This Is First Publication? Really?

Soooo um, ahem. I may have screwed myself a little bit by posting the Airworld story as I go. There’s this concept of “First Publication Rights” which is apparently kind of a big deal to publishers. For some very strange reason, many of them are only interested in publishing things that have never been published before, and some of them might think that posting on the Interwebs is publishing. Oops!

I think I’m probably okay though since, 1) This is only a first draft, 2) I definitely will re-write portions, 3) my work is of such high quality that people will throw out all convention in order to publish it, ahem, and 4) according to Google Analytics, only like 8 people are seeing this.

But I need to re-think this process going forward (ugh, I used corporate speak). Apparently it’s okay to post a story if it’s protected  in some way, which is what Mary Robinette Kowal does, the Writing Excuses author who inspired me to try this in the first place. I don’t like password-protecting posts in WordPress though because it’s a pain in the butt for the author and the reader. Mary Robinette Kowal gets away with it because she is a big enough star that readers won’t mind the inconvenience. Me, not so much.

So I’ll be ruminating upon this over the weekend.