I cannot emphasize enough how much you need to read thoroughly through the terms of any publication before you send your writing to them. It is mandatory that you know and understand what rights you’re giving away when you’re trying to get published.
Just the other day I was emailed by a relatively new indie journal looking for writers. They made it very clear that they did not pay writers for their work, so I figured I’d probably be passing, but I took a look at their Copyright policy out of curiosity and it was a nightmare. They wanted “non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide license and right to use, display, reproduce, distribute, and publish the Work on the internet and on or in any medium” (that’s copy and pasted btw) and that was the first of 10 sections on their Copyright agreement page. Yikes. That’s exactly the type of publishing nightmare you don’t want to be trapped in.
Most journals will ask for “First North American Rights” or a variation on “First Rights” which operate under the assumption that all right revert back to you and they only have the right to be the first publishers of the work. That is what you need to be looking for because you do want to retain all the rights to your work.
You want all rights to revert back to you upon publication in case you, say, want to publish it again in the future or use it for a bookmark or post it on your blog, or anything else you might want to do with the writing you worked hard on. Any time a publisher wants more than that, be very suspicious. Anyone who wants to own your work forever and be able to do whatever they want with it without your permission is not to be trusted. Anyone who wants all that and wants you to sign away your right to ever be paid for your work is running a scam.
Protect your writing. It’s not just your intellectual property, it’s also your baby. You worked hard on it. You need to do the extra research to protect yourself so that a scammer (or even a well meaning start up) doesn’t
steal you work right from under you nose and make money off of it.
Exclusive publishing rights have to have a set time frame! Do not agree to anything that doesn’t clearly state “up to five years from signature” or something like that.
What if the publisher goes defunct? What if they get bought by another publisher who doesn’t care to promote or publish your work? You still can’t to anything with it, you don’t own it anymore!
@deadcatwithaflamethrower i think it might interest you (if not directly for you then it might be of interest for your followers)
This is one of the many reasons that you do not publish your work through Amazon. They contractually own your property in perpetuity, i.e. forever, if you use their publishing service. Theft, okay? Stuff like the above is legal theft. Watch your asses, loves.
(And it’s one of the reasons I’m so screamingly frustrated about not being able to devote any spoons to running Altered Nature Press, because one of its main tenants was I Don’t Own Your Work, You Own All Of Your Work Forever.)
There is no actual, tangible reason why we allow people to starve, to be homeless, to suffer and die needlessly. Food is plentiful. Empty homes are plentiful. Medicine is plentiful. It’s hidden away behind constructs and we pretend those constructs mean something. There is an empty home and a homeless family, give them it. There is a sick child and common medicine to treat it, give it to them. There is a starving person and so much food wasted by corporations or hidden behind a dollar sign, feed them.
Mexican Free-Tailed Bats emerge from Bracken Cave, outside of San Antonio, TX. This cave is the spring/summer home for the largest colony of any mammal on earth, with over 15 million individuals. This emergence continues at this density for up to four hours after the babies are born mid-summer.
Recorded & Photographed May 9 / Posted May 18, 2018
THOU is the subject (Thou art…) THEE is the object (I look at thee) THY is for words beginning in a consonant (Thy dog) THINE is for words beginning in a vowel (Thine eyes)
this has been a psa
Also, because H was sometimes treated as a vowel when the grammar rules for thou/thee/thy/thine were formed,THINE can also be used for words beginning with H. For example, both “thy heart” and “thine heart” appear in Elizabethan poetry.
For consistency, however, if you’re saying “thine eyes”, make sure you also say “mine eyes” instead of “my eyes”.
Further to the PSA:
Thou/thee/thine is SINGULAR ONLY.
Verbs with “thou” end in -st or -est: thou canst, thou hast, thou dost, thou goest. Exception: the verbs will, shall, are, and were, which add only -t: thou wilt, thou shalt, thou art, thou wert.
Only in the indicative, though – when saying how things are (“Thou hast a big nose”). Not in the subjunctive, saying how things might be (“If thou go there…”) nor in the imperative, making instructions or requests (“Go thou there”).
The -eth or -th ending on verbs is EXACTLY EQUIVALENT TO THE -(e)s ENDING IN MODERN ENGLISH.
I go, thou goest, she goeth, we go, ye go, they go.
If you wouldn’t say “goes” in modern English, don’t say “goeth” in Shakespearean English.
“Goeth and getteth me a coffee” NO. KILL IT WITH FIRE.
Usually with an imperative you put the pronoun immediately after the verb, at least once in the sentence (“Go thou” / “Go ye”).
YE is the subject (Ye are…). YOU is the object.
Ye/you/your is both for PLURALS and for DEFERENCE, as vous in French.
“In a performance protest against the Australian shark cull and the global slaughter of sharks, a woman risks it all to dance on the sea floor with swarms of tiger sharks up to 17 feet long without any dive or protective gear.” (x)
I’m not saying I have a mad-crush on this amazing shark-mermaid-lady, but I have a mad-crush on this amazing shark-mermaid-lady.
This is great but she’s not “risking it all”. The entire fucking point is that she’s not risking it all. Those sharks are HARMLESS and dont care about humans at all. As you can see, they’re totally chill with her being there. And as a pro-diver/mermaid she’s fully trained to free dive without equipment.
The reason this is such an effective protest is because it proves that tiger sharks aren’t interested in harming humans. And that they’re actually quite gentle even. So please, for Hannah Fraser, stop putting this shark-scare bullshit on images of her when that’s literally what she’s fighting with this performance.
@zoologicallyobsessed What do you think about her protest method/protesting the shark cull?
Shark only attack people when they mistake them for prey they actually do eat, which is why most of the people who do get attacked are surfers or drivers wearing driving gear; it changes the outline of their shape to look like a seal.
The Sydney Taronga zoo has a published report on shark attacks in 2017, which you can read here. And across Australia there was only 18 attacks, of which only 1 person died, 11 suffering injured and 6 remaining unharmed.
You can see why the shark cull is such an ineffective and cruel process then. Shark culling does not work. It does not lower the already very low number of shark attacks, and most of the time the shark that gets killed isn’t even the shark that attacked in the first place. It serves no purpose.
As for the protest, I think it is effective showing that she can be in the middle of a school of sharks and not be attacked – she’s trying to target the unfounded fear and hate people have for sharks which is good. She’s also not touching or otherwise really interfering with any of them which again is good.
Fibromyangela 