Deanna's diary, the tale of a young woman who fashions a flicker of hope from the dark fabric of her own despair, is out there on the world wide web.

Read it at WWW.DEANNASDIARY.COM

Consider it self-publishing when you put stuff on the web. There are publishers that may be interested in taking something that has been self-published, but the only cases I have heard of that actually worked involved material that had been self-published in small print runs in hard copy.

Self-publishing on the internet means that millions of people can read what you wrote. In that case, publishers figure that there's not a large enough market left for them to make any money by printing it in hard copy.

So it's not just that first rights are gone, but the market is used up, too.