The home of fiction author Val Gryphin…

Part three of three.

Part One
Part Two

Ok, so we’ve covered what a copyright is, and what it means to sell rights to publish a work. Now we’ll talk about bad ways to loose your first rights.

One bad way we’ve covered is to post your work online for free without having a clear plan on how you are going to use it for marketing your book. This goes for any site that is offering to put your work online to gain readers, publicity, agents, or a contract. Don’t stop, run. There is no such thing as “pre-publishing,” and posting your work online gives up your first rights. You do not have to be paid to give up your first rights! All that has to happen is your work be printed in a periodical, or put online where anyone can access it. Do either one of those and you loose your first rights, which are the most valuable in almost all cases. While giving away content in a controlled fashion where you know exactly what you are doing like I discussed last week can be a big boost, really anything else is screwing yourself if you are wanting to publish the material.

Another trap to give up you rights are those so-called contests where everything gets accepted, and then they try to get you to buy the book that your piece was published in. Poetry.com is notorious for this, but there are others. Dana K. Cassell has a great article on this called Writing Contest Cautions. Some of her points for spotting bad contests are:

No entry fees - Writing contests cost money to run. If they aren’t charging, how are they paying prizes and judges?
Entry fees that are out of proportion of the prizes offered, i.e. $20 for a $200 prize, of $5 for a $25,000 prize.
When they take your rights by putting them up online or publishing them in a book, or even just state that they will keep all rights even if you aren’t a winner. Legit contests aren’t going to take your rights if you don’t win - once the contest is over non-winning submissions should be released all rights intact. Read the contracts, particularly if there is a lot of fine print.

Finally, don’t put anything you might want to publish later on up on your website, even if you are asking for feedback. Right there you have given up your first rights, and really, the amount of feedback you get will more than likely not be enough to make it worthwhile.

Part two of three.

Part One.

Yesterday I talked about what a copyright is, how to obtain one, and what it means. Today I am going to talk about this concept of selling rights of publication for your work. When you submit a piece of writing to a market, you are offering them chance - or the right - to publish it. Depending on the market however, the rights that the magazine is willing to buy can vary greatly. Here is a basic overview of the rights that a market can ask for.

First serial rights: This means the right to be the first to publish your piece in any form, in any market. That means it cannot have been published in either electronic or print mediums, in any country. You can only sell this right once, although if the magazine folds without publishing your story the rights revert to you. Again though, be careful. I know of a market that folded and the language of the contract was such that the rights did not revert to the authors even though the magazine was gone - always read the fine print. Also, be mindful that most markets consider the the first rights of a work gone if it appeared anywhere online, even if it was only on a personal website.

First North American (or any other region) rights: This means the publisher want to be the first to publish a piece in a specified market area. This means that if you previously sold first European rights, you are free to sell first North American rights to another magazine, and visa versa. (Although you should always specify where a piece has been published before so that they are aware of what market the piece appeared in.)

Another form of first rights is first electronic rights and first print rights. Sometimes print market will buy the rights to a piece that has been published electronically, and visa versa. Be careful though, always make sure that you own the first rights to an alternate market before you resubmit it with first rights.

One-time rights: The right to use a work once. For example, if you are submitting the same piece to two (usually non-competing) markets and offering them both a chance to print the work. Again, tell the markets you are submitting to. Another was it is used is when as electronic magazine purchases this right in order to publish the story without archiving it.

Perpetual Rights: The right to keep using your work. (As in keeping them up on the sire of an online magazine indefinitely.)

Second serial or reprint rights: Just what is sounds like - you are giving a market a chance to reprint a story that has been previously printed elsewhere. (Again, tell the market you are submitting to where it was previously published.)

Archival rights: The right of a market to keep your work archived (for instance in the archives of an online magazine) either for a specified amount of time or indefinitely. How long a story will be archived for is very important to know, because sometimes markets that accept reprints will not accept a piece that still available online. In addition, a market might specify that they have exclusive or non-exclusive archive rights, which tells you whether or not it can appeare in more archives than the original market.

Anthology rights: The right to reprint your work in an anthology. With both this and archive rights make sure you know what you are giving up - when you sell these rights you will not be compensated by the market for this extended usage unless they have specified otherwise.

All rights: Just what it sounds like - while you are NOT giving up the copyright to your work, you are giving up ALL rights to publish your own work - unless you renegotiate down the road (which many markets are not be willing to do) you will not be able sell it as a reprint, publish it in an anthology, or even put it on your personal site.

Work for hire: As I am primarily discussing fiction, this probably won’t come up much, but I think it is important to mention. Work for hire is a very slippery slope as not only does the market you are writing for obtain all rights for the work you do under their umbrella, but they are actually also are considered the CREATOR of the piece. For more information read What Writers Should Know About All-Rights and Work-Made-For-Hire Contracts by the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

In addition to these market there what is called subsidiary rights, which mainly come into play when talking about a book.

Basically, subsidiary rights are the right to do anything at all with the writing other than publish it as a book. So, unless you sell subsidiary rights to the publisher, you still own the right to publish your work as a movie, film, videotape or audiotape, and electronic rights, translation rights, book club rights, foreign rights, etc. - Writer’s Rights: Know What Rights You’re Selling

However, dealing with compensation and/or retaining these rights are what an agent is for. Or, if you are self-publishing, you retain all your rights until you decide to sell them. However, if you are dealing directly with a publisher, it is well worth your time and effort to research the deal they are offering you to make sure that it is good for you, not just sweet for them.

Other sources on rights:

Blood and Ink: Publishing Rights
The Business of Writing: Minding the Details

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Zooty & Flapper, a “pre-publishing site” that several sites, including Storycrafters and Writers Beware, warned authors off of as it took away a writer’s first publishing rights for very little payoff. The proprietor of said Z&F site, Mr. Pappalardo, who apparently is tracking down and commenting on and/or chastising the authors of posts about him left a comment on my post about him. While it didn’t address any of the specific problems I and other raised about this site, he raised a couple of points that I want to rebut.

Thank you for your comments.
I have been called a scam, clueless, stupid, jerk, etc by the followers of Jean and Victoria Strauss. Both have said I know nothing about marketing a book. I do not know the publishing industry.
Note: Forbes did a story back in 12.01.06 about an author Cory Doctorow who gave away 30,000 free books (down-load) to readers. Within three years he had sold 700,000 of the same book. Cory never has a book published before he gives it away free.
http://www.mdbell had a story today about author Neil Gaiman. His publisher agreed he should give away free (down-load) one of his books to build a larger following.
Those who think I’m a nut might want to read the above. And, there are others.
The experts who have made an effort to bury me, should first check what has proven to work.

The thing that most of the commenters were concerned about was the site’s announced intention of offering other people’s manuscripts for free. The concerns that were given about Z&F had nothing to do with whether an author could give away their own work and succeed, although there aren’t a whole lot of success stories. The examples he lists prove absolutely nothing about his site and its originally stated intention. Doctorow was giving and away and promoting his OWN work - not taking on others’ work and publishing it all on one site. The thing is though, Doctorow devoted a huge amount of energy to ONE book - how could a site that offered to publish many authors’ work possibly even attempt to do anything close to that? And Gaiman? there is no way that man has to worry about a book contract. He is a brilliant writer with graphic novels, movies and books under his belt. He has nothing to loose by giving his work away free.

Pappalardo also has a page up where he talked about first rights that gives me cause for concern because of the misinformation he is spreading. For instance, while he is correct on what constitutes published, he is wrong on much of what he considers to be unpublished. (Bold text is mine.)

1) You gave up your first North American serial rights.
2) Your book went through an editorial process.
3) It appeared in an online journal.
4) It appeared in print publication..even a small print run.
5) It appeared in a literary anthology (collection).

All correct.

Unpublished if….
1) Won a prize but not printed. correct
2) In a workshop ( online writing workshop ). ONLY if the online workshop was password protected, i.e. not available to the general web population. If it was an open workshop. it has been published.
3) Appeared on a blog.. but this is changing. Has been considered published for quite a while. Some publications might not consider it published, but most do.

He also has some misconceptions reguarding what authors want.

If you are an unknown writer building a following of readers, you may want to give up the first right to a book.
Publishers do not want a one book wonder anyway. Your second, third etc books will have a following you can show a publisher.
Read rosenfelds article on Writers Digest and determine what is best for you. Most publishers and/or agents really don’t care about someone’s web following unless they like the book. So giving up those rights has not real benefit.

As for myself, I have chose to give first rights to a publisher before giving away free books. If well received by readers, my publisher will still have first serial rights. This is super confusing. If he has given first rights to a publisher, than that means it has to be published in that format before he can offer it for free online - and only IF the terms of his contract allows it. If it hasn’t been published in their format, by posting it online he is taking first rights away from them, and that could get him in a whole bunch of trouble. First rights is the first time it appears in print. Period.

I stand by my original post on Z&F. As he is now pushing only his own work though, he can publish and promote it however he likes. However, I partially agree with him on one thing - that giving away some of your own work can help bring in publicity and reap some rewards. I’ll post more on that tomorrow.

I was web-hopping around this last Friday, visiting links from my fellow High-Fivers, when I ended up on the blog StoryCrafters. I started digging into it, and soon read an article titled” I’m a Mazzikin, or is that mizzikin?” that started out with the phrase:

I hadn’t been over to the Zooty & Flapper site for a couple days but was told he’d updated it and since I had some free time this afternoon, decided to check it out.

Whhaaaa? I read it and it was humorous, but I didn’t understand the background. So I went back into the archives to dig out the whole story, and actually found a more serious story than I was expecting.

The first post in the series was titled “ZootyandFlappers.com World’s First Pre-Publisher.” It was written by Jean Lauzier, and descussed the website Zooty and Flappers Pre-Publishing. From her summery of how they work:

First, you send him your novel. He sets it up and puts it on his site as a free download. The readers that download it, give it a rating of some kind. If enough readers like it, he pulls it from the “download for free” side of his site, and adds it to his “bookstore” as an e-book or cd and sells it with him paying you 45% of the sale price. Then, once you sell 10,000 copies, he will send a copy of your book along with a sales report and a readers report to “ten real agents.”

Hummmm, so lets see here, he makes money off of your writing on his site without paying you, and then if it starts making even more money, he’ll kindly to give you less than half. Then, as if that isn’t generous enough, he’ll send a sales report and readers report (because we know how well the agents will look at those!) to 10 “real” (as opposed to imaginary) agents, who will probably throw it straight in the trash when they realize who it is from. Mmmmmk, sounds good to me so far. He describes an author as (spelling and capitalization his own):

What does Zooty and Flappers consider a Published Author? A writer who has secured an agent, who has sold your work to a Publisher who prints books on paper, and sells your books to books stores.

And here I thought that you know, having fiction that I wrote published made me a published author. Damn, guess not.

So anyway, Jean published this post warning others about this scam, and this made Mister Domenic Pappalardo very unhappy. He started threatening her. Hence post two: Zooty & Flappers pt. 2 Here Jean outlined exactly what she said about him before, why she had problems with the site and then posts some of his comments responding to her first post.

What you have printed on this site, to the public, I shall take up with my attorney. If I can hold you and the chat room harmfull, I will.

I will take up with her in a court of law.

I understand why you have never been published by a Standard Publisher. I do believe anyone can go to a writing school, and learn how to write. But there are no schools that can teach talent. It’s like learning to sing. Anyone can learn to sing, but they still need talent. And you can’t learn talent. You either have it, or you don’t.The one thing you do have. You have the power to shut anyone on this chat room down when they won’t let you play the expert.

If you can’t beat them by logic, just scream really loud and hope they give up and go away.

The reason that this little “scheme” is so bad, other than just the money aspect, is that this is a form of publication, but not a good form. For one thing, no “real agent” is going to take this guy seriously. And, even worse, once a novel (or story or non-fiction book) is posted on that site, it is published. That means that should someone want to try and shop around a work that was on the Z&F site, even if the site is no longer in existence, they are going to have to tell every agent and/or editor that their work has already been published. While there are writers who have parlayed their online work into novel or non-fiction contracts, they are few and far between, and they were firmly in control of their work at all times. With this concept, the author is giving up a lot of control, and first publishing rights, for little or no payoff, and probably almost non-existent chance for an agent to pick it up off of that site.

So the third post, the I’m a Mazzikin, or is that mizzikin? post, contains basically a slander article that Pappalardo wrote about Jean, slamming her every-which-way and twisting the truth each time he makes a statement about her. Knowing the background puts the whole post into context, which I will only quote a little bit of, you have to read the whole thing for yourself.
He said:

What sparked her to go public with her writing? And what direction did it take?She said she read an article in a magazine. Angered, she wrote a letter to the editor, giving a rebuttal. Her letter along with those of several other people was printed. She had slapped someone down in print! How did that make her feel? In her own words, “I think I slept with that issue under my pillow for a month.”

The quote from an interview with Jean that he mangled was:

In fact, what really got me started on the road to becoming a writer was an article in a magazine. I wrote a rebuttal and it was published. The magazine was an international publication and I think I slept with the issue under my pillow for a month.

And a couple other choice quotes from him:

… I’ll tell you where you can nail my hide to the wall. Find spelling errors in what I write. I am a lazy speller. Heck I even put double words in at times…You put yourself out there as an expert as to what will work and what won’t. You name three other’s who have done the same thing. You say I can’t do it, because others have failed. Hmm? Come on kid, why don’t you stop trying to be an expert on things your not. I told my dog Ruff, “I don’t want to get down in the gutter with this gal and her following of Mazzikins. I have been asked by others to publicize some of your exploits. I know some of your readers think of you as a sweet person.

Humm.

I checked out his site of course, and the text is sloppy and has errors. The graphics that change on mouseover on the menu looks like either clip art or collected images, which gives it an amateur feel. So far it looks like he is his only client, although it seems that since the exchange with Jean, he has pulled most of the text down, and is no longer soliciting other authors’ manuscripts. Hopefully he’ll keep it that way. He is however, already talking about nominating a piece of work from the site for a Pulitzer Prize.