Mary Rosenblum:  Hello all! Glad to see we're up and running tonight!  I particularly wanted to talk about breaking in to today's publishing in today's publishing world. Traditional publishing is changing rapidly and it's hard to know what works and what doesn't.  Ezines, ebooks,and very small press publishers abound. More spring up every day. Very few of these pay right now. People do not want to pay for internet material and most publishers online have not yet found a way to make money from the site.  You have to ask yourself what you want and what the publisher is really offering.  Once you've published you've used your first rights. So spend those first rights wisely. If you're not getting paid, you need to be getting something, or you might as well post the story on your blog or website.

So what do you look for?

Look for web presence. How well known is an online ezine? There’s nothing wrong with submitting to a brand new ezine whose owners are really trying to promote it. That new ezine should get attention for awhile. And your piece is part of it. Check trade magazines for your genre, such as Romantic Times for romance or Locus for speculative fiction. Notice where reviewed stories have been published. And of course, paying sites are always preferable, but I don't know one paying site that is actually making that money to pay authors. They're 'funded by Visa' in the hopes of attracting a better quality story .

It's always good to have your work in front of the public, but a bit of homework can help you get 'more bang for your buck'. If a brand new webzine with a gorgeous front page got ten hits last month...uh, you might as well put it up on your blog. I just featured Liquid Imagination, a new ezine associated with a couple of other publications in last week’s Newsletter. The publisher is going to be my guest in March. They're getting good hits. They're getting word out about the new 'zine.

Always watch your rights.  You must, must, must, MUST have some sort of contract.

That’s MUST
I thought that the ezines didn't use contracts
Mary Rosenblum:  If you have no contract, you just let someone post your work on their zine, they can argue that they now have copyright or the right to do anything they want with your story.   Cat, they had better use contracts! The ones I've dealt with do.  But anyone can start an ezine and you have lots of amateurs out there. And some of the new ezine publishers really don't know contracts from a flowerpot. Many ezine contracts simply ask for 'all rights'. That’s selling your copyright, folks.

What exactly does first rights mean to me?
Mary Rosenblum:  Illinois, first rights means that you are selling someone the right to publish your work first.  That's what publishers pay the most money for. They'll buy reprint rights, but they pay a much smaller fee for doing so.
So what about when you send something in for a contest?

Do you need contracts for blogs? Or does it just become theirs?
Mary Rosenblum:  That's a very gray area, Pam. Anytime someone uses my work, we have a signed, written agreement about just how they can use my work. I do that even with friends.  That way everybody is on the same page.  I wouldn't let someone put my fiction or essay up on their blog unless I had an agreement that this was all they could do, use it this time.  But my stories sell many times and they're income for me. I protect them.
How do you find out how many hits an ezine gets?
Mary Rosenblum:  Laina, the publisher of the eziine should be able to tell you.
okay, thanks
Mary Rosenblum:  You can use google to check 'back links' and see how many other websites are linking to this ezine.  If it's a lot, then the site is popular.

So how does one know when the contract they have is legal in the state they are in?

Mary Rosenblum:   Publishing contracts are legal internationally, mystic.
I have a question. There is this magazine I read and it has a section I would love to submit to. They ask for submissions however I never see anyone else’s name in this section but one person. If someone else is writing these articles and then they are using this other persons name is that right?
Mary Rosenblum:   Interesting llama.  It could be that they're buying the essays and then publishing them under this fake byline. If that's what the contract states, it's perfectly legal. Many writers do 'work for hire' and write, say, Nancy Drew mysteries.  The author by line is Caroyn Keene, but of course she has been dead for a long time. That's quite legal as long as you agree to do it.
So Mary, do you copyright all your work before you send it out?
Mary Rosenblum:   My copyright is automatic, Pam. I don't have to register it with the copyright office and I don't.
How is that?
Mary Rosenblum:   If someone tries to sell my work without my permission -- and it has happened -- I have the legal right to tell, say, the webmaster of that site to stop, and it gets stopped.  Your copyright is automatic as soon as you write the words down on paper or hit 'save' on your computer. The only time it's advisable to register your copyright is if you think your book is likely to be infringed upon. Then it will help you if you bring a lawsuit against someone.

But do you get to use clips from "for hire stuff you have  written for someone else?
Mary Rosenblum:   Sure you can, bss. If you're a ghost writer, you're going to use clips of books you've ghost written. If a publisher doubts your word, they can always check.
  Does that apply to music too?

Mary Rosenblum:   Cat, I can't tell you how similar or different music copyright is, but I'm assuming that it's just as automatic. You'd have to check that to be sure.
so if you have submitted to a contest and then you see work that is very very similar to yours is there any thing you can do?
Mary Rosenblum:   Not unless it's substantially the same, mystic. Ideas are not copyrightable. You can have two stories about a young wizard in wizard's school written at the same time and that's not plagiarism.
There's a great beginners FAQ at the gov copyright site: http://www.copyright.gov/
Mary Rosenblum:   Yes, there is. Thanks for the link, sojourner. I was groping for it.
When you're a new writer, getting your name in front of the public is valuable to you.  So if you have tried paying markets and received rejections, then by all means submit your work to the nonpaying ezines. Even if they're small, that's a few more folk who know who you are and have read your work, eh? Nobody reads stuff that's stored on your hard drive.
  So the big deal is first rights, and if it has been published, then it doesn't matter so much if you give it to someone’s blog??
Mary Rosenblum:   Correct, Pam. Once I've sold first rights, I'm quite happy to let just about anyone publish the story, as long as they only want non-exclusive rights. I might make 25$ from some small new 'zine, but hey, it's more readers for me, maybe new people.  Always watch for the key words 'nonexclusive rights'.
  Define that please
Mary Rosenblum:   That means you can publish it several places at once. I just had two 'best of the year' collections ask to use the same story. Fortunately they both want nonexclusive.
Do you set a time limit for it to be used on a blog?

Mary Rosenblum:   Dani, blogs usually archive forever unless the blog owner starts deleting old files.
Is there a ezine website list?
Mary Rosenblum:   I've been compiling one for LR bss.
Non-exclusive means that you can publish the piece somewhere else, right? You still own the story.
Mary Rosenblum:   Correct, andi. And it means not only do you still own it, but that person who purchased the right to use it, cannot demand that it not be published anywhere else.

And if you didn't have a 'blog contract' prior, who's is it?
Mary Rosenblum:   Well, it's technically yours, Pam, but you and the blog owner have never defined what you have licensed the blog owner to do. It's not really likely to be a problem most of the time.  But what if he sold that story to a movie producer for a half million bucks and then said he didn't owe you anything? He could maybe get away with that legally.  You didn't define what he could do. You didn't say he couldn't sell it. You let him use it.
And if you sold it....could he claim some?

Mary Rosenblum:   Probably not, Pam.
So can contest holders sell our submissions with out our permission?
Mary Rosenblum:   Contests nearly always define the limits of what they can do. Usually they say that after the contest all rights revert to the authors. Sometimes they publish the winners and then you do use your first rights of course.
Thanks that makes more sense to me now.
Mary Rosenblum:   There's one scary phrase that stops a lot of people. The contest usually says that all submissions become the property of the contest. This does not mean that your copyright becomes their property. It means the manuscripts become their property. That's to keep angry submitters from claiming that the contest threw away the only copy they had. They are saying 'if you send us your story, we get to eat it if we want to. It's OUR paper. ' But it's not 'our story'. Just the physical pages.  But do read the rules.  Someone sent me one set that stated that the winning stories could be used any way that the contest givers chose. Here's that 'sell it as a movie' scenario again!
Can you briefly explain what "first rights" is?
Mary Rosenblum:   First rights means you sell someone the right to publish this piece of work first, before anyone else does.  And ...of course...you can only sell that one time.
But it's not EXCLUSIVE rights?
Mary Rosenblum:   Andi, it usually IS exclusive for a period of time. For example, my Asimov's contracts buy first rights that are exclusive for six months after the story is published in the magazine. After that, I can publish it anywhere I choose. An ezine might buy exclusive rights for a month, three months, even a year.
Is there legalese, or outright trickery, in some contracts. Or are they mostly straight forward?
Mary Rosenblum:   Well, a lot of contracts are written by people who don't know how to write a contract so they go for 'all rights' probably figuring that covers all bases. It sure does, but not in YOUR favor.  And other contracts, like that sneaky contest, are, I feel, intentionally trying to get control of marketable product for cheap.
Have to be careful with EULAs too. Facebook's new user agreement says that they own everything, for ever. Even after you delete your account.
What's a EULA?
Mary Rosenblum:   Oh, Soujourner that's scary! Hey, will you write me a factual piece about that? And send it to me as web editor? I'll feature it in the newsletter with your byline. People need to be aware of that!
EULA =  end user license agreement
Mary Rosenblum:   That's the page of small print where nearly everybody clicks 'accept' and doesn't read.

I received the new 'Best of the Magazine Markets' book from Long Ridge and was browsing through it and noticed some of the magazines specify they want ALL RIGHTS... is it wise to send to them or stay away...
Mary Rosenblum:   Owly, that's a very good question.  When do you sell 'all rights'?   All rights is like work for hire. You are selling the words themselves, not the right to use them in a certain way. I do work for hire. But then those words are no longer yours. If you're doing nonfiction and it's a specific piece, why not? You probably can't sell that exact same piece too many other places, most NF pieces are slanted pretty specifically to markets.  BUT.... it is fiction.... you are also giving up the right to ever use those characters again. They now belong to the all rights purchaser.  I would not sell all rights to a fiction story.  I may want to use the characters, the world, or do it as an expanded version. When I wrote the LR novel course, that was a work for hire. That was fine. Most textbook work is.
  If you expand a story, can you sell first rights both times?
Mary Rosenblum:   Oh yes. It's not the same story.  I'm talking about a substantial change...from flash fiction to say, 5000 words or from novelette to novel. Most of my novels were published novelettes first.

Remember, everything on the internet....EVERYTHING....is copyrighted to somebody.  That's why you really need to get permission before grabbing something off the internet. For your own use it's fine. That’s 'fair use' under copyright law. But if you want to put it up on your website or add it to a project you want to publish, ask first.
I notice a lot of websites that mention something like "Please give credit to _____ if you'd like to mention this on your blog or web page"
Mary Rosenblum:   Good for them and most people are happy to have the reference or the link.
Mary, Will it take a long time to BIP? I sent a query letter to a magazine asking if I could send my work but they didn't even reply. Is this the norm?
Mary Rosenblum:   Melody, editors are pretty harsh about queries. IF your query 'misses the mark' and doesn't offer them something that they could actually use, they often don't reply. If you were 'close' but not quite right, they'll send you a note back. So you may have simply misread their slant or something.

Mostly it’s a matter of researching your markets and then being persistent.  Remember…what do you call a persistent writer?  Published! 

Good night all!