/
There's a pretty in-depth thread about it already, which will explain better than I'm managing to do this evening: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/does-posting-work-here-harm-our-chances-of-being-published.23612/ Edit: Snap with @JosephMarch
No. Once you submit to the site, writingforums.org has the rights to everything in the workshop. If someone posted the work you submit here it would be a violation of their TOU, and they would be open to litigation from @Daniel.
@Jack Asher In the ToS it says You are granting us with a non-exclusive, permanent, irrevocable, unlimited license to use, publish, or re-publish your Content in connection with the Service. You retain copyright over the Content. That thing about the copyright remaining mine is really all I care about when I post my work (since I don't want to publish). So, for example, if somebody decided they liked my content enough to try to steal it (not saying anyone WOULD do that, just a hypothetical) I have full legal right to chase that person down, right?
It wouldn't be legal for them to do so, but if they do so anyway, the story would be "published", yes.
