Guidelines Questions

I'm not a lawyer and I don't play one on TV, but here's my take on your questions:

1. Probably. Possibly. It depends on what the editor of the magazine in question thinks. Sometimes print mags don't care about web publication (especially small-time blogs), since they have no web arm themselves and so no way of using your stuff on the web. Sometimes they do, for various reasons. And then there's the fact that, really, print first rights and electronic rights are two different things anyway, although some magazines buy both at once...

2. See above...

3. No idea. I'd tell him to see a lawyer who knows something about the publishing business.

Good luck.

I was searching around for threads on a similar topic earlier today. Check this out: Posting poems and First Rights...

1) As Betty said, it might. Different editors/pubs have different ideas about what constitutes "published." One way to (possibly) increase your chances of getting first rights acceptance is to rework the piece semi-substantially and remove it from your blog before submittal. Then you can tell the editor that an unfinished version of the work was briefly posted on your blog but nowhere else.

2) Along the same lines as the above; don't title the piece, label it as a work in progress and remove it after receiving your feedback. Editors I've talked to about this (not many, four or five) didn't deem such a piece previously-published.

3) I'm assuming your friend means paying contributors to the ezine if their work should later appear in a compilation. I hate to suggest this but the way to get around it is to do the dreaded rights-grab thing when they contribute to the ezine: draw up a contract in which the writer signs away all rights. A much better option for a good-hearted Bhuddist is to share whatever meager wealth he might amass via such a compilation with his writers. I hope the latter is the option he decides on.

Anatole Ghio said:

1) Does posting something on my blog count as "previously published"?

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Yes. IMHO.

Anatole Ghio said:

2) Does posting a piece for critque on a writing board, such as this one, count as "previously published"?

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Does the forum prune posts? I think if you workshop your writing online, and that writing "falls off" the board pretty quick (days or weeks, not months), then it's not published. IMHO.

Thanks for the link, Rose!

Anatole Ghio said:

Hey gang -

I have a few questions about publishing material and I thought this forum would be the best place to put them in.

1) Does posting something on my blog count as "previously published"?

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This is really up to a publisher's judgment. If you sign a contract, you'll have to certify that the material hasn't been published before, or if it has, where and under what circumstances.

If you make something available to the general public, even briefly, it's been published, in the technical meaning of the word. But if it's behind a password, like the SYW part of AW, it's not generally considered 'published'. But the publisher's is the final word.

A single chapter or two from a novel, posted to a blog, is rarely a problem.

1. Publishers guidelines often indicate their belief here. In general, I feel it's better to err on the side of caution and not post to anything publicly accessible.

2. If it's accessible, yes. If it's password protected, like SYW, no.

3. It's all in the contract with the authors.