# Flash Fiction submissions



## Kepharel (Aug 28, 2014)

I read somewhere in a thread on WF about submitting flash to a website that will pay a small amount for any work they accept.  Googling a few sites I notice a pre-requisite for some that the work has not already been published elsewhere.  This was taken to include Forums where the work was accessible to the public without the need for a password. Something to do with 'first rights' it seemed. Does this mean that stories posted under the Fiction Board (as opposed to the prose workshop) are already deemed published and therefore not submissable to these sites?


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## Pluralized (Aug 28, 2014)

Yes, in a nutshell. I think the common wisdom is that the publisher would have to be overly pedantic to reject work on this basis, but it has happened and, if Google can find your story it's considered previously published.


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## garza (Aug 28, 2014)

There's no 'considered' about it. Anything posted in the open on the Internet has been put before the public - i.e., published.


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## Plasticweld (Aug 28, 2014)

Gaza I have no reason to doubt anything you have ever said... but I did go to google and enter in some of my stories and sure enough they all come up, some way down in the listings others right at the top. Also some are only a few days old and they come up.

Does this mean I could tell someone I am a published writer... seems far fetched to me


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## E. Zamora (Aug 28, 2014)

Plasticweld said:


> Gaza I have no reason to doubt anything you  have ever said... but I did go to google and enter in some of my stories  and sure enough they all come up, some way down in the listings others  right at the top. Also some are only a few days old and they come up.
> 
> Does this mean I could tell someone I am a published writer... seems far fetched to me




That's why Pluralized used the word "considered," and it was appropriate in this context.

No, they are not published in the way we all look at it, as in accepted by a publication, but a publication might "consider" them published if they appear on the internet. It's not the same.

P.S. I've looked into this, because I've posted poems in an open forum. Other experienced, published poets who have done the same remove them from the forum before they submit the poem for publication. Of course, the safest thing to do is post your work in a "members only" section of a forum, like the Workshops here on WF, which can't be accessed by search engines.


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## Kepharel (Aug 29, 2014)

That's very educational guys. Thanks. Plastic, I still can't come up with a wording that would allow my stories to be found by Google.  If I may ask, what did you type in?  PM me if you would like to share, and would prefer.  I'm unclear too about deleting work from Forums etc before presenting to publishers. I seem to have this idea in my head that Google may still provide a link to a removed work i.e. it may now be a dead link, but it's mere existence will have been noted, and that would alert a publisher to possible first rights complications. Finally, if I were, to say, make an anthology out of my submissions to WF would I have any issues should I go down the self publications route.  I have no intention of doing so, but others in the WF forums might.


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## garza (Aug 29, 2014)

Publishing is publishing, but some houses see publishing on the Internet in a forum such as this as unimportant. Others see it the same as traditional publication so far as first rights are concerned. This I have learned by experience. 

A piece called 'The Writer' that I posted here a couple of years ago was rejected by a Big Slick magazine that I've written for before because I told them up front that the piece had appeared here. Otherwise, I was told, it would have been accepted. Had I not told them and had they published the piece and later discovered it had appeared here, a door that has been open since the mid sixties would have slammed shut. 

On the other hand, the publisher who bought two short novels for publication next year - one for the Spring catalogue and the other for Winter - discounted as unimportant that the first chapter of one of the books was posted here. 

My personal rule now is not to post anything that might have commercial value anywhere on the Internet.


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## Pluralized (Aug 29, 2014)

It's worth clarifying:

 -- Works posted on a public forum on the interwebs, even if deleted, will retain a 'cache' presence and therefore may be accessed by search.

 -- Works posted in the private, non-accessible workshop on this site should be safe from any searches and should therefore not present you with any impediment to publication beyond the quality of the work itself and how you follow the submission guidelines. It's hard enough to create publication-worthy writing; following submission guidelines should be the easy part.

I'm of the opinion that the Fiction sub-forum and the Workshop (and same for non-fiction, poetry, etc.) should be merged into one creative area, and then labeled out 'public forum' and 'private workshop' or something really clear, just to resolve the ambiguity. But, it's not caused too much of a stir, obviously, so I doubt there's much appetite for wholesale changes of that magnitude. 

I have no idea why I'm offering input in this thread -- I've got scarcely little published, and need to focus on the craft more so than the publishing of stories. That said, I've had rejections based on nothing more than having stories posted up on the public internet.


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## E. Zamora (Aug 29, 2014)

Pluralized said:


> Works posted on a public forum on the interwebs, even if deleted, will retain a 'cache' presence and therefore may be accessed by search.



Absolutely. And you do so at your own risk. However it's easy enough check for yourself to see if the work is still cached. I've tried it after a moderator removed a thread and a few weeks later the work didn't show up after an extensive set of searches.

And I'm talking about poetry. Unfortunately, on some of the more active sites where you can post poetry, there isn't a members only section for poetry or if they have one, it doesn't see much activity. I feel I need the feedback; so the benefits outweigh the risks at this point. And most of the submissions guidelines for poetry only stipulate that the poem be "unpublished." I feel it's a bit like "don't ask, don't tell." I think I can submit something that has appeared on an open forum and still sleep at night.


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## Kyle R (Aug 29, 2014)

Kepharel said:


> I read somewhere in a thread on WF about submitting flash to a website that will pay a small amount for any work they accept.  Googling a few sites I notice a pre-requisite for some that the work has not already been published elsewhere.  This was taken to include Forums where the work was accessible to the public without the need for a password. Something to do with 'first rights' it seemed. Does this mean that stories posted under the Fiction Board (as opposed to the prose workshop) are already deemed published and therefore not submissable to these sites?



When a publication states they request first publication rights upon acceptance, that means they are paying to be the first ones to publish your work for others to see (electronically, and/or in print).

If it's already been posted publicly for anyone else to see, that's considered the first publication. Don't post anything publicly that you may want to sell in the future.

A way to think about it is: Why would a publisher pay for something that's already been available for free?

They are buying the rights to be the first to publish your work.

:encouragement:


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## garza (Aug 29, 2014)

Golly gee whiz. I never knew that!


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## Greimour (Aug 29, 2014)

Kepharel said:


> That's very educational guys. Thanks. Plastic, I still can't come up with a wording that would allow my stories to be found by Google.  If I may ask, what did you type in?  PM me if you would like to share, and would prefer.



Type in Soldafonism for an example of finding work posted on this forum.

It isn't the title of a story or anything, but you will find two stories posted by the same member from this forum.

 It is an easy example. ^_^


~Kev.


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## Kieran S (Aug 29, 2014)

Kyle R said:


> A way to think about it is: Why would a publisher pay for something that's already been available for free?
> 
> 
> They are buying the rights to be the first to publish your work.






garza said:


> My personal rule now is not to post anything that might have commercial value anywhere on the Internet.



I would guess that both these quotes get to the nub of the issue: it's about hard cash, and the publisher/buyer not missing out by having free copies available of what they are charging for.


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## krishan (Aug 31, 2014)

Kepharel said:


> That's very educational guys. Thanks. Plastic, I still can't come up with a wording that would allow my stories to be found by Google.  If I may ask, what did you type in?  PM me if you would like to share, and would prefer.  I'm unclear too about deleting work from Forums etc before presenting to publishers. I seem to have this idea in my head that Google may still provide a link to a removed work i.e. it may now be a dead link, but it's mere existence will have been noted, and that would alert a publisher to possible first rights complications. Finally, if I were, to say, make an anthology out of my submissions to WF would I have any issues should I go down the self publications route.  I have no intention of doing so, but others in the WF forums might.



You could try picking a distinct phrase from your story - something that is likely to be fairly unique - and running a search with that phrase in quotation marks. This is what I do when I want to find out if a piece has been published online in any easily-accessible form.

I have done this in the past with some of my stories and was intrigued to find that a few of them had been copied and republished without my knowledge, or presented as the work of someone else entirely.


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