Is Your Writing Published or Not?

Frequently people ask if they can submit a piece of writing to a contest or a magazine, publisher, agent if it had already appeared on a web page, in a blog, at a critique site. I advocate playing it safe, because appearance on any web page fulfills the definition of being published. A web page is anything that will appear on your computer monitor's screen. As quickly as it appears, a search engine robot may be "spidering" that website and capturing an image of the page for the search engine's index. There the page becomes part of an archive.

The definition of "published and first rights used" depends on the potential buying publisher, contest holder, agent. Some dismiss appearances on critique sites, some don't count blogs, some will even waive self-publishing (with minimal distribution). Jordan E. Rosenfeld explores the vague and shifting boundaries in a Writer's Digest article, Shades of Gray:

Here's his quick list to determine if your piece counts as "previously published."

It was published if...

• you gave up your first North American serial rights

• it went through an editorial process

• it appeared in an online journal, even a defunct one

• it appeared in a print publication with a small print run

• it appeared in a literary anthology

It's unpublished if...

• it won a prize but was not printed

• it was workshopped in an online writing workshop

• it appeared on your blog or someone else's (though this is changing, so tread carefully)