If you get a story and/or photos published in an e-zine, it seems that it's so easy for others to - it sounds harsh, but steal your work. I've got one story with photos under review for publication with an e-zine now. And since it's my first story for an e-zine, I'm concerned about both other individuals perhaps copying the story and selling it as well as the e-zine itself selling it to other publications. I am not saying my story and photos are so wonderful that everyone is going to be grabbing them off of cyberspace for themselves. But it seems this would be a common issue of concern for writers and photographers, and I don't see anyone addressing it. Does anyone have any advice about how to prevent this from happening? Do e-zines typically have a contract you sign? If e-zines do re-print your work elsewhere, do they typically leave in your byline? Has anyone had any experience with work being stolen? Thank you for your help.
...first, your work is copyrighted from the moment it's completed and existing in any reproducible form... you can register/archive it at wga east or west, if you want to spend the money [pros don't bother, except for screenplays and song lyrics]... so, if anyone steals your work, you can sue them... if you want to spend even more money and are terminally paranoid, you can register your copyright with the loc, but only amateurs do that [for anything other than noted exceptions], as it dates the work... ...can you stop anyone from lifting your wallet in a crowded subway car, no matter where you carry it?... of course not... but your wallet has money in it that can be easily spent anywhere... and no one will ask if the person spending it made it, unless it can be identified as counterfeit, which is not the same as stolen... ...a written work can't be 'spent' anywhere... it has to be sold... and it'll be just as hard and costly in time and postage/paper/ink for a 'thief' to sell it, as it is for its owner... so why would anyone want to lift something they can't just spend right away, or pawn at the nearest hock shop?... ...besides which, if they are lucky enough to find a venue willing to pay to publish it, the stolen item is going to be displayed out there in public, along with the perp's name, so it's very likely that the 'liftee' will find out and sue the idiot for all s/he'll ever own... ...they should, but i'm sure most of the freebies don't bother... the respectable paying ones will, however... ...any venue that publishes your work is legally bound to leave your by line in place, no matter where it's published, or when... and of course they would... why wouldn't they?
