The poster may or may not have said that s/he did not write it. But the site is not very searchable, so we were having trouble finding the piece, particularly since the site is NSFW and we were in the middle of a Barnes & Noble. She doesn't think that they credited me with it.
Apparently, the piece did well and a lot of people "liked" it; so many, in fact, that it was featured on the site.
Now, here's where things make me angry. I don't mind that people like the piece of a NSFW site. That's fine. I am glad people enjoyed it! I am even glad the person didn't take credit for it. But I didn't get credit for it, and I didn't give permission, and I wasn't asked.
I cannot tell you how infuriating this is. Here I am, trying to build an audience, and a golden opportunity like that slips away under my fingertips. It makes me realize 2 things:
1) My pieces WILL get stolen
2) I could probably get a bigger audience if I specialize more.
So now I get to figure out what my next move will be. I could stop putting up short stories altogether, but I'm not sure how much that will help me. I suppose I could instead simply collect them for publication. But if I do that, I need to do something for exposure, to gain an audience. I could find a niche and go with it. If so, what niche? Any ideas?
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It sucks that your work is showing up other places without permission. Even if you can't find the piece yourself, maybe you can still contact the site administrators/moderators and have them take the piece down or modify the post with the author info. My suggestion is not to post short stories you'd like to publish in a collection or magazine but only those that you wouldn't mind too much if they showed up other places without attribution. For example, free-writing exercises, experimental pieces, only snippets of stories, or only make full stories available to readers who sign up for an email list, something like that.
ReplyDeleteWell, none of the short stories I've posted have been edited to final quality. Just y publishing them here, they are considered "previously published" and would be harder to get published elsewhere (most places seem to want first or exclusive rights). My idea is to get 52 of them (one year's worth), edit them, and create an anthology with them. I do use them to experiment with, but the fact remains that it is *my* intellectual property, even if I post it for free. I'm doing this partly for the love of writing, partly to maintain my skill as a writer, and partly to gain exposure. I may need to start putting up bits of it and offering the rest only in subscription-type services. We'll see.
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