Questions that don't seem to be in FAQ

[JakBird]

The first question deals with back catalog. What's the policy on posting stories that have already appeared on other websites, be they dead and gone or still active to a greater or lesser extent? I have a back catalog of about 25 stories. Some were popular years ago, others are recent but as far as I can tell, from lack of feedback, were not well-read on the original site, perhaps due to a poor fit to the site theme.

The second has to do with copyright. I prefer all my stories show as being placed in the Public Domain, rather than a copyright. Is this possible?

And finally, what about length? I use the word count defined by the Hugo awards to classify story by size: short story up to 7,500 words; novelette up to 17,500; novella up to 40,000; and novel for anything larger. Are larger stories (i.e. novella and novel) posted as one entity or broken up into a number of sections? Is there an upper limit for story size (say, 120K words)?

 

[oggbashan]

Q1. No problem. They just have to be the first time on Lit.

Q2. Lit has permission to show your stories but owns nothing. Copyright depends on your location. By default in Europe copyright is yours from creation. In the US you have to register (and pay for your copyright). You can put an author's note that you disclaim the copyright if you want to.

Q3. This has been often discussed in the AH. There is no upper limit. 300,000 words have been posted as one story. You don't have to put a longer work into the Novels and Novellas category. Up to you whether you post it as one piece or break it into chapters. there are pros and cons for both.

 

[KeithD]

The second has to do with copyright. I prefer all my stories show as being placed in the Public Domain, rather than a copyright. Is this possible?

You can either include a "free to copy" note at the beginning or end of the (in straight brackets is best, which denotes an author's note: [ ]).

Or you can just not pursue any reposting of it elsewhere that you see.

 

[PennameWombat]

Q1: LitE doesn’t require you publish ‘new’ work. They only get upset if you copy another story already on LitE and try to pass it off as your own. Or steal from elsewhere.

Q2: To publish here, you’re granting LitE a non-exclusive license but you continue to own your copyright. If you want to disclaim copyright on your work, look up Creative Commons licenses. Copyright is automatic on any creative work once you’ve fixed it, so you need to take explicit action to disclaim It. CC licenses (there are a few) allow you to grant usage rights to your work. The other option is to simply never try to enforce your copyright, but the CC license tells others they can freely (mostly) use the content. An advantage of CC licenses is they’ve had actual legal talent working on them and are recognized.

Q3: my longest single stories are around 70,000 words, but as Ogg said, there are plenty longer than that. My long stories are not in Novels & Novellas, but in SF&F and First Time, since their themes fit the categories. The work I have in N&N is about 40,000 words, but had no specific sexual theme that fit to a Category, and N&N can be used for that. But the short story/novelette/novella/novel classifications are not used here. You’ll often see discussion of “Lit pages.” Each Lit page contains around 3,750 words and there has been much discussion in this forum about the ‘perfect‘ length in Lit pages for a story. It does seem different Category readers prefer longer or shorter, but around 3-6 Lit pages is what the Group Mind here seems to think is quite popular. But, my longer stories (the good ones, at least) have very good ratings. So… it’s really the story.