I seem to be making a habit of only posting one journal a month (at most) these days... well, anyway, this one is a continuation of sorts from the last journal.

I'm sorry, folks, but I can no longer offer my stories for public reading on deviantART. Even after they're finished, it's in my best interest to just not post them here at all. Why the sudden change of heart, you ask? The answer is a very simple one that I have somehow overlooked because I never bother to look into this stuff.

So I was checking out this site, Forward Motion, which was recommended to me by ~Lady-Shade. Looks like joining up would be a promising investment for me, but that's not really the point. I was searching for something on that site, and I came across something else; a critical piece of information that is mandatory for every serious writer to remember (I forget where exactly I saw it, so I can't link it... oh well.)

Apparently, if you have your work posted on the Internet in any place that can be freely accessed by anyone who finds the site (i.e. any place that isn't password protected), you will be unable to sell it to a publisher. Unless, of course, you sell it as a reprint. This is because, in the eyes of the law, you've already published your work by posting it on a free site (such as this one.) I'm glad I saw that information before I posted any of my new drafts online.

There may be some publishers who don't care about that... but I'm not willing to take the risk. Due to the miserably deep financial hole I'm in right now, I cannot afford to lose one potential penny that I might gain out of my books.

I normally wouldn't care if a publisher rejected my work as an original print because of it being online already, because I wanted to self-publish. Until I looked into it on Forward Motion. I wanted to know why, exactly, they don't promote self-publishing, and I found out it's because professional publishers have access to all sorts of necessary things that you NEED for the market but probably don't have available to you personally, including vast amounts of shelf space, printing presses, loads of paper, advertising, and probably a lot more stuff that I don't remember. Self-publishing services help you out a little, but from what I read on FM, it's really not worth it, and some of those services are apparently crooked and like to steal your money. And if you publish your work by yourself, you also have to deal with the fact that a lot of people won't even bother reading your stories simply because they're shelved along with the rest of the stuff that's published by the service you're using, and the stereotype is that those stories are pretty terrible in general, which is a real turn-off for many potential readers.

Again, I got all of this information from Forward Motion, and I know about as much about the publishing world as my Chihuahua does, so don't take my word for it... but I'm playing it safe. You want my work before it gets on the shelves probably a year from now (if not even later), send me your e-mail address and if, IF, I trust you enough, I will send you parts of my in-progress work anytime you want.

I will still post my art for my stories here, though, as that should be safe. The Story Blog will continue. And I'll try to at least get a new journal out every 2 weeks... if I remember.
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