Hatrack River Writers Workshop: To Place Stories online or no?

This is topic To Place Stories online or no? in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by pantros (Member # 3237) on :

Is there a significant danger in placing finished works online (PDF format)?

I have a personal website with my completed novels and some of my short stories, but I think about 50 people have ever been there. Will it affect my publication potential? (Ignoring the fact that my works may not be publishable for quality reasons)

Posted by JmariC (Member # 2698) on :

Yes.

You are self publishing online by having the stories and novel publically available.

Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :

More specifically, you have given up first worldwide electronic publishing rights. You have done this by making your stories publicly available on the internet. It doesn't matter how many people have seen your stories, it matters how many can -- and that's any Tom, Dick, or Harry who wants to.

Please, take your stuff off the internet. If you ahve some reason for wanting it up there, say a convenient way to critique the stories, then password-protect the site, or at least the stories. This does not give up those aforementioned rights, because it is not public.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

Yeah...there are a couple of different problems here. One is that you have published them by making them available to the public on your site (unless it's password protected, in which case you should have a better idea how many people have seen it).

The other thing is that only about 50 people have shown any interest in them. Now, there are reasons for that which can be good, but a potential publisher will look at that and see it as all bad.

The best solution is to go through and completely rewrite those stories. You can use the same ideas, characters, and plot. But the actual text must be new (you should probably retitle as well). In conjunction with that, you should go ahead and take what you've already published out of public view. Keep them, and if any publisher asks be up front that you did make a previous version of the story available to the public. Be ready to prove that the story you are selling them is new material, even though it is based on the older, already published story.

They probably won't ask for that. If they like the story you offer and can't find it on the web, that's going to be enough for them.

One thing I'd be willing to bet. After a while on this site you'll want to rewrite those stories anyway using all the 733# skillz we're going to teach you

Just don't publish the new versions for free. Or if you do, realize the consequences.

Posted by pantros (Member # 3237) on :

Hmm, Thanks.

Gonna go disable those links.

Posted by DavidGill (Member # 1688) on :

Take them down but don't sweat it too much.

Posted by pantros (Member # 3237) on :

Well as far as only 50 people, well thats actually 50 hits and at least 40 of them were me, The other 10 were close friends. So I dont really consider these previously published. The stories I intended to publish someday were password protected. So I can name the people who 'helped polish' my work.

I didn't market at all and specifically 'hid' the stories from search engines.

Now, here's a question. How picky do publishers get about using characters/settings from previously published works. I do have a serial up on my website that I expect to keep up there due to a too specialized market. (Unless someone knows of a well paying publisher of Fantasy setting hard-core erotica) But the setting is the same as my other works. Like Charles D'lint, most of my tales take place in the same universe with crossover for flavor and fans(I have 5 ), but no real plot necessity.

Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :

You can use characters/settings from your OWN previously published works to your heart's content...just as long as the work you're trying to sell stands on its own and is interesting to a publisher.

Posted by pantros (Member # 3237) on :

They are all mine

Thanks, I know them too well to give them up lightly.

Posted by JmariC (Member # 2698) on :

Actually, yes there is a market kind of.
The Meredith Gentry series by Laurell K. Hamilton.

Posted by pantros (Member # 3237) on :

Funny you should mention that.

My wife, after reading Hamilton, wanted something along those lines, but better, so I wrote her some stories. My wife likes my stories better, but I think she might be prejudiced

Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :

A friend of mine keeps recommending Hamilton but I've been reluctant because the same friend recommended David Eddings <shudder>.

Posted by pantros (Member # 3237) on :

Hamilton was a decent writer in the vampire series, but she would still be a decent writer if she had left it at a trilogy.

I will no longer recommend her to anyone. My wife stopped buying her books.

Posted by JmariC (Member # 2698) on :

I haven't read the vampire series, I'm sticking to the Meredith series.

As far as the David Eddings refferal, I feel the same. I read the Saphire Rose trilogy and I won't touch any other books by him regardless of what nice things anyone says.

Posted by Beth (Member # 2192) on :

The vampire series turns into full-time orgies later in the series; if that's what your wife likes, she might enjoy them. The later books are definitely more like the fairy series than the early books, at least in terms of how much sex there is.

Posted by Keeley (Member # 2088) on :

Re: Self-publishing online

What's your reason for putting these stories online? Is it money? Or is it to share your story with others without going through a publisher?

I think putting stories on a website is equivalent to self-publishing a book. I don't see it as a way to make money unless you do a LOT of advertising or you're spectacularly good and get mentioned in just the right places. I also don't think it's bad to put stuff up for free. It's easier to be slip-shod with rewrites if you put them up for free: I have a personal website where I stick shorts occasionally and I have a tendency to want to put up the first draft, barely polished.

Unless you're pushing your website as part of your book/story, and/or the story you're trying to sell was part of that website, I don't see where having a website with some of your stories on it is going to affect a publishers view of the manuscript they're staring at.

And yes, you're going to want to revise any story after muddling through a bunch of beginners mistakes. I did. Still do. And it's not just with things I've put on my website, it's also things that have been published by editors.

Not that my list of published works is very long so far.

[This message has been edited by Keeley (edited October 05, 2005).]

Posted by Beth (Member # 2192) on :

Oh, plenty of publishers do online searches to make sure that the work they're about to buy hasn't already been published. Don't assume that the publisher just won't notice that you've already put the story up on a web site.

Posted by pantros (Member # 3237) on :

I had early drafts up for friends to review.
Good friends got the passwords to read completed PDF documents.

Nothing I had up was searchable through search engines.

However, since I am taking my quest for publication a little more seriously now, I have removed most of the stuff.

Posted by yanos (Member # 1831) on :

So long as they are password protected and the number seeing them is restricted then that is not a problem.