Review Board is now open! Submit your Short Prose, Poetry, and Book today!

Day(s)

:

Hour(s)

:

Minute(s)

:

Second(s)

Deadline: Thursday, February 22nd

Photo by Braden Kowitz

These days, most writers know that posting your short prose and poetry online means that editors will consider the work to be previously published and therefore ineligible for publication in most literary journals. (Note: “Previously published” means something different for books. See our post: What is previously published writing?)

Naturally, writers want to share their work online because it’s an easy way to swap support and critique. But who wants to take the chance of having a piece become ineligible for publication?

One writer recently asked us: How can you share your work with a group without publishing it online?

If you’re careful and honest, there may be a few ways you can share your short stories, personal essays, and poems with a small group of people using the Web—without inciting the ire of irascible editors.

The Caveat: Every editor will have a different opinion about what constitutes “previously published” work. To be 100% safe, don’t post your writing online in any way, shape, or form. If you are uncertain whether an editor will consider your piece previously published, write and ask before submitting.

The suggestions we make below are strictly for sharing with small groups of family, friends, and peers. We recommend you limit the availability of your work (to no more than a dozen readers). Otherwise you may begin to get dangerously close to having the work considered “published.”

Five Ways To Share Your Writing Online Without It Being Considered Published

Start a small Yahoo group. Everyone can comment on your work and interact with one another in a close community. But because you can change the settings so that members must be invited to the group, writers can control the number of readers to be sure the work doesn’t make it into “published” range.

Start a personal email list. Sharing a poem with a small group of friends via a private email list isn’t going to get you into too much hot water if your numbers are reasonably small. You may want to ask your friends not to forward your work to others. We’ve all seen myriad email forwards that appear to have no author…and we don’t want that to happen to you!

Submit to Review Board

Start your own password-protected website (or, protect the portion of your site that features your work). By requiring visitors to have a password to see your work, you limit the number of potential readers.

Join an online workshop. A typical writing workshop (such as at a university) will have only a handful of people in it. Editors understand (and sometimes want) poems and stories to be workshopped prior to submission. Bigger writers groups will often split into smaller groups as needed in order to keep the critique personal and private.

Be warned: If there are hundreds or thousands of people who can read and comment on your piece as they please via an online critique website, that’s getting dangerously close to editors rejecting your work because it’s previously published.

Share via private message. Posting your work to your social network puts that work in a sticky situation. Editors don’t know whether you have five friends or five hundred. Plus, if you post your work on Facebook and your fifty friends “Like” it, the friends of your fifty friends may be able to read the work and “Like” it for their friends…and then you’re well into “previously published” territory.

Rather than deliberating over the details and what-ifs, most editors will simply say “no” to work that has been published on social networks of any kind. Don’t muck up your chances of publication: Play it safe by sharing your writing via your social network’s private messaging feature. That keeps your writing out of the public sphere.

Limit The Number Of Readers

Whatever method you choose to share your writing online, the key is to be sure you’re not oversharing. Limiting your readers to a finite, controlled number is key.

Even if you suspect that only a handful of readers looked at your poem on your public blog, most editors will consider the poem previously published because the number of readers is potentially unlimited.

And remember: When in doubt about what “counts” as previously published writing, play it safe. Share only with your critique group and your closest family and friends.

When you’re ready to submit your work, the experts at Writer’s Relief are here to help! Our research team will pinpoint the best markets for your work and boost your odds of getting published. And that’s a pretty compelling reason to learn more about our services and submit your work to our Review Board today.

In addition to helping clients navigate and submit their work via traditional publishing paths, we also provide affordable and expert self-publishing options. We understand writers and their publishing goals.

Writer QuestionsQUESTION: Do you—or would you—use any of these methods to safely share writing online, or do you prefer to keep your writing on lockdown before submitting to literary journals and magazines?

9 Comments

  1. Farrah

    Ahh that’s some tricky ground, thanks for the heads up!

    Reply
  2. Carol

    I’ve used a Yahoo group that was by invitation only. I think it’s a good way to keep all your posts in one place and easy to access anytime. Much easier than sifting through hundreds of emails. However, sometimes the site doesn’t recognize us, even if we are logged into our Yahoo accounts. Then we have to log out and log back in to Yahoo first, before logging in to the group.
    Some of the invitations to new members didn’t go through. And some of the members just could not quite get the hang of it, and did not want to use it anymore.

    I’ve wondered whether this new Google Documents thing might work? I’ve seen Google Plus Circle in action yesterday. Not sure that is safe enough, or any easier than Yahoo.

    Carol

    Reply
    • Writers Relief Staff

      Carol, thanks for commenting! Google Documents can be a useful and relatively safe way of sharing your work, but only if you send it directly to others. You don’t want to leave it in cyberspace, and certainly not anywhere it can be publically viewed. The same goes with Google Plus; social media, as a whole, is very public. Unless your privacy settings are locked down tight, you don’t want to post work to any social network or program that can be viewed by multiple users.

      Reply
  3. Julie

    I started a blog just over 2 months ago in an attempt to revive an old love of writing. I have several series of posts in mind that could eventually become indie published ebooks. Since I would be retaining sole control over those posts, the “previously published” issue should not be a problem.

    Do I assume correctly, though, that if I were to start a new project such as a full-length novel, I should keep that under tighter wraps? What if I were to take a series of blog posts, do MAJOR re-working of them, and perhaps combine them with other never-published work? I suspect publishers would still have a problem with that.

    Am I correct that such writing would of necessity have to remain in the indie-published realm?

    Thanks for the heads-up.

    Reply
    • Writers Relief Staff

      Julie, assuming “indie-published” means “self-published,” you are correct. Whether your blog posts are seen by 100 or 1,000 people, you will be perfectly fine if you self-publish your work. However, if you ARE planning on taking your work to an agent or agency, you will want to start limiting the amount of writing you put online immediately. A major revision might help, but the agent/agency in question will most likely be turned off if they see your work has been publically viewable for a long period of time.

      Reply
  4. Jonathan

    I don’t want to post; I want to publish! But sending unsolicited stories or poems hasn’t worked for me. Suggestions?

    Reply
  5. pge outage map

    One thing I want to tell you is to keep doing what you’re doing and getting better and better.

    Reply
    • Blog Editor

      Thank you!

      Reply
  6. snow rider 3d

    To be 100% safe, don’t post your writing online in any way, shape, or form. That;s right!

    Reply

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Review Board is now open! Submit your Short Prose, Poetry, and Book today!

Day(s)

:

Hour(s)

:

Minute(s)

:

Second(s)

 

 

See ALL the services we offer, from
FREE to Full Service!

Click here for a Writer’s Relief
Full Service Overview

Search

Reviews

“Getting that first poem published was the hardest threshold to cross. My team at Writer’s Relief kept encouraging me…then came the acceptance! We celebrated…then I continued writing, and Writer’s Relief continued doing the wonderful work they do!”

—King Grossman, Writer
(Watch King’s video testimonial here!)

“Every piece I have sent out with their help has been accepted for publication! I am looking forward to working with the team on getting my new novel out into the world.”

Services Catalog

Free Publishing Leads
and Tips!

Featured Articles



Featured Video

Follow us!



YES, IT'S MY LUCKY DAY!
Sign me up for
FREE Publishing Leads & Tips
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

WHY? Because our insider
know-how has helped
writers get over 18,000 acceptances.

FREE Publishing Leads and Tips! Our e-publication, Submit Write Now!, delivered weekly to your inbox.
  • BEST (and proven) submission tips
  • Hot publishing leads
  • Calls to submit
  • Contest alerts
  • Notification of industry changes
  • And much more!
close-link


STOP! BEFORE YOU GO...
Sign me up for
FREE Publishing Leads & Tips
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

WHY? Because our insider
know-how has helped
writers get over 18,000 acceptances.

FREE Publishing Leads and Tips! Our e-publication, Submit Write Now!, delivered weekly to your inbox.
  • BEST (and proven) submission tips
  • Hot publishing leads
  • Calls to submit
  • Contest alerts
  • Notification of industry changes
  • And much more!
close-link

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This