Rights/publishing question

LordKyleOfEarth · Jun 3, 2009

I have recently considered submitting a story to ClonePod.org. They produce an audio show where they read short stories. They buy exclusive audio rights and do not offer a printed media in any form.

My question is: if I sell them a story, for audio broadcast only, will I then be unable to sell first North American rights to a print publisher?

Cogito · Jun 3, 2009

Interesting question.

My guess, and it is only a guess, is that some publishers would consider it pre-published, so you could be cutting off a toe or two if not the entire foot. The story would be under the same copyright protection in both media (it is verbatim the same piece). I would think it would be equivalent to an audiobook in the eyes of a publisher.

You should probably refer this question to a literary attorney. If you do, let is know what you find out.

LordKyleOfEarth · Jun 3, 2009

Fair enough, that is sort of what I expected. I'm emailing my creative writing instructor from last semester to see what he thinks.

The exciting new frontier of electronic media...

mammamaia · Jun 3, 2009

i can only ditto cog's post... good luck with it!

hugs, maia

LordKyleOfEarth · Jun 6, 2009

Quoted with permission from my Creative Writing instructor:

Kyle,

This is a real grey area in publishing. Sites like ClonePod are right on the cutting edge of publishing, as far as podcasts, Twitter, Facebook, Kindle, and other such publishers of stories in forms other than the printed word printed on paper are concerned. ClonePod refers to the Cretive Commons Licensing agreements, which are being designed to give some kind of legal rights to authors in the electronic medium. The argument is that if authors are allowed to decide what protion of their copyright they are willing to sell, as in the case of authorizing an audio podcast of a written story (whether it is alrady published or not), this prevents podcasters and other from creating electronic versions of the printed work without the author's permission. Of course others argue that it really doesn't have any legal standing as it has not yet been fully tested and decided in the courts. Anyone can say something is a legal contract, but where it comes to electronic rights, at the moment things work on a more or less system of good intentions. Sometimes they don't, as in the case of Amazon and Google, which are being sued in a massive class action suit because they electronically appropriated stories and sold them without the authors' permission or making any kind of payment for using the stories.

What I can say is this: if your story is unpublished and you sell the "audio rights" to a place like ClonePod, right now the law more or less states you can sell it to a printed market, but you'd still have to let the publisher know the story appeared in electronic audio form at ClonePod. Whether or not a publisher would care depends on the publisher. Some look at these kind of sites as legitimate publishers and think if a story appeared in audio form and was popular, it can only help its repurtation and they will buy it. But then again, some won't. As I said, the laws here are still grey. There's also that bit in ClonePod's submission guidelines that states under their Creative Commons type of licensing, listeners can record, keep, and distribute the audio broadcst of your story and use it as long as it is not for "commercial purposes or to make money" and they cannot "alter its form" without your permission. This is about as grey an area as you can get these days. And when you consider they can remix parts of your story for personal purposes then it gets even murkier.

But in the science fiction field especially, Podcasts and audiocasts are beginning to become a growing part of publishing. As always, science fiction will probably lead the way in this field, as it usually explores the limits of technology, even in the publishing industry. What you need to ask yourself is this: Do you want your story out there being read or heard or seen? And exactly what rights do you want to give up? Traditional print publishing that only buys First North American Publication Rights is safer ground, because you know you own the story and they can only publish it once in their magazine or book. Electronic publishing is beginning to make legal rules, where you know you're selling your story to be available on a website magazine for x number of months and then the rights revert to you, but then again, some publishers won't want to publish a story they know will always exist on the web in one form or another, and then again some will. Pocasts? The laws are just being explored here. So I might look at who's being published there and what those authors are saying about it. ClonePod seems to be publishing some heavy duty Science Fiction authors. Go to their websites and see if they are advertising that their stories are on that podcast. If so, that's the way the market is evolving, and it might be worth your while to have a story heard there.

I hope all this information helps you out. Personally, if the story really meant a lot to me I'd seek traditional print media first. Then if your story doesn't find a home, maybe you'd turn to podcasts. If it's a story that doesn't feel like your firstborn, maybe you'd like to hear it read and have the publishing credit alongside some big name authors. Good Luck!

Jack Buentello
Click to expand...

Cogito · Jun 6, 2009

Thanks Kyle. That's about what I figured.

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