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General: Posting in Critique = online publishing?

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    Okay, now I’m wondering about the whole posting for critique may constitute online/self publishing thing. I have no real delusions about being published myself, but if the opportunity were to arise it would be nice if I could. Until then, how safe is it posting in the Critique (which is private, anyway) thread? I feel any help I could gain would certainly outweigh the potential risks. And then, can’t it just be deleted if I do go down that road (again)? Hell, if Glorified Twilight Bondage Fanfiction™ was first up online…

    • CommentAuthorSen
    • CommentTimeMay 15th 2012
     

    Online Critique Sites: Good or Bad For Your Rights

    Until then, how safe is it posting in the Critique (which is private, anyway) thread?

    If you mean how safe as in could anything placed on Impish Idea ever be considered published, it couldn’t. Although, I do wonder about the main site. If you’re wondering how safe it is as in how private it is, it’s the internet. You’d have to decide for yourself if the thread being viewable to members only is good enough for you to place it online at all. And maybe see how safe you feel about the possibility of someone gaining access to your password or anybody else’s in order to be able to view the critique threads. But then, it’s just easier to create an account and do so.

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      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeMay 15th 2012
     

    I’m not an expert in copyright/IP law, so if you’re seriously concerned, then I strongly advise you to look into this on your own or contact a professional (an editor, an agent, even a copyright lawyer if you happen to know one) rather than taking my (probably incorrect) advice!

    That being said, I don’t think asking for critiques from a limited group of people really counts as publishing. Doubly so because the Critique section is private, which means non-members can’t read anything in it and it won’t show up on a Google search. So I doubt that would be a problem. Where problems might arise is if a piece was posted openly on a fanfiction site, for example, which I suspect would count as publishing. (Although I can think of a particular case other than Shades of Grey where a fanfiction author rewrote a fanfiction originally posted on a public site into original fiction and got it accepted by a publishing house, so maybe it’s not as big of an issue after all. She may simply have never told them the origins of the story, though, and it was extensively rewritten (although if you knew what to look for, you could work out what the original story/characters likely were).)

    The critique sites mentioned in the post Sen linked, I’ve never used anything like them, but I’d be a bit leery of them in general. That post did bring up an excellent point, though: on some critique sites, by submitting work you’re granting them rights to display your work. On II, you never made an agreement like that; SlyShy/Puppet/II admins have no legal rights whatsoever to your work. It’s displayed here because you posted it here, which I assume gives II as much right to your work as a bulletin board would have to it if you put up a story on one—in other words, no right to it at all!

    If you’re concerned once you start sending something out to agents/publishers, then maybe take down the story and do the final stages of editing through e-mail with only certain people or something. That definitely wouldn’t be publishing, and then you could truthfully say the finished version was never posted anywhere, only older drafts.

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      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeMay 15th 2012
     

    On II, you never made an agreement like that; SlyShy/Puppet/II admins have no legal rights whatsoever to your work. It’s displayed here because you posted it here, which I assume gives II as much right to your work as a bulletin board would have to it if you put up a story on one—in other words, no right to it at all!

    Yup. And if you want it deleted, we’ll delete it. Boom. No proof it was on the internet.

    It’s also always a good idea to query the publishers you plan on submitting to. Some are quite flexible. Others, not so much.

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    Might as well go for it. It was on Fictionpress years ago in a rather rough form anyway, and under a different title, but as I soon found it’s not a great site for critique. In terms of it being considered published and all if I post online, how the hell else can I get help? On FP the best you can get is something poorly spelt and full of abbreviations, whereas most critique/constructive criticism you give is met with hostility.
    Thanks for the help, guys and girls.

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      CommentAuthorInkblot
    • CommentTimeMay 15th 2012 edited
     

    Here we edit like champions and eat typos for breakfast. We type corrections at the speed of leet and never miss questionable grammar. We can keep track of fifty characters and all their cats and know things about your plot that YOU DON’T REMEMBER.

    ImpishIdea. Use responsibly.

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      CommentAuthorTheArmada
    • CommentTimeMay 15th 2012
     
    So I can post additional chapters of my story too?
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      CommentAuthorInkblot
    • CommentTimeMay 15th 2012
     

    You already have a few editors, so go ahead. I’d like to think we’ve got a pretty rigid honor code around here, and your work will remain yours.

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      CommentAuthorKyllorac
    • CommentTimeMay 16th 2012
     

    On FP the best you can get is something poorly spelt and full of abbreviations, whereas most critique/constructive criticism you give is met with hostility.

    You obviously never courted the auspices of The Review Game. We prided ourselves on the quality of our reviews.

    At least, we did, back when I was an active member of it.

    ImpishIdea. Use responsibly.

    XD

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      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeMay 16th 2012 edited
     

    ImpishIdea. Use responsibly.

    For external application only. Do not swallow. If nerdgasm lasts for more than four hours, consult a doctor and discontinue use. Active Ingredients: Literatum polypsychotrate, 0.0100% (100 ppm), Acerbic acid, 0.0008% (8ppm). Adults: take two tablets daily. Not to be taken by individuals diagnosed with Special Snowflake Syndrome, or haters.

    On a serious note, in Australia the rule of thumb is that if it is accessible only by the members of that group, and not to anybody who wanders past (e.g. will not show up in search engines, cannot be found via data caches or archives without membership rights (i.e. password-protected), then it is not considered to be published.

    On a linguistic note, ‘public’ comes from the Latin word publicus, meaning ‘regarding the people’. The suffixes -ate and -tion combine to mean ‘the act of transforming’. So publication, quite literally, is the act of transforming a thing into a product accessible by the general population ( populus ). Since the elite few of us who have the honour of being members of ImpishIdea are not considered ‘the general public’ (more like ‘the unwashed masses’), putting something up where only we can see it, and where it cannot be accessed by non-members, technically does not count as publication.

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    (more like ‘the unwashed masses’)

    I wondered what the smell was in this place!

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      CommentAuthorTakuGifian
    • CommentTimeMay 16th 2012
     

    Nono, I was referring to ‘the general public’ as ‘the unwashed masses’. We are the elite few, remember?

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    I don’t quite know where else to put this, but since it relates to the topic… is there a way to copy and paste text to II so that it retains its formatting? I’m just worried about italics, as my text uses them to represent thought-speak between some characters. Or do I have to go through and manually do the underscore italics tags?

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    I’m 99% sure that you have to go through and do it manually. It is kind of a pain, but I’ve never heard of a way to do it differently.

    Also, the FAQ thread is a pretty good place for these types of questions since you weren’t sure where to put it.

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    Thanks for that. I’ll just do the formatting in the original and copy+replace it out later. I really should’ve chosen some punctuation marks instead…

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