About Copyrights

When you post something on Writing.Com, you own the copyright. It says so, right at the bottom of every item you create here.

You don't have to do anything else to secure your copyright beyond posting your story. In fact, the copyright notice isn't even required. All that's needed is that your item is fixed in some form. Writing it out longhand on a piece of paper does that. So does recording it. Sorry, having it fixed in your imagination doesn't count, nor does telling it to someone. It has to be fixed in some medium. When you post on WDC, you do that and also document the date you established the copyright.

Copyright is complicated and beyond the scope of this forum. If you want to know more, check out this blog entry.  

What matters in terms of this Roundtable is the connection between copyright and passkeys.


Your copyright secures certain rights for you. These include, for example,

the right to reproduce the work;
the right to create derivative works;
the right to distribute the work to the public; and
the right to perform or display the work in public.

If you want to sell your story, what you're really selling are some or all of the rights that your copyright secures. In particular, publishers want to purchase "first distribution rights," or "exclusive distribution rights," typically to some market such as "North America," or "online." They also generally purchase these rights for limited period. If you get a contract from a publisher, it's worth your time to review exactly what they are purchasing--try to not sell your rights "in perpetuity," for example.

This is why passkeys are important. If you have not used a passkey to protect your story, then you have already distributed the work to the public online. You can't then sell "first rights" to a publisher, and thus you won't be able to sell your story since the rights publishers want to purchase are no longer available. You haven't "voided" your copyright--no one else has the right to distribute your story. But the "first rights," which are what publishers want, are no longer available since you used them up.

So, you should always use a passkey for any story you hope to eventually submit to a publisher.

But if you've used a passkey, aren't you also blocking people from reading and critiquing it for you?

Well, no. You can share the passkey with individuals while preserving the right to "distribute the work to the public." Most authors have beta-readers or are part of a peer-review circle that shares reviews. Publishers know this, expect it, and often encourage it. Sharing in this way with a small, select group of reviewers won't compromise your ability to sell your story. In all probability, it will make your story better and more marketable. If you are in a writing group--there are several on WDC--it's even OK to share with everyone in that group. That's not "distributing to the public."

This Roundtable is a closed group, so sharing the passkey here would not compromise your ability to publish. Still, we recommend against doing that as an extra security measure and we will not post passkeys in your review requests. In any case, in order to share your story, you'll need to share the passkey with people wanting to review it. We recommend that you do so by responding to email requests from members who want to review your story.

Another way to protect your story is to both have a passkey and also make access to the story "group only," selecting one of your groups to grant access. That way, you've pre-approved access to a limited group of people, such as those who can see this Roundtable, i.e., members of the "Short Fiction Authors" . Unless the Roundtable membership grows to more than twenty or so members, this is another secure way to protect your copyright. Later, once you've gotten reviews, you can change the access back to "eyes only." Since your story has a passkey, you can still get reviews from WDC members who are not part of the "Short Fiction Authors"  by providing them with the passkey.

If your item has a passkey and is marked "eyes-only" or "group only," reviews will not appear in any publicly available page on WDC even if someone with access marks their review public. This is an extra safeguard provided by WDC to protect the privacy of member items. However, regardless of the security settings on an item, reviews provided in response to requests in the Roundtable should never be public reviews and should never be posted publicly. This Roundtable is intended as a safe place for open and authentic discussions, which implies that we respect the privacy of said conversations and not make any part of them public.

When you post an item here, one of the things you can add is a "teaser." This could be a few words to entice readers to read the story, or it could be an excerpt that does the same thing. If you post an excerpt as your teaser, it should not exceed 10% of the story by word count, again in view of protecting your ability to market your copyright.

Similarly, public reviewers should take care to not quote more than 10% or the story in a critique. Private reviews can quote the entire story with annonations, although we strongly recommend against doing that.