# First serial/electronic rights



## andrewclunn (Oct 23, 2017)

I have a question regarding poems shared around here.  Honestly, I haven't had anything published since college, which is over a decade in the past now.  I haven't even submitted anything for publishing since then.  If something I share here gets put into one of the regular publications from WritingForums.com I'm fine with it.  I'm not all that interested in anything other than the creative process.  However, I am unsure of how a work sitting on this forum, but never published in any periodical fits into the notion of publication.  If it's here and visible via internet search, is it then technically already invalidated in the terms submitting it someplace that requires first serial/electronic rights?  And if not, then would the staff here contact me first before publishing any of my work, only because if I happened to have submitted that work elsewhere, I wouldn't want any conflicts to occur.  I hadn't really thought about any of these issues before, but a friend of mine is pushing me fairly hard to submit a few of my pieces and I wanted to check with people who I'm sure are much more knowledgeable than I am.

I like sharing my work here, and would it's honestly not a huge deal if continuing to do so precludes me from submitting it elsewhere.  I also wouldn't want to put my work behind any sort of wall from search engines because the openness of critique is a valued portion of that interaction.  I'm just not sure how any of this works industry wise.


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## Jack of all trades (Oct 24, 2017)

Technically posting in visible areas counts as published, so first rights are gone. But I have seen a few deleted their works when they submit them for publication. Not sure what happened after that.

In the future, you can post in members only sections which protects first rights.


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## andrewclunn (Oct 24, 2017)

Alright cool.  That's fine by me.  I now have an excuse to give the friend for why I'm not submitting things to publishers, which is really a fine out as far as I'm concenred.


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## aj47 (Oct 24, 2017)

Also, not all areas are visible.  The workshops are private, members-only spaces.  Works posted in those areas are not visible to search engines or the internet as a whole and are thus not published.  Groups, however, are NOT private.  Nor are blogs.


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## Jack of all trades (Oct 24, 2017)

I didn't know that groups are public. I remember trying to see what was in a group, back when I first joined, and gettin a "you have to join the group to view anything" message.


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## aj47 (Oct 24, 2017)

Yeah but search engines can see in. To me, that's not private.


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## Terry D (Oct 25, 2017)

If WF staff would like to use something you post here in one of our publications -- Flashes of Brilliance for instance -- you will be contacted and asked for permission to publish. The choice will be yours.


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