Posting Writing Online
Have you been curious about posting writing online, and the potential benefits and risks? Look no further for advice than this video, with the transcript featured below.
Want even more Good Story Company content? Become a member! Get access to tips, workshops, handouts, resources and videos for writers of all levels—all for less than your Netflix subscription.
Posting Writing Online Transcript
Hi, this is Mary Kole from Kidlit, Good Story Company, and Mary Kole Editorial. I am talking today about posting writing online. This is a very, very hot topic for a lot of writers, and I'd like to present you with some food for thought. So, a lot of writers don't really know how to get traction for their writing, or they're looking for critique partners or a writing community online somewhere. And one of the best ways that a lot of people have figured out to do that is to post a snippet of writing online. Now, sometimes posting writing online may be the end game. You may want to generate a following for your writing on, say, Wattpad, and you may want to just start posting and you're doing it with the full intention of getting eyeballs on that writing, getting a readership or maybe there is a fan fiction forum where you post to try and get reads, or maybe you're responding to a writing prompt online.
In those cases, likely, you are understanding that by posting writing online, you are gonna get that writing read and maybe you don't have, sort of, bigger thoughts for that writing, bigger schemes for that piece of writing. For example, fan-fiction designed for a specific forum, it's probably not gonna leave the forum and you're okay with that. So, that's one bucket where I think posting writing online is rather straightforward. Now, where some writers have gotten into hot water with posting their writing online is if they are posting their writing with other motives in mind, for example, when they're posting their writing hoping to attract a publisher or a literary agent, whether it's in a contest or on a blog or a forum or on Wattpad hoping to, sort of, spin the writing in one way or another to something bigger, to use it as a stepping stone.
A good example would be a blog-to-book type of goal, where you are posting your writing on a blog, you're generating readership there, but you're looking at the horizon and thinking, well, wouldn't it be nice if I could take this writing and then spin it off into a book once the blog gets enough traction? That's definitely happened. It is seen as, sort of, a ladder that you can climb to get a book deal eventually. Same with how some writers use Wattpad, for example, they want to generate a certain number of views for their writing, lifetime views, monthly views. They basically want to rise to the top, and then with the hopes that an agent will come along and see their success, a publisher will come along see their success. And there have absolutely been scenarios where that has happened as well.
In fact, there have been forums designed specifically for the purpose of, sort of, crowd voting on pieces of writing. And so, there, the intention is a little bit different, and you're not just posting writing online for the sake of posting writing online and then that's it, that's all. You are posting writing online with a bigger aim in mind where, hopefully, you can parlay some promising success or some viewership into the next step for that piece of writing.
Now, this is a conversation that we have a lot in terms of self-publishing. For example, there are writers who are post-writing on the Kindle Store, publish online, create a hard copy of a piece of writing, and their hope, they know that they are self-publishing or publishing independently or putting their piece of writing out there already, they know it on the one hand, but on the other hand, they are hopeful that with enough sales, with enough traction for that piece of writing, with enough just attention to it, they may be able to push into a traditional deal. In my editorial practice, I speak with writers all the time who are, sort of, in this scenario where they have self-published or they have published an eBook or thrown something up on Kindle, and now they're like, "Okay, I'm ready to try and take this traditional." Usually, it's because they've realized that publishing independently involves a ton of marketing and it's actually quite difficult to do well. But such is the learning curve of trying to get a piece of writing or a manuscript or project out into the world, right?
This is a potential disconnect, unfortunately, that a lot of people don't really run into until it's too late. For a lot of magazines, a lot of publishers, when a piece of writing is out there, when it's posted, when it's published, it is, in fact, published. So, if you have used "first rights" to that piece of writing already in a literary magazine, on a blog, in a forum, you have used those rights. Technically, from a legal standpoint, those rights have already been exploited by you putting that piece of writing on whatever platform you happen to have used.
One of the cases in which this is pretty clear cut is if you have published something in a Kindle edition, it's available for sale, it's "out there," even if nobody has bought it. It's out there. And so, a lot of publishers then, a lot of magazines that are kind of more traditional players will say, "Well, you know, the logic is, you have, sort of, probably put it out there, you have maybe hit up your network, and you have used your platform to try and get people to that piece of writing already." And so that easy cream off the top that is most predisposed to buying that project, well, they have already known about it, bought it, didn't buy it. So, it's basically like you've already put it out there and you've directed people toward it, and it either did great or maybe not so great, and sort of the verdict is in. That's the viewpoint of a lot of publishers and a lot of literary agents.
And so, if you have put something out there with the goal of then getting it traditionally published, and it did not do incredibly well, your, sort of, road to getting a traditional publisher is gonna be complicated by that. A lot of publishers, as I was saying earlier, they will look at it and say, "Look, this is already been published, what would you like for me to do?" Or you've put it out there, you've gotten the sales that you're gonna get, this doesn't seem like something that I, the publisher, am really willing to step into take on because then it has to be re-branded and repackaged. And a lot of resources from the publisher financially go into that process. And if it didn't do so hot for you earlier, then where is my motivation as a publishing house, as a business, to see if I can take it even further?
This is, unfortunately, the wall that a lot of independently published or people who've posted their writing online, they run into, this objection. The only real asterisk to this very common story is if you publish something in a forum or online or an eBook or even a hard copy, independent publishing, and it is taken off, it's like shot to the moon surprising everybody. And we do hear stories about this happening, then maybe an agent will notice, maybe a publisher will notice, maybe they will approach you, maybe you'll get some interest in then leveraging the early success that you've had and taking it to the next step in a more traditional format.
The reason that a lot of writers, sort of, hold on to this hope and intend for this to happen to them is that we've all heard the news stories about it, we have seen, you know, 50 Shades of Grey that was originally an independently published project, and then it was just like a rocket was taking off and then the publisher strapped themselves to the rocket and help boost it even faster. The reason that we know these stories is that they are very unusual. And so, I think to try and manufacture that situation or to think that situation likely, that may be a bit of a miscalculation on your part if that's, sort of, the scenario that you're counting on. It's not necessarily very realistic to expect that to happen, but that is the mindset when a lot of writers go into this scenario of posting their writing online or of doing a test run self-publishing experiment. They think that this is just step one of a much longer publishing journey for that piece of writing.
The reality, though, is that sometimes a publisher, an agent, a more traditional gatekeeper will consider that piece already published. And unless it did extremely well, and by extremely, well, I'm talking sales numbers in the thousands, the tens of thousands and above, you may not have a lot of gas in that engine to then drive it into a traditional publishing path and have it take off from there. This is not necessarily the news that a lot of writers wanna hear, but I think it's important to be realistic, I think it's important to have a strong sense of how the marketplace actually does work when you're making your decisions. And some people will say, "Well, what if I have published something online and I can just yank it and pretend it never happened? I'll change the title, I'll use a pen name. I want to submit this to agents and traditional houses. I want to absolutely wipe the history that this project has with being online or being independently published." For me, that is a bit of unethical gray area. I am very much into transparency and being as honest as possible with any agents you submit to, any publishers.
You can pull something from the Kindle marketplace, for example, you can erase something from the internet. Unfortunately, the internet has a very long memory. It is not necessarily something that goes away once you take something down because there are gonna be cached versions of that same thing online somewhere. And if a publisher does work with you, and they think they're getting a brand new, hot project that has never appeared anywhere online, and suddenly they realize that this project actually has been floating around as an eBook for five years, you may open yourself up to some pretty difficult conversations and a breach of trust with a publishing partner that you did manage to find. That, to me, I don't think is worth it.
And so, the only scenario in which I would counsel you to do something like that is if you pull something from being available online, you do heavy revision, not just moving comments around, but you change the story, you change part of the premise, you change the character. You just really, really roll up your sleeves on it and dive for back in, then I think you can have a case where it's a new story, it's a new project. You can go out to agents, you can go out to publishers with a clean conscience, I think. And if they find an earlier version of it under a different title, somehow, you can just say, "Hey, that was a companion book I played around with," and I think everybody could sleep a little easier that night. Otherwise, you may be opening yourself up to something where... I don't know if I would feel comfortable in a partnership like that, starting off on such a wrong foot. It does happen, people do do it. Do do. But is that the way that you really want to make your entry into the marketplace? And for me, that's just a bit of a gray area I personally would avoid.
So, here's the little talk about posting your writing online. I apologize for the dogs barking upstairs, the mailman is probably here. And it's an issue with a lot of layers and I hope that you learned something and took some food for thought away from this short video. Thank you for listening. My name is Mary Kole with Good Story Company. Have a great day.
Good Story Learning combine the elements of learning and community, to give motivated writers everything they might be looking for in one space. Like any WIP, it is a resource and community that’s growing and changing. Come join us and see what it’s all about.
