First Publication Rights: A Rant

I've been a bit apprehensive about this whole big 'being a professional writer' business that I'm trying to break into, and I think I can speak for a while, at least, on why exactly that is. Before I posted or talked too much about it, I wanted to make sure that it wasn't just me whingeing on about it because of something silly and juvenile like "zomg, y for am i not published yet?" or "i read a story i didnt liek and it was published so publishing is dum". Yes, I have felt both these things before. No, they are not why I am posting on the subject of the publication industry.

Back to Basics: Why do people write? What's the point? Some people want a prize-- fame, and fortune, and that-- and write in a severely misguided attempt to achieve either or both of those. But most people do it because they have something to say, and they want you to hear it. Sometimes it's related to current events-- my playwriting prof. in Wales wrote a radio play on the 'subprime mortgage crisis' back when they were calling it the 'subprime mortgage crisis'. Sometimes it's about broader social issues like gender-identification, or the exportation (and subsequent dumping) of nuclear/toxic waste to unpatrolled waters/coasts, or post 9/11 discrimination against Arab and Muslim citizens. And still other times, it's all about the beauty a writer can squeeze out in a few well placed words. Always, always, though, it's to be read and heard.

The Problem: Here is the problem. Editors (not any editor specifically, but rather the whole class of editors) are greedy. They want not only the right to show your story as is their function, but they (almost always) want the right to show it first. Think back on your childhood-- the first kid to get a new type of action figure was always the coolest, right? Same thing, really. And that's fine. Sort of. I mean, it's their money, and they're giving it to you, so they should be allowed to ask for something fresh and exciting, right? Unfortunately, the product of requiring First Publication Rights (at least when 95% of markets are doing it) is that writers sit on their work. They submit their piece to a magazine (mags that don't accept simultaneous submissions only exacerbate the problem, by further restricting the number of people to read a manuscript), then the story is read by at most 9ish people (however big the editing staff is) and is rejected the vast majority of the time. Then, it goes off to 9 more people, etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseam. Markets can have reply times of up to 6 months (as an average high)-- which means that a piece can keep going back through the cycle infinitely, in 6 month waves. For a piece written, especially about current events, this can have devastating consequences for its impact on the reader. There is nothing wrong with editors asking for First (world, north american, whatever) Publication Rights, except when it becomes common practice. At that point (see dictionary entry; The Distant Past), the written word society ceases to be a society of sharing and creating, and immediately shifts to one of withholding and ownership. The culture that's grown up around the "First Publication Rights" mindset is insane. If you post online-- a free, worldwide forum where anyone can read your work? What could be better?-- you're labeled amateur. If you submit a never-before-published piece to a mag. that accepts reprints, they send you very nice emails asking, roughly, 'What the hell?' The social pressures of publication culture mirror the perverse incentives system; not only do you not get paid for sharing your work without editorial approval, but you become the object of mockery from other 'serious' writers. I cannot think of a more psychotic way for writing as a culture to use instant, free, and world-wide distribution.

But Christian, Clearly You're an Idiot: Now, I know what you're going to say: But the whole point of editing (and the reason it's called that) is to let in only the best of the best. Why should we as readers settle for less? And I will rebut with 3 points:

1) The good will float and the bad will sink. Good things tend to hang around (unless they were shelved in Alexandria circa 50 BC), and bad things don't. Why? Because people are smart. Well, smart enough, at least, to stop reading when they're disappointed by the story, and to share awesome things with their friends.

2) Bad can be valuable. For example: A Midsummernight's Dream is bad-- look at the plotting, and the characterization. It's all piss-poor at best. Now! Look at King Lear. Or Hamlet. Holy balls, those plays are brilliant. Without A Midsummernight's Dream, Shakespeare never would have had the ability craft either of those plays. Not ever.
Similar to writing bad, reading bad can be valuable too. Don't believe me? If every 9th grader who wanted to write high-fantasy read the Eye of Argon, would we have such a plethora of cliche'd nonsense? I should say not!

3) Do you honestly think editors do a good job of letting in the good and keeping out the bad, now? Because I don't. Watership Down, the book with the single longest print-run (besides religious texts) in the world was rejected for publication 42 times before it was finally picked up. And it's fabulous literature. Conversely, I own a copy of a for-realz, published X-men/Star Trek crossover book. Yes. That happened. Seriously.

(A brief sidenote: I have done a little editing work, and believe me-- it's not the editor's fault! Reading through manuscript after manuscript tunnel-visions your perceptions, sometimes into expecting ludicrously high quality. It's not that editors are bad at their jobs because they're morons/blind/nutcases. It's that editors are bad because they posess the same frailties as any other human in their situation. Good Editors are simply the ones who can ground themselves better than the Bad Editors. It doesn't mean that Good Editors don't miss some great pieces, though).

4) Don't worry! Editors will still filter! Seriously, folks. Editors as a class of people, won't be going away anytime soon. If all editors cease requiring first publication rights, people will still go to magazines to see what the editors they've come to trust over the years consider good. Bad stuff won't make it into the magazines, mediocre stuff still will (at the same rate it always has) and good stuff will still be published there too. The only change will be that the good stuff will enter the light of day faster. The mediocre stuff will get feedback and review. The bad stuff will be forgotten, just the same way it always has (and hopefully the authors will get better from the experience).

Okay, Smartass. What's the Fix, You're So Clever:
Pretty darn simple, to be honest. Editors don't even have to change their practices. One thing, and one thing alone. Are you ready?

Posting stories/essays/poems online does not constitute publication. The end.

Right now, if I were to throw up a story online, it immediately becomes toxic to any editor whose magazine requires First Pub. Rights. Unless it takes off Scalzi-style (which is lightning-strike rare), that story is dead in the water.

The two reasons editors like being the first to publish something, as far as I can tell, is that it differentiates their magazine from their competitors, and that it bottlenecks traffic of people reading the story through said magazine.
If half the point of being the first editor to be able to show a given piece is that it differentiates your magazine from everyone else's, redefining self-posting online as 'not official publication' does not affect magazine's differentiation at all.
What's more, the in-print precedent of self publication was the following: If you print it out and hand it to random folks, guess what? It's not published. I honestly don't know why we departed from this, other than, as said earlier, editors are greedy.

So, that's it. We've reached the end of my rant. I hope you've been persuaded. And if not, that's okay. I would invite you to post comments, but that functionality seems not to work on my blog, for one reason or another... Hmm, I shall have to remedy that.

Cheers.

thoughtjunkie

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