 |
harold said:
Given that you end up with a story that's ready to be published, there are at least two parts to your answer request, so my answer will have at least two parts.
First, you need to determine what you mean by "publish" when talking about your story. Do you want to simply make it available to others to read, or do you want to have it published for cash? The answers to the two are very different.
Publish for others to read: You can post this on any web site, just about. I would encourage you to find a site where you have a sense of community - where the people who may read your story know you and respect you. Don't pick a place where no one has ever heard of you. You could post it here on Fanpop if the level of commentary and critique you see here is satisfactory to you. If not, you might want to find a community dedicated to serious writing; such sites of necessity include serious critique. Receiving critical response and trying to respond to those criticisms are how writing improves (in addition to just raw practice and lots of reading). If you want some recommendations for sites, let me know. An additional consideration when publishing to a web site is whether you wish to maintain your intellectual property rights over that writing. Every web site you use has a "Terms of Service" document, and part of that document describes what happens to your rights to the content that you post on that site. Some sites immediately own whatever you post on that site as soon as it is posted, others do not claim ownership, and still others claim partial or limited ownership, restricting your rights to post or publish the material elsewhere. As a writer, you must always make sure you know the terms of service for a site BEFORE you post your writing to that site.
Publish for money: This is a whole different consideration, and there's very little overlap between the two (the exceptions being pay-for-unique-page-view sites like associatedcontent.com). Getting paid for your writing almost always requires getting that writing published in print (though some markets will also have rights to reproduce the written material online). If you're just getting started and have never submitted material for print publication before, you will want to a) determine which markets are the right targets for your story, and b) send copies of the manuscript to the appropriate people at those markets. An indispensable tool for this is your local library. The librarian there can help you determine the right targets ("I've got a story about X, what magazines or publishers are there who deal in that subject?") for a), and then you can refer to the library's copy of Writer's Market for b). You must always make sure to use the most current copy of Writer's Market, of course. Additionally, there are many books at the library that talk about how to format your writing (how to write cover letters, etc) so that the editor you send it to will actually see it.
|
|
