quote:Generally speaking, if you e-publish your work in its entirety, you'll be considered to have given away your first rights, which makes it unlikely that the work could be subsequently print-published. Note that this rule holds true not just for e-publishers and e-zines, but for any public forum on the Internet, including writers' groups, Usenet, or your own webpage.
I think that posting for feedback here is essentially like handing the story to a friend, or even mailing or e-mailing it in order to illicit comment. Yet on the other hand, stories that are posted here are available to anyone on the Internet, and in that sense it is like posting on any other website.
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This is why, when you post here, you don't post the whole thing, but just the first several lines of your submission. The rest of it (the full text) is shared with only a select few who are in your writers' group and that only via e-mail. This is protection of your first rights. Posts: 303 | Registered: Feb 1999
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Yes. Of course, first rights does not have a 'fixed' meaning at this time because of the dispute over distintion between electronic and print media, but there is a natural concern for publishers that they be able to take advantage of the excusivity of material. If anyone can just look the work up on the internet, then the print edition is reduced to the value of the paper that it's printed on (or a little less).
At the same time, publishers have learned a little something from the shareware strategy of marketing. Let part of the work, say the first several chapters, be published online, but have the second part available only through the publisher. And of course, you are still the author of the work even after publishing it for free on the internet. I think that we talked about this in a couple of the other threads, the E-books and some other thread that I can't remember the name of right now
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