# Publishing something from the fiction thread



## thepancreas11 (Feb 17, 2014)

So I've run into a bit of an issue....I want to publish a short story that I've got going in the fiction thread, but Pluralized has pointed out that I have now lost first rights to the story, and just about nobody would pick it up for that very reason.

I'm not sure how to get a short story published as it is because I'm new to that game, and I'm really not sure about how I'd get this thing published now. Any ideas? The more the merrier.


----------



## Gavrushka (Feb 17, 2014)

The only link you will ever need! 

http://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/

And the best of luck. - Make sure to post whenever you have a piece accepted.


----------



## Sam (Feb 17, 2014)

Only a really pedantic publisher would claim that you've lost the first rights to your story. If you ask for the thread to be deleted from Fiction, so that a search engine won't find it, you should be fine.


----------



## Deleted member 49710 (Feb 17, 2014)

The Submission Grinder (that Gavrushka posted above) is a great tool--you search through the listings, try to find magazines that publish the kind of thing you've written, read whatever content is available. Fit can be very important, as important as quality in some cases. Some magazines will consider a story posted publicly anywhere "previously published," but I've seen others that make exceptions for personal blogs or online critique groups. Often this information (as well as other important info about how they want you to submit work) is in the submission guidelines. If they don't say anything, well, you can always try.

For future reference, if you post in the "Prose Writers' Workshop," because it's password-protected and not public, your first rights will not be affected.


----------



## Pluralized (Feb 17, 2014)

Sam said:


> Only a really pedantic publisher would claim that you've lost the first rights to your story. If you ask for the thread to be deleted from Fiction, so that a search engine won't find it, you should be fine.



I've been working on a few shorts that have been rejected a few times (possibly on the grounds that they're low-quality) with the reason given they were previously published on the internet. Mostly on my website, but subsequently deleted prior to submission... there's still that unfortunate Google cache. So far, that's been more common than I would've expected. Even if the piece is deleted, you're running the risk that it's part of the cache.

Either way - I think it's perfectly reasonable to post your work in the Workshop from here on, where you won't have to worry about such things. Maybe I'm making a Chicken Little situation out of nothing, but I've personally been burned by this a couple of times now, and it's disappointing after waiting weeks to hear back.


----------



## Schrody (Feb 17, 2014)

lasm said:


> For future reference, if you post in the "Prose Writers' Workshop," because it's password-protected and not public, your first rights will not be affected.



That's all I needed to hear (I knew it, but had some doubts); when publishing on Amazon they hold exclusivity to your story in e-book format, so if you post it on e.g. your blog, they won't publish it.


----------



## InstituteMan (Feb 17, 2014)

Just as an fyi, and not in any way as legal advice, in the US you don't lose your copyright by publishing your work. You do lose some nice benefits like statutory damages if you publish without an already registered or soon registered copyright, but losing handy sticks for litigation that you will never file probably is not a big deal for most writers getting started. Now, having your work published on a forum like this may still freak out someone wanting to buy your work, but that is a different matter.


----------



## thepancreas11 (Feb 17, 2014)

Unfortunately, when I put the piece on the forum, I did not properly read the guidelines. I've learned my lesson, but it may be too late for this piece. I can always come up with something else, if I need to, and in the meantime, I'll give publishing a shot.


----------



## Schrody (Feb 17, 2014)

thepancreas11 said:


> Unfortunately, when I put the piece on the forum, I did not properly read the guidelines. I've learned my lesson, but it may be too late for this piece. I can always come up with something else, if I need to, and in the meantime, I'll give publishing a shot.



Did you think about CreateSpace (self-publishing)?


----------



## Ilasir Maroa (Feb 17, 2014)

For posting on public critique forums, you can attempt to have the thread deleted, and there's a possibility, especially if it hasn't been up long, that you will be able to still claim first publishing rights are not lost.  But there's a also a good possibility that you won't be.  Some magazines will accept works that have been "published" on critique forums, but many explicitly do not, or will inform you upon checking that they consider you to have already used your first publishing rights for the piece and thus they cannot publish it.

There are also markets that explicitly accept reprints, especially among literary magazines.



But it's true that the best advice would be to post work you intend to submit in the password protected sections of the forum.


----------

