Story website

Will they stay mine?

[csb1]

Hello everyone,

I am thinking of opening a website about short stories, it would mainly just have short stories,and they would be my own.
What I'm worried about is that if people liked them couldn't they just take them and possibly pass them off as their own without me knowing? if that is the case are there any steps that I can take to stop this?

I am not that well versed in the ways of the web (making the website is another question for later) but it seems a good way to get myself and my work, be it good or bad out for people to judge themselves.

But I would like the credit if any of them go down well.

Any thoughts?

[Frequent]

About the only thing you can do is use some sort of monitoring service and hire a good lawyer.

Also make sure you have everything clearly marked as copyright protected and have a professionally prepared Terms of Use outlining a very high fee for the use of your work on another site, in a book, etc.

Freq---

[csb1]

Thank you,

A bit of a silly question but what do you mean by monitoring service? and where do I find out about them?
If you don't mind...

Chris..

[Frequent]

Copyscape is a good example. Using Google Alerts (free) is also pretty effective.

Freq---

[csb1]

Thank you, they go onto my ever increasing list of things to learn.

Thanks for your thoughts..

[Beagle]

If your goal is to sell your short stories in any venue, print or online, I'd strongly suggest that you not post all of them. Yes, you can track down people who steal your stuff, but it may take a long time and damage can already be done.

But even more importantly, I believe, is that a number of publishers consider stories that have been published on an open website as "previously published," which means they might not consider them at all or might buy them only at a reduced rate since they're not buying first rights. You can check out individual publishers' writers' guidelines and see what they say about previously published material, but you'll lose at least some possible buyers for stories by putting them on your site.

If your website is the only place you're planning to have your stories published, it's not such a big deal. Otherwise, I'd suggest that if you post any stories at all you limit them to a sampling of your writing for publishers/editors/etc.

You said the site is "about" short stories. Some well-written articles on story writing would add some topic-related content, and would also let potential publishers see that you know what you're doing. One of my smaller websites is "about" fiction writing; I've had site viewers ask when I'm going to post some of my own fiction and my answer has been, "If you ever see any there, you'll know it's something I've given up on selling." (There's none there yet.)

[csb1]

Beagle, thank you, I think I might change track slightly, I hadn't really thought about it properly and all the different implications, you got me thinking like I should have been in the first place.

chris.

[annej]

I find Copyscape really frustrating as they include all the scraper snippits and there is nothing I can do about those.

I need a service that catches it when all or most of an article has been copied.