Remember, back in December, I mentioned Kelly Valen and her book “The Twisted Sisterhood: Unraveling The Dark Legacy of Female Friendships”. Her book caused me to visit her website (http://www.kellyvalen.com/); and it was her genuineness that encouraged me to reach out to her for her guidance.
She suggested that we look into getting an essay or excerpt published somewhere — whether it is in a magazine, newspaper, or wherever. Something like that may just kick-start things for us, as it did for her.
She mentioned that some of her friends were picked up by Modern Love, which is a segment/column of the New York Times.
So, I thought that it’s worth a try. What do I have to lose?
Well, I found out, very quickly, what I could lose.
In reading the submission guidelines, I came across the statement: “Essays must be previously unpublished. Work that has appeared online, on blogs, etc., is considered to be previously published.”
In the same area, they state: “A book of collected columns, titled "Modern Love: 50 True and Extraordinary Tales of Desire, Deceit and Devotion," is also available at bookstores.”
Those two statements got me to thinking… at the end of all of this, do I retain rights to my own work or am I forfeiting it away to Modern Love?
Well, the only way to find out is to ask them, so I did. They told me that “We do not acquire rights to submitted material, but we do buy all rights if we offer to publish it.”
OK. Exactly what does that mean? That means that whenever someone says that they buy all rights to your work… well, it means just that. You license away all rights to your work; you forfeit the right to ever use it again.
There are other types of rights as well. First serial rights means that the writer offers a newspaper or magazine the right to publish the article, story, or poem for the first time in any periodical. All other rights to the material remain with the writer. One-time rights or simultaneous rights allows a publisher to buy the nonexclusive right to publish the work once. Second serial or reprint rights gives a newspaper or magazine the opportunity to print an article, poem, or story after it has already appeared in another newspaper or magazine. There are also electronic rights, subsidiary rights, and dramatic, television and motion picture rights, etc. The point is to check out all your rights before signing them away…
With the fact that the New York Times buys all rights to my work, I knew I couldn’t send something that I plan to use in one of our books or seminars. For example, I couldn’t send an excerpt from one of our books, because if they published it, it becomes their property… and we’d have to beg for/pay for permission to use my own creation…
If I wanted to try to get something published by the New York Times, I needed to write something new that was good enough to submit, but something that we wouldn’t want to keep for ourselves. Yeah… right!
Add to that, I had to come up with something that Modern Love would want to buy from me.
Ummm… I’m afraid what they want to buy isn’t what I’m selling. I know the simplest answer is to write something that they would want to buy, but that’s just not my style. I’m working to change reality, not conform to it
And, honestly, until I try, how would I know they wouldn’t want what I’m offering?
So, I’m trying. I sent it off yesterday. If I don’t hear from them in four weeks, then I’ll try another publication… maybe Psychology Today. At first, I thought of some women’s magazine, like Woman’s Day and such, but Woman’s Day works exclusively with experienced writers who have clips from major national magazines (bummer!) and won’t accept anything from anyone else. The other women’s magazines that I’ve “googled” don’t offer ways to contact them online nor offer their mailing addresses — so…
But, that’s another bridge to cross at a later time. Right now, all I can do is wait the four weeks, and then see if Psychology Today would be interested.
By then, a book publisher would have come through for us, and Ellen DeGeneres would have called…
No worries….
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