The Rocky Road to Publishing

[underwhere]

My dearest underwhere,

Did I actually say that?

Each time a reader opens your story (or part of your story) you score a hit!

Okay, that answers one of my questions directly. I was a bit unsure as to how that worked. Thanks for the clarification. If they were to read each of my two chapters separately, that would be two hits. If they were to read the whole thing all at once as it is currently, that would be one hit. I'm not sure that is the most useful way to do it for statistical purposes of determining if my story actually has staying power, but I'm not honestly sure how I would make that better.

You can always stick a copyright notice in at the end or even as a revision of previously posted works. Its helpful if you think someone might lift your story word for word and try to pass it off as their own.

Probably nobody ever thinks that is going to happen, but each of us must be careful with such things and do whatever we can to protect ourselves. I guess I should start adding copyright notices to each of my story parts and my story information page just to be safe.

Publishers frown on trying to charge people for something that you've given away for free. Even then, say you've posted the first three chapters of a ten chapter saga, they may well give that a thumbs up if they are getting the exclusive on the whole story. e-publishers who invest much less in publishing a story tend to be laxer in these matters.

I can understand and definitely appreciate that. What prompted me to write that particular response was the fact that if my story received more than ten thousand hits for two story parts, there would seem to be quite a following for the story, and then I got to thinking, "What if there really is a following for this story?" I guess I've been dreaming a bit about planting a money tree with my writing since then.

Paper publishers (the monsters bent on destroying old growth checkered owl habitats) might ask that you withdraw any free e-published versions of the story. That led to a dust up a few years back when ownership changed. the former owner Jinn had no problem pulling an old story pretty much at the authors request. New ownership, not so much. A number of fairly respected writers stopped posting. A direct question to Tiger might help you here, but you're more likely to get a response from Torq.

At some point, I will be sure to inquire if they do not happen to read this thread first.

Ms. King is quite right about pen names, sometimes I feel a distinct need to shorten mine to M. Lews, though savvy perverts are not fooled.

I had pretty much assumed as much, but you know what they say about assuming.....so its good to get feedback on that too. Thank you for your response. It has been helpful to me.