# Question about posting work on a blog



## Mugician (Dec 23, 2014)

I wasn't sure where else to put this. I have a Tumblr, and I *used* to post some of my work on it (back when I didn't have any followers—it was just a place for me to put my work, and make it look nice). Once people started following my blog, I removed my writing. I was worried that people might copy and paste it as their own, or reblog it and remove credit.

I've been trying to figure out how to put my writing back up, since I want people to be able to read it, and I had an idea.

I'm thinking that I'll take screenshots of my writing, and on the pages I'll have a watermark. Then I'll post images of the pages, as opposed to the text, on my blog. I'll post the images as a photo set, so when viewing fullscreen, people will be able to click on the image to "turn" the page.

This seems like a decent idea. Am I wrong? I want my work to be protected out there in the harsh, depraved world of Tumblr. Is this a safe way to go about it?

EDIT: to be clear, I'm not necessarily worried about somebody trying to sell my writing as their own. I get that selling writing isn't a very lucrative business. I just want to be sure that in a place like Tumblr, my work will have my name on it even if it gets reblogged a thousand times (if I'm as good as I think 8} ).


----------



## krishan (Jan 3, 2015)

I'm sure this would work, but I wouldn't read anything of any length in this format. When reading text in a browser I can adjust the font size, search the text, bookmark things, or copy paragraphs that I want to quote. All these options are unavailable if I'm reading an image of the text instead. On top of that, it's such an unusual way of formatting a story that I don't think I'd trust it. For example, I wouldn't want to invest time in reading in case some of the images later on in the set were broken.

It's unlikely in the first instance that your work will be copied or reblogged without credit, and ultimately someone could almost as easily steal a set of images as they could some text. I'd err towards just posting your stories as text, perhaps with a request to always include a link back if people want to repost.


----------



## Morkonan (Jan 3, 2015)

Mugician said:


> ...I'm thinking that I'll take screenshots of my writing, and on the pages I'll have a watermark. Then I'll post images of the pages, as opposed to the text, on my blog. I'll post the images as a photo set, so when viewing fullscreen, people will be able to click on the image to "turn" the page.
> 
> This seems like a decent idea. Am I wrong? I want my work to be protected out there in the harsh, depraved world of Tumblr. Is this a safe way to go about it?



Well, it's not foolproof, but it's something. 

You could use Digimark to embed a digital watermark that isn't detectible, visually - http://www.digimarc.com/products/guardian/images/basic-edition And, this watermark is "tracked" so anyone who can read a digital watermark will know exactly who owns the image.



> EDIT: to be clear, I'm not necessarily worried about somebody trying to sell my writing as their own. I get that selling writing isn't a very lucrative business. I just want to be sure that in a place like Tumblr, my work will have my name on it even if it gets reblogged a thousand times (if I'm as good as I think 8} ).



Hmm.. Protecting things on the web from piracy and unintended use? Sounds like a great idea! 

In short, anyone who can "Print Screen" can "own" your image or text, unfortunately. The best way to "protect" what you produce is to require logins and authentications and to prevent that data from being gobbled up by search engines. For instance, on this forum, anything you post in http://www.writingforums.com/forums/5-Members-Only-Workshops is protected through login confirmation and is hidden from search engines. This ensures that "First Publishing Rights" are protected and that the work posted is only available to a select and controlled few. So, you could post your work there and your audience would be limited only to WF Forum Members and those publishing rights, sought after by publishers, would still be valid.

You could maybe post samples of your work and then require viewers to join a group or become members in order to view full versions. In the final rendering, though, anything you make viewable to anyone else can be "stolen." Even things you don't intend to be viewable can be stolen, sometimes right off your hard-drive.  Don't worry too much about this, though. Just take reasonable precautions, like keeping full copies of your work as well as your notes and reference materials, and you should be fine.


----------

