GA and Publication

[anonymous dreamer]

Hi all,

 

So it's been a while since I've been on GA. During that time away, I've written some pieces that I would love to upload to GA and share with everyone, possibly get some feedback and responses. However, because it's been some time, I wasn't sure if there were certain rules that I was forgetting about. One concern was that if for whatever reason I decided that I wanted to publish stories that I had posted on GA, would I run into some technical or legal issues with that, since they were on GA first? Does me uploading stories to GA mean that GA "owns" my stories somehow, and I wouldn't be able to publish them without consent first? I've never really had a knack for this technical type of stuff, so I was wondering if anyone could explain it to me. I just thought I would ask before I would do something that I may or may not potentially regret later on. Hopefully, this was worded well. Thanks!

 

Best

 

PS I hope this was the right forum to post this (again, it's been a while).

[Cia]

Not really. If you have a question about site rules and/or issues directed at staff you should use the Help Questions and Answers forum. More staff respond there. I follow this forum, however, so I received a notification when you posted. We do not 'own' your stories at any time. You always retain the copyright on posted pieces. However, if a member posts stories then removes them for publication they are not eligible for promotion to Hosted or Promising author status.

 

Additionally, if we feel an author is using GA as a place to polish and refine their stories simply to improve them for publishing, we will remove the author's posting ability. This applies particularly to site anthologies as removal of those stories is more work for the staff. Some authors from GA do publish as well as post free fiction. We understand the trend in the online fiction world is growing toward eBooks, however, GA Stories is not intended for stories an author plans to ePublish.

[Thorn Wilde]

The way I've understood it, it's okay to publish stories as long as one doesn't remove the original from GA. Is this correct? I mean, I know of people on site who do this; post the story here while writing it and then later self publish, but leave the free version up on GA.

[Cia]

It varies. For some authors of high quality stories we can work out an agreement with them, as long as their publisher approves, to remove stories from the public free area of the site to our Premium section. That is a case by case basis though. Other people do leave originals up and publish expanded, polished pieces as eBooks instead. The main concern for us is the removal of stories, and if it becomes a repeat habit.

[Thorn Wilde]

Good, that's what I thought. Thanks for clarifying.