Writers’ Markets: Read the Fine Print

I just updated my list of Short Fiction Markets and Young Writers Markets, so it’s only fitting to add a post on the fine print. Before you submit your work to any contest or magazine, double-check the rights you’re selling or giving away.

The best magazine publishers buy first world serial rights to the pieces they publish. (That means they have the right to publish it first anywhere in the world). If they have much online presence, they’ll also buy a non-exclusive right to archive your work on their website. (That means they can keep your piece on their site even if you later republish it elsewhere. Many magazines will remove your piece on request after a couple of years).

Some period of exclusivity is reasonable (e.g., you can’t publish that piece elsewhere for, e.g, one year), and some recognition of the first publisher is expected (e.g., if you republish the piece in an anthology, you mention that it was first published in this magazine). Whether the publisher pays cash or glory, these are the minimum rights they usually buy. And any writer is happy to grant them.

If you keep all other rights to that work, you can submit it to anthologies or include it in your collected works, or do whatever you want with it, including get paid for republishing it — because you own the rights.

A publisher that wants more than first serial rights should ideally purchase only non-exclusive rights to the work. So, even if they can reprint it in an anthology later without your permission, you can reprint it without their permission. (Just don’t try to sell exclusive rights to it later, because you no longer own exclusive rights to it.)

For young writers, especially for contests, it doesn’t always work that way. Sadly, it’s not uncommon for publishers to buy all rights to the work that young writers submit to contests or magazines. Sometimes a publisher will say that just by submitting to them, you are giving them all rights to your work.

It’s not that they’re greedy. They’re avoiding potential legal headaches by buying your rights to that work. (Because you would not believe how many people claim their ideas were stolen. “I sent a story about a lost dog to your contest and now someone else published a story about a lost dog. I’m suing!” Seriously, no one wants to steal your ideas. If your story was worth stealing, it would be worth publishing.)

Buying all rights frees the publisher from keeping track of authors — and kids are hard to keep track of. If a contest wants to do a “Best of…” anthology with the first-place winners of the past ten years, they won’t have to track down all the grown-and-gone no-longer-young writers to get permission to reprint their work if they own all rights.

I get it. I understand the motivation for a blanket rights claim. And it’s the way that rights are purchased in most kids’ contests that I’ve judged. (And I’m a staunch supporter of those contests — they’re fabulous!). But I believe that authors of any age should retain the rights to their work — at least non-exclusive rights — unless they’re extremely well paid (and a $50 prize is not well paid, though it’s way better than a $0 prize).

If you give away all your rights to, say, a poem, then you can’t include that poem in your collection five years from now, you can’t read it aloud on your podcast, you can’t even include it in the autobiography you write 40 years later when you’re a famous author — unless you get permission from the publisher.

You can write the original publisher and ask for permission for any of those things and they will likely say yes, because they’re nice people who want you to succeed — which is why they’re involved in children’s publishing in the first place — but still, you’d have to get permission to publish your own poem that you sold for $10 when you were 12, and they can say no if they want, and you can’t do anything about it — because you no longer have any right to your own work.

Chances are, you will never want to republish a story you wrote in your youth, so it could be worth any price. $10? Take it! Let me write you another dozen! Just know what you’re getting into. Read the terms before you submit anything. Writers have rights. (Till they give them away without reading the fine print.)

Now you can get back to selling your work. Check out my list of Canadian Short Fiction Markets for adults, Print and Online Magazines open to Canadians under 18, and Contests open to Canadian Writers under 18.

Good luck!

Young Writers’ Markets

Short Fiction Markets