Sorry to be a bother, but I was having a look at one of the submission threads, and became a touch concerned. The fact that people are posting whole bodies of their work on a public website (ie one which can be viewed by anybody who comes across it) means their work is technically published, and they may lose publishing rights (most likely electronic publishing rights).

This problem is easily corrected by having a private forum for the critique of poetry/short stories/novellas etc. I'm not sure whether this is in the nature of goth.net, but I thought I'd suggest it to protect the publishing rights of those writers on the board.

Ahri.

Even if it is a password-protected forum, if a full body of work is available online for *anyone* to be able to read, there are publishers who will not pick up your work. If you have any intent on publishing, I do not recommend putting your work, in complete form, ANYWHERE on the web, protected or not. It falls under "self-publishing." This advice comes directly from pblishers I have asked.

Unless, of course, it's there solely to be critiqued (although I do prefer critiques via email).

I just thought I'd put in a heads up, is all.

Ahri

While it's within the capabilities for us to do this I'm not sure it would make that much difference as Luna pointed out.

Secondly we're not forcing people to put their stuff up and it's entirely their own responsibility to choose whether or not to submit it or put it up on a webite or not. I personally don't have to time to run after everyone and hold their hand and ask them if they know what they're doing when they submit.

Thirdly, the very harsh truth of the matter is that quite a few of the people that would post in the forums promo section will never get published because their stuff varies from just not good enough to shite.

If people only want some people to critique work that they'd rather do via email correspondence then they can sollicit this kind of help in that section as well, rather than posting the piece for public consumption.

But thanks for the comment


Lilith

Ahri - Just to add a bit to Lilith's words...

If you are really interested in serious crits, I recommend a serious writing forum, like The Writer's BBS. They will tell you the same thing I have about this, but you do have the option both here and there to delete your work after receiving crits to avoid having the complete piece available online.

See, even if it is there for crit, if it is a whole work, it is available to be read and thus not viable for first rights so long as it remains online. And passwords don't ensure enough limitation of distribution for most publishers' tastes. They can be cracked (for whatever reason someone would have for doing it) and those with access can still share the work with others because it is an easily-copied source.

Trust us on this. I've looked into it.

I am serious about my writing, and am part of several writers' groups. I don't personally post any of my work online for the reasons both you and Lilith have mentioned, but many do.

Erm, Lilith, I must say I agree with you about the quality of some of the stuff posted here, but what can you do, hmm?

Thanks for taking the time to respond, and I apologise for my bratty know-all newbie-ness.

Ahri

As long as that time stamp exists on your post in this forum, then it files under published protected works. If a submission is sent to me via email, then the time stamp on it is the publishing date. The same files for websites. There are atleast a thousand plagiarisms on people's webpages of the 'What Is Goth?' section on Goth.net.

Plagiarism is as simple as highlighting and pressing Ctrl+C. But the credit would go to you no matter what if by some one in a million remote chance that someone here had their poetry stolen from here and published in a bound edition by someone else and it made money, you'd have the legal rights to sue them.

But given the quality of 90% of the submissions around here, both in the forum and to the sub-editor at goth dot net account, I SERIOUSLY doubt that someone is going to plagiarise the works around here.






~blood rose~

Well, that's actually the reason why we have a section where people can post their own stuff here... because some people just want to showcase their work regardless, and not everybody has a website. Whether or not people go to the User Submissions section and read stuff there is up to them.

The stuff that gets posted in GOTH.NET's Writings section is put under harsher scrutiny before it goes up, checked by our lovely editor Rose, but the forums section is basically a free-for-all section for anyone with the balls to put their stuff up.

Other than that a lot of stuff just really isn't good, for numerous reasons. Some people seem to think that one can be a poet even when one is absolutely crap at spelling and grammar or that having things ryhme a-a-b-b or a-b-a-b is enough. As Rose put as a guideline on the submissions page... you have to know the rules before you can break them, and many know nothing about the artform that is poetry or writing/English in itself and the various rules it plays by.


I think those really serious about their craft with the intent to try and publish do go out and search for information in writer's groups like you do, and as Lunamoth does and has also pointed out. I'm not sure most people are really that serious about being published as their goal, not serious enough to do research at any rate, and generally they just want the exposure/attention they can get by posting it on a public forum.



Lilith

Though lets be honest you have about as much chance of knowing who is plagiarising your work when it's online as if it was published in hard copy.

Mes