Question about rights?

[emilycross]

Hi everyone I'm a complete short story newbie, and if this has been talked about before (please mods delete or move). I checked the stickies but didn't see anything refering to this infor.

Are short stories similar to poetry when it comes to getting a 'book/anthology published'? i.e. you should try and place your stories in magazines, get some publishing creds then see if publisher is interested in printing an anthology?

Can i ask then who owns the rights for the story - magazine or the author, or is this down to specific mag? should i be wary of magazines who say they own your work if they accept your submission?

I know some unpaid mags will say 'all rights stay with the author' - are these the types of mags you would want to submit to, if you want to eventually have stories published in anthology?

or are there specific publishers where you can go with a anthology of short stories? (i doubt this but I just want to double check)

Sorry for all the questions, but hanging round poetry and novel sections for last few years on AW i'm paranoid when it comes to issues of anthologies and your rights.

Thanks so much :)

[izanobu]

Generally if you publish with a magazine, you license them the rights for a little while, as specified by the contract (in my experience this is generally 3 months to 1 year). You should never sell all rights forever.

If you want to get a collection of short stories published, it does help to have sold a bunch to reputable, well-paying markets and even to have won an award or two. But collections are a tough sell. From what I've seen, the best way to sell a collection is to sell some novels and make a name for yourself, and then your publisher might be interested in putting out a collection of your shorter works.

Getting published by non-paying markets is generally a waste of time (sounds harsh, but it's true, sorry) if you want to be a professional writer. No editor will glance twice at a bunch of random, non-paying credits. Get stories published by quality, pro-paying venues, none of which should try to grab your rights.

[emilycross]

Thanks a million for your advice Izanobu! Especially about the non-paying markets, I would never had coped that.

[Jamesaritchie]

Good magazines almost always buy First North American Serial Rights. This means they have the right to publish the story before you can use it anywhere else, and usually have the right to publish it somewhere a second time, but this second use is non-exclusive, and it seldom used. You can only sell first rights once, of course, but you can sell reprint rights over and over.

Some magazines buy all rights, and this means you can never use the stories again for anything, unless those rights are assigned to you. Some magazines will reassign rights, other will not. It's almost always a horrible idea to sell all rights.

A collection is a book of stories by a single writer. An anthology is a a book of stories by many writers. By and large, publishers prefer to release collections of stories that have already been published in magazines.

Some anthologies also want stories that have been previously published, or that have won awards. Original anthologies want stories that have not been previously published.

Anyway, as I said, a collection is a book of your own stories, and you put it together yourself. You'll probably have to sell most or all of the stories to magazines before a publisher will be interested, and they may not want it, anyway. Short story collections, except those published by a tiny few famous writers, almost always lose money.

Anthologies are put together by someone else, and your story will be in with stories by many different writers.