publishing question

[alanna]

hi! i asked this question in the poetry forum, and then thought this would be a good place to post as well. my apologies to those who are reading it twice.

my question is this:

a magazine's submission guildelines say that they want unpublished work, and they consider work that has appeared online publishied. my quesiton is, if it was posted in this forum, would they consider it published? and also, if this is so, would deleting the post that "publishes" the work "unpublish" it so that i could submit it? i know "unpublish" is a bad choice of words, i just can't think of another way to put it right now. thank you so much!

-alanna

[dragonjax]

I'm not a specialist in this area, but I'm fairly certain that if it appears here, it's considered published electronically (possibly because this is not a private forum). But this is my guess; I'm not certain. Curious about the definitive answer myself.

[Lauri B]

I'm not a specialist in this area, either, but it seems simple logic that since you posted your poetry online here at the poetry forum, it's been published online. Deleting your post doesn't change that fact. However, it would probably be worth contacting the magazine and explaining the situation: the editors might have intended to include only work that has appeared in online literary journals or ezines, rather than a "show your work" section of a forum.

[Liam Jackson]

Some magazines consider publication on "password protected" sites different from publication on public access sites. The only way to know for sure is to query them.

Good luck!

LJ