Submitting work that appeared on your blog

I haven't had personal experience with this, but I have read that a published post on a blog is considered as "published." I won't even publish the articles I've written for various mags and websites on my blog until the contract rights are up.

That said, I have tweaked articles for my websites, and vice versa. For me, it's better to err on the side of caution...don't want to bite the hand that feeds me!

Yep, I've got experience with this. I published an essay earlier this year that was basically the offspring of two blog entries I wrote in 2001. I let the editor of the mag know upfront that the essay had been adapted from my blog. She said that was no problem. The entries in question actually hadn't been available to the public for a while; I had published them originally on my Livejournal, and I switched them from public to private after several years. Just a thought that before you submit your essay, you might want to either take down the blog entry or entries that resemble it, or switch them to private mode. But still let the editor know.

One journal's submission guidelines specifically mention this issue -- Brevity, an offshoot of the renowned journal Creative Nonfiction, asks you to let the editor know if you're submitting something that was originally on a blog. They say that, in general, they do consider that "published," but it's implied that they still make decisions about re-publishing blog entries / excerpts on a case-by-case basis.