What Are First Publishing Rights?
In short, they are what major publishing houses want. They want to be the first to show your story to the world.
First publishing rights are used when a work is considered “published”. Usually, this means there is some sort of rights exchange: the author loses some rights* to their work, the publisher prints the book and attempts to sell it.
First rights are usually divided by country, and sometimes there is a difference between the right to print works and the right to publish works online. Some publishers will buy first world or first international publishing rights, which means they can publish internationally at their discretion. You get some of the sale, but you can’t control what country your story shows up in, since the right to publish in every country has been sold.
When negotiating a contract, give up as few rights as possible. The more control you have over the future use of the story, including where it’s published, the better off you’ll be.
*Always read contracts very carefully to make sure you’re not losing rights to things like the world, characters, plot, ect. — if these are handed over to the publisher, they can proceed to give the whole world to another writer. And yes, this has happened.
First Publishing Rights vs Copyright
Copyright protects the words of your story itself. It acts like a neon sign that says, “Mine! Nobody steal it!” Anything you make that requires effort to reproduce is automatically copyrighted. This article goes into more detail on copyright.
First publishing rights, on the other hand, are "who is going to be the first to show my story to the world?" and are given away the minute you publish your work. Even if you retain copyright (which you should), you give away first rights.
What Is “Published”?
Each publishing house will have a different definition of what is “published” when you get down to nitty-gritty. However, the following covers some of the most common major points:
Self-Publishing
For every incredibly successful self-published author, there are hundreds if not thousands of failed self-published books. And once these books are self-published, they can no longer be sold to major publishing houses.
As cold as it sounds, publishers consider self-publishing a test market. If it fails to sell through self-publishing, then they think it will fail to sell when published through their company. Whether or not they are right is irrelevant; they will refuse your work if it is self-published.
Vanity Publishers
Much like self publishing, vanity publishers have you pay a fee for your writing to be published. Having to pay money to have your work published is a huge red flag, and paying money to have your work published can damage your reputation more than help it.
It also means that all the warnings about self-publishing apply to vanity publishers.
Websites That Take Your Rights
Some websites’ terms and conditions have a clause that says they can use the work at their own discretion, without any consultation with you. Some will explicitly say you sign your rights over to the site when you upload it. If you have uploaded your work there, then no publisher will take it.
Always read the terms and conditions for any site you intend to post your writing on. Sites like Facebook, LiveJournal, Wattpad, and Tumblr are well-known examples of sites that strip users’ rights to their own writing.
If you have posted the entirety of your work on such a site, you may unfortunately not submit it for publishing as-is. Your only hope is removing the work (if at all possible, but it isn’t always), and heavily editing the story before submitting it for publication.
If you've only posted snippets, stop posting immediately so publishers will still be the first to show the whole story.
Sometimes, Any Website
This is a downright nasty difference between the US and the UK when it comes to publishing. The last I heard, the UK considered any works posted online as “published”. While this might have changed, it might not have. If you are in the UK, research publishers very carefully to find out if they will accept works posted online.
That doesn’t mean you can’t use YWS for improving your work; it just means you can’t make any later drafts public. Post early drafts up for review anyway (they’re unlikely to resemble the finished product), and go for private betas on later drafts.
This might also apply to other countries. It is very difficult to research all publishing houses in the world, so please do your due diligence when it comes to researching publishing houses.
What Should I Watch Out For?
As soon as websites start hinting that they can use your work any way they want to, with or without your consent, you are at risk of giving away rights. To be safe, avoid placing your work on sites with this policy.
Also be on guard for “retain copyright” or "retain ownership" in place of “retain rights”. While it is very important to retain copyright, it is equally important to retain rights. You do not retain rights if the company can use the material at their discretion, instead of yours. Most social media sites use wording like this.
Companies that truly let you retain the rights to your work usually say in no uncertain terms “authors/creators retain all publishing and distribution rights to their work”. Often, they will add “authors/creators can remove their work at any time.” Sites like this usually have limited to no sharing potential, so it is possible to remove the works completely. The more social the site, the more rights they take out of necessity to make the site function.
If you want help reading legal jargon in site terms and conditions, feel free to shoot me a PM with a link to the site. I have also provided relevant portions of the terms and conditions for Facebook, LiveJournal, Wattpad, and Tumblr, with a translation of the legal jargon at the bottom of the article. Many other sites use the same wording, including Google and fanfiction.net.
If you want help to navigate a publishing contract’s legal jargon, please get a lawyer to look it over. I am not one.
Is YWS Safe?
For any country that doesn’t consider posting the work online “published”, yes. YWS allows you to retain all publishing rights to your work, and you may remove it at any time. Once it is deleted from the site, it's permanently deleted from the server.
To quote the copyright policy:
The Young Writers Society respects the intellectual property of its members and all original work remains the property in whole of its creator. No works, graphics, or other original creations may be reused or published without the explicit permission of its creator.
The Next Step
Now that you’ve made sure publishers will take your story, you can move onto getting ready for publishing and querying. Lauren has a lovely, in-depth article on the topic.
Sources
http://howpublishingreallyworks.blogspo ... ights.html
http://www.writing-world.com/rights/rights.shtml
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/570 ... -copyright
Also, a UK YWSer known as Karsten, who was getting her degree in publishing and highlighted the difference between US and UK publishing on a (now defunct) YWS Blog post.
Terms and Services Translated
Spoiler! :
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