»
Discussion
»
Q & A
»
Ron...a moment of your time?
| Q & A |
|
Ron...a moment of your time? |
|
|
serenity blaze Member Empyrean
since 2000-02-02
Posts 27738
|
I know that this has been addressed before--just can't remember for the life of me where to find the answer to my question. Does posting in this forum constitute a "first publish" right? As you know, when you submit poetry or stories to publication, they usually would like "first publication"--forgive me if I don't word this properly--but could you elucidate for me? *smirk* just wanted to use ONE big woid OH. Also, if it does not? Does that pertain to work posted on the main site as well? Thanks in advance--from the "resident imp" of passions!  |
||
| © Copyright 2002 serenity blaze - All Rights Reserved | |||
|
Ron
Administrator
Member Rara Avis
since 1999-05-19
Posts 8669Michigan, US |
"First Publication Rights" can mean anything. Or nothing. Copyrights are established by statutory law and well defined. Publication Rights, of any of multiple kinds, are defined by contractual law. (This should not be confused with the legal definition of Publication Right [singular], which controls non-copyrighted material, such as a digital implementation of the Bible.) In other words, when you write something you automatically own the copyright to it. When you sell something you wrote to someone, you enter into a contract (explicit or implicit) with them that grants them "some" right to publish your work. You can sell them Gargantuan Fiduciary Publishing Rights, as long as the terminology is spelled out in the contract. And so it is with "First Publication Rights." The terminology is defined by the publisher and spelled out in the contract. Each publisher can and often does define it differently. The thing to remember about Publication Rights is the reason they exist - they are intended to limit competition. Publish an article in your local high school paper, and I can guarantee you Good Housekeeping won't think twice about buying it from you. The previous publication was noncompetitive. Publish an article in Women's Home Journal, however, and Good Housekeeping won't touch it. The bottom line is that a publisher wants to make money by marketing your words. If they think they can, they will. That's why the Chicken Soup people, as one example, have contracted with several of our main site authors, even though the poetry was obviously published on the Internet and seen by millions of readers. MIT has a good summary of this at http://cognet.mit.edu/Cover/contrib_info.html (I'm thinking of adding something similar at the main site). |
||
|
serenity blaze Member Empyrean
since 2000-02-02
Posts 27738 |
Thanks Ron... this "thinking" stuff is exhausting...how DO you do it? |
||
|
Nan
Administrator
Member Seraphic
since 1999-05-20
Posts 21191Cape Cod Massachusetts USA |
It's probably the effects of that cowboy hat...  |
||
|
serenity blaze Member Empyrean
since 2000-02-02
Posts 27738 |
*chuckle* gonna have to "git" me one of those... |
||
|
|
⇧ top of page ⇧ |
|
| All times are ET (US). All dates are in Year-Month-Day format. | ||
