Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Writing Contests, Copyrights, and Publication Rights, Oh My!

This is topic Writing Contests, Copyrights, and Publication Rights, Oh My! in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by trousercuit (Member # 3235) on :

So on my last Ask Mr. Writing Person, I actually answered a real question. The questioner's story excerpt was hilarious. (I still get the chuckles from "Fabio was a lonely pitchfork in the middle of space.") So it got me thinking... how about a contest?

I've never run anything like one before, so I'm essentially clueless on a great number of details. What I'm most worried about is copyrights and publication.

I assume that story authors retain their own copyrights. The only issue is that I may want to edit some things (for swearing, explicit romantic encounters, that kind of thing). What's the best way to do this?

First publication rights shouldn't be an issue for the most part: this isn't the kind of stuff people would submit anywhere else. But what if someone wanted to alter (read: totally corrupt) an existing story and send it? How would publishers regard the original if the silly one (or part of it) were already published online?

Oh, and it'll be 500-1000 words. I don't think I could actually finish reading a full-on short story that employed all of Mr. Writing Person's rules. I mean, Eye of Argon was hilarious, but reading it was hard, hard work.

[This message has been edited by trousercuit (edited June 16, 2006).]

Posted by Nietge (Member # 3474) on :

I'm out of my element on this issue; I have absolutely no experience in this regard. I'm responding with this post since so far no one else has done so of yet and I didn't want your own 1 post to be lonely. Although, I've heard that if you set 2 male posts in the same thread, they tend to fight if you leave them be for too long...

Posted by pantros (Member # 3237) on :

First Publication rights usually refer only to the copyrighted work being published. Posting it to your web page (or any public web page) would count as being published.

Stuff like Characters and Story lines are not included in First Publication rights. Though, if you try to sell two versions of the same story with the same characters, no one will be happy about it.

Characters are always the intellectual property of the creator unless they sell the rights. What is the definition of a character? Its complex. Basically don't use someone elses character name as they same role in the same genre. But even then, its not always the same character. How many elder vampires named "Marius" are there out there? About one per vampire book, I think.

But, as the creator of a character you can reuse the character all you want regardless of who bought previous stories of that character (Unless you sold the rights to the character too..and don't sell the rights to your characters)

Posted by autumnmuse (Member # 2136) on :

Really the best thing to do would be to not publically post the stories, in order to protect the authors' rights. If the site is password protected, that's not generally considered publication. Over at Liberty Hall (www.libertyhallwriters.org) there are a bunch of stories posted every week from contests, but the stories are password protected and can only be accessed by site members. Many of those stories have since been published, and no one has had any trouble with the fact that they were on the site first.

Posted by Pyre Dynasty (Member # 1947) on :

If there is a contest I think I'll write one about a whole council of vampire elders, all named Marius.

"Marius will you please read your statment," the lead Marius said.
"Certainly."
"I object!"
"Marius will you please shut up?"
"But you just asked me to..."
"Not you the other Marius."
"What do you want from me?"
"Not you either, Marius continue."
"Okay, so I object because."
"Not you Marius, you want a steak through the heart?"
"What did I ever do to you I just sit here in the corner apperantly receiving death threats."
Suddenly delivery boy enters, "Flowers for Marius the Vampire Elder."
All:"I'll take it"

Sorry, (and I know this doesn't quite meet the 'ahem' standards of Mr. Writing Person.)

Posted by trousercuit (Member # 3235) on :

Hee hee.

Actually, do it, and then apply Mr. Writing Person's advice afterward. So far, almost all of it is stuff you can apply after the story is already written, which nets you an awful lot of story mileage for very little work.

I've decided to suggest, in the rules, that authors not submit corruptions of stories they've already written, just to be safe. I'm afraid it can't be password-protected - it's for laughs. Thanks, pantros and autumnmuse!