Re-Selling One’s Work : I’ve had a number of original nonfiction magazine articles published over the years and I’ve put a lot of time and research into them. I’ve also endeavored to sell only “1st North American” … or “one-time rights” … to these pieces. Sometimes I had to sell more rights than I wanted to. So now I’m looking into remarketing some of my work. This would include updated research … re-slanting to different markets &/or age groups … etc. Question: - to what extent should a remarketed article differ from the original product … so that it’s not considered merely a reprint? Question: - what are the pros and cons of selling to the reprint market? Thanks. shamrock838
you'll need to make significant changes in the structure of the piece and add a goodly amount of new material, if you want to shop a 'new' article claiming it was merely 'inspired by' the original and not get nailed for being its sneaky near-clone... pros: $, 'fame' [getting your name out there as much as possible], $, and $ cons: none i can think of
It certainly would. Besides, how many average readers would even notice that you've taken an old article and updated it?
H.P. Lovecraft did this very thing quite a lot during his lifetime, and I remember a story about this. He sent his first tales to non-profit, amateur journals and wrote in his spare time. But when the editor of Wired Tales asked him to submit a few stories to him, Lovecraft resent some of those already published in those amateur papers to get money out of them (whereas he did not receive any of the royalties from those original publications. But later, after his death, some of the few remaining magazines would not let his protégé August Darleth from printing some of his older stories and where taken to court as they still had legal right over a particular story, and only via a legal short-cut was August allowed to print those stories in a collected anthology of Lovecraft’s work.
