I have begun setting up a websight to offer my short stories for people to read. The ones I like but won't probably ever be "published" for profit. I read somewhere that one option for seeking publishing is to password protect your work, place it on your webpage and when a publisher wants to see the full work its available for them to review, just send them the password. Is this common? I only found it suggested one place(and can't remember where). That right there does cast some doubt.
yes, it's website... and if you post more than very brief excerpts of your work anywhere online, you'll be seriously narrowing your chances of selling it to a publisher...
I hate making fun of misspellings, but I seriously expected a thread about Spiderman! He has Spidey senses you know. Anyway, I have my own site and am publishing a whole giant novel and it's all there to read, copy, or whatever. But, it's my copyrighten material, as is anything anyone posts, so you can take action if someone steals your work. Thus, I would post your work for all to enjoy.
If you post a story on your website, you are basically publishing it and using your first publication rights which is what most publishers buy. Agents/publishers have their own guidelines about manuscript submission, so in essence the posting and password protecting is irrelevant to the submission process.
yep, I did mess up the title. But if password protected, only the people I wanted could see the work, thus not everyone in the world could read it for free. The stuff I post without protection would be free to read, probably alot will be stuff I posted on other sights, just putting it all together. The suggestion was to have whole books on the page, so that if a publisher wanted they could read it without having to make a hardcopy. They also said some publisher like to carry the hardcopy with them when travelling so in the spare time they could read it. Like I said, I only saw this in one place. I heard the only way to copyright is to file it with the goverment, pay the fee, and then its yours. Otherwise, it can be argued as to who really did the work. No poor mans copyright(mail the piece to yourself), no date posted copyright, etc. Is this not true? Oh, and I mean live the safe experiences. I can write about near drowning, violent car accidents, on a bus with no brakes going down a vineyard in Germany, having guns pointed at me, none of which I would recomend trying to recreate. These are experiences you only get when they happen, not by choice. For bad experiences, find someone to interview, 2nd hand will have to do.
you need to learn what copyright really is and how it works... go here for the official info: www.copyright.gov meanwhile, you're wrong about 'filing'... written work is automatically copyrighted from the moment it's completed and can be reproduced... registering your already existing copyright with loc does for you only relates to going to court, if your authorship is in question... you'll find the details of all that on the site linked above... the 'poor man's copyright' has no standing in us courts, but may have some in the uk... but the best way to prove you wrote something is to simply keep all your earliest notes on the idea, plus your first draft and maybe one of the subsequent ones, that will show how you developed the finished work from concept to completed ms... and you shouldn't rely on 'password protected' sites... these days, nothing on the web is safe from those who want to get at it... besides, most agents and publishers will want a hardcopy, anyway...
