The complication in question is more about legality and litigation than anything. Too often, writers don't realize what rights they've sold or given away - or they are mistaken because of verbal acrobatics in the contracts. This is really the biggest reason we use release forms: to clearly state what rights we are asking and what rights the author retains (now I have to go check our form to either verify or correct this). While there are a few dishonest ones out there, I like to think that most of us small press publishers are just honest schmucks trying to do our part. Which is to say that we're just folks and can sometimes get caught up in all the regular pitfalls such as trying to use fancy legal jargon to (accidentally, I hope) obfuscate the matter at hand.

Ease the publisher's mind about that, and the publisher loses one critical category on which to reject the work. For some of us, it simply is a matter of convenience and peace of mind. We don't have the time or other resources to dick around with copyright claims, so we use it as a default rejection to narrow down the slush. Got nothing to do with the work, per se, or with the author. Has everything to do with efficiency and security.

 

That's the way it is. Deal with it. (As a writer, I feel a compulsory need to apologize; consider this my apology )

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Exile of my own dull vice. . .

 

On the other hand, I understand that there are some publications that only want new work, which is different.  If they say they accept reprints, then what's the problem?

Oh, and I got the same reply from an agent once, and my actual word count is 98,000 words - just shy of 100k, which would put the estimated count right there.  Go figure.

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Tower of Light Fantasy http://toweroflightfantasy.myfastforum.org/

TOL Guidelines http://toweroflightfantasy.myfastforum.org/about16.html

Avatar Lore http://avatarlore.blogspot.com/

(Feel free to PM me with an agent reference. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.)

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Exile of my own dull vice. . .

 

Every publisher's submission guidelines should specify the minimum and maximum word count they'll look at from a new author.

As for posting online and the rights issues, some publishers don't care. Others do. My thinking is, why risk cutting off even some of your potential markets? And deleting something from a public web site isn't the answer, because there are plenty of places where that will still be cached...

 

Part dark, part light. And gooey in the middle.

 

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Jordan Lapp

 

Do you know of any speculative fiction contests that pay well?  There's WOTF... but what else?

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Jordan Lapp

 

Of course, it is also difficult to sell exclusive rights because of search engine caching and the fact that people sometimes just copy publicly available information wholesale to their site (not legally, but it happens).  If a search Engine has cached your work, it may appear at the same time as the market you sold it to chooses to display it, and hence is not exclusive.

 

There are plenty of sites that offer private critiquing groups.  Critters for once, and Writing.com has a "private" option that allows access to your stories only with a password (which is acceptable to most publishers), so why take chances?

 

Jeff.  I haven't heard of this happening either.  I can't imagine anyone sueing over it, but why take chances?

 

Certainly, a publisher might ask you to significantly rework the sections that have been posted... but I doubt it.  Established authors like Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow are posting entire novels to the web using the creative commons license... but they are established authors, so presumably they have that leaway.

 

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Jordan Lapp

 

Part dark, part light. And gooey in the middle.