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An alarming note - TO all writers

T

tyger

The Astute cynic
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I was talking with my creative writing professor today, and she told me of something that scared the shit out of me. It seems any work that you have on the internet and is viewable by the public won't even be considered for publication by publishers. She knows because she has gone thorugh the same situation it seems. All publishers it seem go by the philosophy that if you already have somethign published in one form, why should they pay the money to publish it again, and why should readers pay money to read what is available for free.


So, I just wonder what you guys think of this, and how it shall influence all your original works. Fanfiction doesn't really fall in the above category I suppose.
 
I don't think this is true for all publishing companies.

Heck, I know of writers who circulate e-copies of their books, or parts of their books, to generate interest in the published deal.
 
One possible reason is that they might not be able to verify whether the one published on the Internet is in fact your work, or if you plagiarised the work on the Internet...
 
Google can be exceedingly helpful there -- especially now, since they've expanded their search limit to 32 words. Just pick an adequately long sentence and you're quite sure of finding the original, if it exists.
 
It seems any work that you have on the internet and is viewable by the public won't even be considered for publication by publishers.
Click to expand...

Tell that to the authors of Megatokyo and El Goonish Shive...

Or does this not apply to comics? Because if so, it seems hypocritical...
 
In any event, I was never planning to publicly reveal any ORIGINAL work of mine. And fanfiction cannot be published in any event.
 
That said, I have one question:

Explain the darwin awards books.

(Non-fiction, sure, but the principle applies)

(That said, if you pull it down and wait 'til it's out of google's cache, you should be fine, right?)
 
Ketsuban said:
Tell that to the authors of Megatokyo and El Goonish Shive...

Or does this not apply to comics? Because if so, it seems hypocritical...
Click to expand...
Comics are a different situation. There's a long-established market for books reprinting comics which have already been published in another format.
 
Damian Silverblade said:
In any event, I was never planning to publicly reveal any ORIGINAL work of mine. And fanfiction cannot be published in any event.
Click to expand...

It can, but in very small, and very rare, circumstances.
 
Yeah, but *pokémon* fails to qualify.
 
As far as I can tell, virtually all Star Trek novels are fanfiction...
 
Zhen Lin said:
As far as I can tell, virtually all Star Trek novels are fanfiction...
Click to expand...

Official Paramount policy
As a rule of thumb, the events that take place within the live action episodes and movies are canon, or official Star Trek facts. Story lines, characters, events, stardates, etc. that take place within the fictional novels, the Animated Adventures, and the various comic lines are not canon.

There are a couple of exceptions to this rule: the Jeri Taylor penned novels "Mosaic" and "Pathways." Many of the events in these two novels feature background details of the main Star Trek: Voyager characters. (Note: There are a few details from an episode of the Animated Adventures that have entered into the Star Trek canon. The episode "Yesteryear," written by D.C. Fontana, features some biographical background on Spock.)
Click to expand...

So yeah, they pretty much are just fanfiction. Even, apparently, the movie novelizations written by the late Gene Roddenberry.
 
Thanks for warning us about this. Yeah, I'd heard that online works are tainted goods, but I've never been concerned about it because I don't think I'm all of a sudden going to write the next great American novel on some forum. More likely my writing will progress, I'll enjoy sharing my work with peers online, and then when I feel I'm ready I might work on something that I'd want to publish, I'd just write it and send it to the publisher without putting it on the net. Although I'm not planning on ever sending anything to a publisher so that doesn't apply to me, really.
 
That's bull. Baen, the best Sci-fi publisher out there, offers entire books online for free.... those books are still selling... selling very well, in fact.

Fanfiction can and has been published... see Baen's Grantville Gazette or their Polseen fanfic collection.
 
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