Forum / Are Fictionaut postings considered publication?

Julia Mary Lichtblau
Jul 30, 02:42pm

Hello, friends,

Do literary magazines consider posting (previously unpublished) stories on Fictionaut publishing or do they see it as putting them up for critique, like on Zoetrope? I've put up stories that have already been published and would like to be more active here but am reluctant to post new work out of concern that magazines will disqualify it.

Thanks, Julia

Matt Potter
Jul 30, 02:49pm

Yes and no ... some do and some don't ... what is NOT acceptable, I believe, is to put a story on Fictionaut after it has been accepted elsewhere, even if an earlier draft, even if it has a different title.

There is also etiquette re putting a story on Fictionaut after it has been published elsewhere. In this case, it is best to at least wait until a new issue or edition is out, after your story is published ... then you can post it on Fictionaut, with a note saying where (and when) it was originally published,

Julia Mary Lichtblau
Jul 30, 03:12pm

Thanks, Matt. I wouldn't pre-empt a magazine that had accepted a story. But as far as submissions are concerned, how do people handle the some do/some don't? Just assume it's considered workshopping and submit where they please or query?

Joani Reese
Jul 30, 03:44pm

Julia: There is a rather lengthy discussion on this topic further down in the Forum notes with lists of venues that will accept pieces placed on Fictionaut and others that won't.

W.F. Lantry
Jul 30, 03:54pm

Julia,

I've never had any trouble with this. Most of my things go up for a few weeks here for comment, and then I make them "private" and send them out. It's like sharing things among friends before submitting... many people do that.

I can't imagine anyone would consider sharing something on this site as 'Publication,' but I guess a few still cling to old ways. Someone even told me there's such a thing as The Flat Earth Society... ;)

Thanks,

Bill

Julia Mary Lichtblau
Jul 30, 04:19pm

Thank you, gentlemen. Sorry to be a pest, but do you recall the header for that discussion, JP? I don't see any search mechanism for the forum.

Gill Hoffs
Jul 30, 04:57pm

http://www.fictionaut.com/forums/general/threads/1133

http://www.fictionaut.com/forums/general/threads/976

are both helpful threads.

But I think, Bill, some of the stuff on here, if it gets shared or linked [I'm not great with technical stuff, so bear with me!] can still be found online and will be counted as published since anyone can read the 'open' stuff, just not comment. Private groups are a different biscuit altogether. But yeah, it depends on the place you're submitting to. But you've been doing this a whole heap longer than I have, so you're quite possibly right and I've got mixed up with something else [like I said, I'm not that good with technology/21st century/practical stuff in general!] I'm not, however, a member of the flat earth society. Or the hole-through-the-poles society. Or the we-came-from-Venus society.

If there was a chocolate-should-be-one-of-the-essential-food-groups society, however, I would give it a whirl.

If in any kind of doubt, Julia, query them first. Better that than besmirching your reputation if it's something that they aren't keen on. Good luck with your subs!

Julia Mary Lichtblau
Jul 30, 05:15pm

Thank you, Gill. This is what I was afraid of, alas. The list of those who accept is quite short. It may seem flat-earthish but it's hard to get around . The story is out there. So caveat poster.

Sam Rasnake
Jul 30, 05:58pm

There are a number of periodicals - print and online - that do not accept work that has been previously published/posted - even if it's the writer's own blog or home page.

Many online venues, though not all, will accept previously online posted material without restrictions. A large number of online venues will accept previously posted material with some restrictions / provisions - such as linking from the online site to the venue or removing the material from the archives of the personal or public online sites.

Here are two periodicals that do not accept previously posted/published online material - including personal blogs or home page sites:

Online / The Smoking Poet
Guidelines: "We do not accept poems that have been previously published, even online on your own site."

Print / The Gettysburg Review
Guidelines: "The Gettysburg Review does not reprint previously published material, including material that was first published in electronic form on the Web."

*

There’s a thread in the forum that lists periodicals that will accept previously posted/published material (from online sites).

MaryAnne Kolton
Jul 30, 06:14pm

The problem here is once you have posted something "public" on FN anyone can go to Google, type in your name, the word fictionaut, and read that piece.

Bill, Have you tried this to see if the work you changed to private disappears from Google? I'm thinking it doesn't because I had a story on the front page for a day or two and then pulled it and sent it to the Woodshed, making it private and it still shows up on Google.

I've deleted all the work I've got in submission at this point and alas it's still on Google. Forever.

Gill's probably got the right idea - when in doubt, query the publication. I just don't put anything I plan on submitting on FN, at this point.

MaryAnne Kolton
Jul 30, 06:22pm

PS Not only that, but I just Googled myself and find that some bits of my stories and poems are quoted randomly on sites I never heard of!

Every comment I've made on someones work is there, even some things from the General Forum!

Joani Reese
Jul 30, 06:38pm

Mary Anne: You are so right, unfortunately. I thought I had safely removed a poem I posted before I started posting only published work on Fictionaut from public view, but when I googled my name and the poem's title, there it was in all its glory (or slight lustre anyway)as a PDF. Dang it. Perhaps there should be a way for pieces to be removed entirely, but I guess once posted, ridding the world of one's words would be like trying to stuff an obese, recalcitrant genie back into a tiny bottle. We are Google, and it owns us.

MaryAnne Kolton
Jul 30, 06:43pm

Joani, No! I refuse to accept that! Let's ask Carson - he's looking for sugggestions for site redesign and no one has sent him anything. I've emailed him already today and I'm sure he is sick of me by now so you ask him, okay?

Joani Reese
Jul 30, 06:53pm

MaryAnne: Carson has no control over Google's sweeping reach.

Sam Rasnake
Jul 30, 07:02pm

Works posted in FN in private groups cannot be accessed by google - at least none of mine can be. Assuming the works have never been posted to the public wall here, they cannot be read in online public manner. Private groups here at Fictionaut are workshops - and the public cannot view the work. No magazine, print or online, would have a problem with works posted only to Fictionaut's private groups.

David Ackley
Jul 30, 08:57pm

Before we collectively hyperventilate over having our works Googled and summarily blackballed from publication, I believe there are magazines-those with no stated policies in the matter, at least-which either don't check for previous electronic publication, or don't much care.

I came across a story in an important online magazine that was still up on fictionaut as it had been for the six months before the magazine published it.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that if a story is rejected on grounds of previous electronic publication it probably would have been rejected anyway, and that a magazine worth its salt won't turn down a story the editor likes just because it had previously appeared on fictionaut.

Carson Baker
Jul 30, 09:13pm

Google does index all the publicly posted stories on this site. It also indexes forum posts, and user profiles, and lots of other stuff. That's its job and that's a good thing.

If you take a story down or make it private, it's possible Google may still retain a cached version of it. I'm not sure how long their version is retained. It probably expires after the GoogleBot spiders the page again and notices its disappearance.

The role of Google's cache is also a good thing, in my opinion, because it lets you access a page if the original is unavailable, which could happen for a variety of reasons.

The rule of thumb on the internet is that if you don't want something public, don't post it publicly. Not even for a second. We built the mechanism for private groups and private stories so that you could have some control over visibility, but this gate is only managed by Fictionaut. If you open the gate, and Google or Bing or archive.org or Julian Assange makes a copy of your work, we can't necessarily make them delete it.

W.F. Lantry
Jul 30, 11:54pm

Ok, so, here's how it works. Things stay in Google's cache for about 30 days (in practice it's somewhere between 20 and 40.) So, yes, people can google a story that's been made private, and even if the link turns up blind, a determined searcher can find it in the cache. Assuming, of course, they have nothing else to do.

Then there's the problem of screen-scraping. This site, and just about every other one out there, gets scraped against our will. The content then goes up on robot sites, surrounded by ads. No-one has any control over this: if it's out there on the open web, it's gonna get scraped. That's the likely explanation for Joani's PDF.

Then there's the wayback machine (don't ask). Then there are even things like oocities, where someone grabbed ALL the content when geocities died, and slapped it up, forever, without getting approval from the content owners.

My point is not that it's not out there. Once things exist on the net, they're durn near immortal, even if they're not easy to find. But so what? You go to this month's issue to read this month's issue, and there you find work by poets and writers you enjoy. In other words, you're reading both the journal and the writer.

The real problem, the one we're missing, has to do with rights. It used to be I could sell "First North American Serial Rights" to a poem. And then, if I were so minded, I could sell the same poem to a journal in London, and one in Calcutta, and one in Bogota. But now, if I place one in, say, Montreal, that's it. I can never do anything else with the piece. Ever. Anywhere in the world.

It's a weird tradeoff. I suppose its in our favor, but it just seems a little odd.

Thanks,

Bill

MaryAnne Kolton
Jul 31, 02:49am

Thanks so much Carson and Bill.

Until I came to FN the only thing on Google about me was that I was number 160,000 to use the drive up window at the local library. Now there are pages and pages about me, my work and my opinions. . . .does that mean I'm famous now?

David you are probably right. . .

I'm guessing Julian doesn't have access to a computer or a printer at this point. . . .

Gill Hoffs
Jul 31, 02:57pm

'Screen scraping'? That sounds FOUL - and painful.

But yes, Bill makes some good points here. Folk are now pressed for time, swamped by options on the internet [a mixture of 'hits' and 'shits', if you'll pardon the expression], and appreciate/need the convenience of clicking on a journal and using it as a locus of work they enjoy - and can trust for similar in future. The rights taken are now most commonly [I've found] first worldwide, electronic and print, but reverting to author after time period x. But the 'dues' for the greater rights haven't really changed, except perhaps gone down.

Some places seem more laidback than others with their attitudes to online posting and viewing, but I guess if somewhere has maybe felt cheated before for buying supposed 'exclusivity' then found the piece comes up elsewhere if searched on google etc, they are more likely to make their criteria specific in their guidelines.

This afternoon I was reading an SF anthology of work from the 50's and 60's which culled the work from a few magazines from back then but namechecked each one on the contents list - which would have made me more likely to try the magazines if I had been around back then. Don't know if I'll come across something similar so readily available today [e-zines to print anthology, with different sources rather than similar 'parents']. But it would be nice.

Will now be googling some of the words Bill used [oocities? I've heard of oocytes...] and smiling about being immortal somewhere, even if it's just on Julian Assange's PC!

Thanks for the elaborations and explanations, Bill and Carson. Much appreciated.

Roberto C. Garcia
Aug 09, 03:58am

Wow, what an educational forum discussion. I have to get on here more often. I wonder how many rejections I've received due to reviews perceiving FN as previously "published".

Thanks all,

Roberto

James Lloyd Davis
Aug 09, 01:38pm

True, the idea of work posted on Fictionaut being classified as 'published' does make one pause. I suppose what I've posted here so far has been 'experimental' in nature, of tossaway intent, so there's no loss, no harm. But if I should suddenly decide that 'flash fiction' is something I want to work at, posting it here would create a disadvantage in trying to publish. The exposure has been good, though, and I can't complain about that.

Now ... if Fictionaut were to consider a hardcopy & electronic publishing venture, some sort of "Best of ..." anthology, wouldn't that be a good thing.

Wouldn't it?

hinthinthinthinthinthint

Linda Simoni-Wastila
Aug 11, 01:27am

I like the way you think, James ;^) Peace...

MaryAnne Kolton
Aug 11, 05:22pm

JLD sometimes speaks words of great wisdom.
Are you tuned in Jürgen? How could we help?

Mark Budman
Aug 12, 05:19pm

I wouldn't post any unpublished story here because people who are not members have access to them, and such posting would constitute publishing.

Mark Budman
Aug 12, 05:20pm

I would consider it published as far as my magazine is concerned.

Ann Wahlman
Aug 16, 07:13pm

For those of you who don't want your stuff on the mighty Google:

I have been playing around with Google trying to get it to stop caching my stories. I added no-cache tags in the Author's Note, but they haven't done anything thus far. However, I was able to remove the text from my story and publish it empty, then force Google to spider the page by adding a link to another page under the Author's Note section. Google will automatically crawl your Fictionaut profile and stories as soon as it notices a change like this.

Now that the Google cache is of the empty story, I've changed the story back to private (Google won't spider private stories).

It's not ideal and it's not perfect, but it works. Purists may still call it published, but at least it's not still out there on the net somewhere.

MaryAnne Kolton
Aug 17, 02:53am

Why not just name it one thing on FN and call it something else when submitting? I actually got a rejection yesterday from an editor saying they look up every submission on Google and if you're there you are out. . .

C.F. Pierce
Oct 05, 08:24pm

Let's say I am an editor of a literary journal. I like a short story that has been submitted, but then I google the title and author and find that it was once (but no longer) posted on FN. I therefore reject it on that basis.

Isn't that giving the word "petty" new meaning?

Really? What is the justification?

And even if it is currently posted, So what, if the author is willing to delete it (and does so.)

I understand that some editors only want what previously unpublished material. But come on now.

Adam Sifre
Oct 06, 12:56pm

I had two stories disqualified because they had been posted here.

Now they are both recluses, living in a pool shed in Miami.

strannikov
Oct 06, 02:10pm

Perhaps possibly maybe only by lazy editors or idiot publishers can stories posted @ Fictionaut be deemed "published", but their opinion is not shared by writers, authors, and scribes necessarily.

In fact, the existence of this very thread suggests the rampant idiocy afflicting most editors and publishers and literary agents of our day, the utter lack of imagination with which they read or are able to read.

I for one refuse to acknowledge or concede that an appearance of any piece of mine here @ Fictionaut constitutes "publication" properly so-called: when only MY editorial eyes have seen most of my posted pieces, the bulk of those pieces remain "unpublished".

I have cited for readers' benefits (if not for lazy editors and idiot publishers and unimaginative agents themselves) those few pieces which have in fact been published elsewhere, just as I've belabored observations that some story or tale has not been published anywhere, ever, by anyone, which remains the bulk of my output.

(I can and have taken editorial suggestions in stride, mind you, as long as I'm able to see soundness in such suggestions. Petty tampering I have no patience for or with, so I credit myself for not submitting work so frequently as to rescue my work from relative obscurity.)

Chris Okum
Oct 06, 08:46pm

I would take what lit editors say with a hearty grain of salt. Most of them aren't even competent enough to manage a Starbucks. If they've decided that posting a story here is equivalent to publishing that's only because they decided so for reasons that make no sense, even to them.

Arturo Ruiz
Oct 06, 11:23pm

This thread has me a little concerned, since a lot of my postings are "unpublished," and part of a collection, or possible collection, I'd probably like to start publishing in some form at some point.

To follow up on Ann Wahlman's suggestion, in addition to following the steps she outlined, you can also use this Google tool to help remove any "cached" content that might still be out there after you've made a story private or removed the story entirely.

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/1663691?vid=1-635796854408924867-3826864806

I followed these steps:

1. Deleted the content of the story post and published it empty.

2. Entered the URL of the now empty story into the tool above.

3. You'll be asked if the page's content has changed, and how. Enter in a few key words from your story that is no longer on the page.

4. Wait for Google to review and remove the cached version of your story.

I did this yesterday with a few of my poems and had some luck. I'm going to continue doing it for anything I haven't published yet.

I'm also unlikely to post anything else to Fictionaut that is unpublished. If anyone is running a private group for poems, let me know. I'd love to "workshop" unpublished pieces without publishing it to the entire community.

I hope this info helps someone.

Samuel Derrick Rosen
Oct 07, 07:47pm

I hope not

David Ackley
Oct 13, 03:35pm

A list of magazines friendly to previous Fictionaut publication can be found here:

http://fictionaut.com/groups/fictionaut-friendly

Gary Hardaway
Oct 15, 01:21am

Screw any venue that considers Fictionaut or any similar display space publication. The list of venues expands exponentially in digital world anyway.

Gary Hardaway
Oct 15, 01:21am

Screw any venue that considers Fictionaut or any similar display space publication. The list of venues expands exponentially in digital world anyway.

Charlotte Hamrick
Oct 15, 03:26am

I agree with Gary. There are so many venues for publication online now that a writer can be choosy about where to submit. Personally I rarely submit to a journal that considers my little blog or Fictionaut as "published". IMO, editors need to get with the program and realize the Internet has changed the game, thank the goddess.

Nonnie Augustine
Oct 28, 01:08pm

I find it strange that you can submit entire manuscripts, with an acknowledgemnts page for published pieces, to contests and presses and they are happy to know that poems, flashes, or stories have been published elsewhere. There is slim chance that you will have your book accepted, but if it is, it is a whole book. Yet, online lit mags get so persnickety about this. Print journals who pay their authors decently get to be persnickety, in my opinion.

And as Bill pointed out, once a poem is published, (even by a magazine that fails for whatever reason) that poem, story, flash has no future, unless you put it in a book and that gets published!

As a former poetry editor for The Linnet's Wings I wanted good poems and trusted the author to tell me if the piece needed an acknowledgement.Of course, we didn't pay, and I stopped volunteering for them when the managing editor put the mag on a subscription basis—still without offering even a token payment to authors.

By the way, I submitted a piece to PANK, they accepted it, and THEN, I remembered that I'd put it up here because I trust you guys as readers for my new work. Anyways, I emailed telling them it had been up on Fictionaut, and the response was "Fictionaut is fine." So, they published it, paid me $20, and I got a truly cool T shirt. Sorry if I've nattered on and on.

Frankie Saxx
Oct 28, 10:09pm

Agree with Gary and Charlotte. I tend, these days, to take down old work after a while. But anyone who considers having been on Fictionaut for a couple weeks 'publication' and geounds for rejection is suffering from incurable silliness. Likewise work that's been on my blog. Especially if they don't even provide remuneration.

David Ackley
Oct 29, 11:44pm

I've said this before, and not even sure it bears repeating, but I've never had a problem with publishing work ( other than having it rejected because they didn't like it) after it appeared on Fictionaut. If a journal's guidelines say they don't want stuff that's previously appeared online, I just assume that includes stuff that's appeared here and don't submit it. There are so many magazines out there now it's fairly easy to find ones that will take the work you want to send them.
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