Are any of you concerned about your work being stolen?

I never publish anything of potential monetary value on the Internet.

Bless you, Jonathan. You don't have a profile available to me, but I'm guessing you must be very young and sheltered to have such trust. Your wife is right. Follow Sue's lead...never publish anything of monetary value on the internet.

You also have the posting date on the Gather article.

You could post drafts to be seen only by a few friends on Gather whose comments you value by publishing it privately rather than openly. That also solves the issue that has been discussed recently about whether posting on Gather is "publishing," which is a bigger issue for me.

Screenwriters I know register/send copies to the Screenwriters Guild.

Professional writers I know who have been in the business forever say not to worry about people stealing ideas. Ideas aren't really worth much, it's the execution that is and by then you got pages people have seen, or you've mailed yourself, and stealing is stupid.

Sure it occasionally happens, but I'd guess most of the "he stole my idea" situations are cases where two people independently came up with a similar thought.

I class worrying about someone stealing my idea for a story, book or screenplay with worrying that someone might hack into my email — which would be a case of someone who really needs to get a life.

Why not share it after it's been printed elsewhere? Some of the writers on gather share their previously-published work.

I'll weigh in with everyone else here on the idea you never put anything of value onto the Internet. However, you should know that most of these lawsuits alleging that someone at a studio stole their idea is just a ruse to get money. Generally speaking it's entirely possible for two people to get similar ideas triggered, perhaps, by the same events, that result in a similar story, but it's not that they stole it.

I have worked with studios a couple of times, and trust me they would rather just pay you for your idea most of the time than go through the hassle of a lawsuit. That's not to say it never happens or that you shouldn't protect yourself, but rather that for the most part those claims are specious at best.

I agree about not sharing ideas and I agree that it's the execution that is the most important. Great idea to utilize Screenwriters Guild.

I've had an idea and only told immediate family and have seen it done a bit different by someone else. I didn't get mine done first...my loss.

You can't copyright an idea but you can certainly do so with a storyline-- do so, and register your work as synopsis with either west or east coast Writer's Guild (this can be done on line with a credit card for $20).
And hopefully, if you've protected the work in as complete a form as possible -- wait for the money to roll in if someone runs with your work. It's much easier to get a studio to pay you off if they are making money. Check out the 'Coming to America' scandal -- and Buchwald didn't win just because he was famous. Remember Amistad?

But no internet posting and no discussion with anyone until you protect your work.

vjw

I think there's a lot of hubris involved in most folks' worry about protecting their ideas. Ideas are worth very little. It takes incredible work and a lot of practice to turn an idea into a novel. And if the novel sells, it won't be because the idea was great, but because the execution was. That's why copyright protects the execution, and not the idea.

Five thousand people could write novels about a Civil War soldier deserting and making his way home. Only one would be Cold Mountain. Two people could write a YA novel about a boy who hates space camp only to wind up in a real camp in space. The odds against both of them being publishable are huge. And if they were both published, it wouldn't matter at all.

You waste your time mailing your synopsis. All you protect is the exact wording, and not the story it lays out. And that wording is only useful to someone who writes the book it describes.

On the other hand, it is foolish to put such trust in the entire gather community. Many folks here have been caught plagiarising, some because the don't know better, others because they didn't think they'd be caught. But even they are not selling the work out from under the writer.

John Phillip is right that no professional writer worries about this.

I don't worry too much about my work being published online. The places I post have their own copyrights listed at the bottom of every page. My postings also contain the date I placed them there and all my files have a created date stamped on them. If anything comes out close to what I have already written, I have evidence to back me up.

The only thing I would worry about is publishing too much. Some places consider posting to the internet as published, which is silly, but it is what it is.

When you get to a certain point with your book, you can limit who can see it when you put it up on gather. It will allow for only, friends/colleges or a specific group, if that would make you feel better.

When you write your word processing program dates things. If you are backing up to disk, the date is on there too.

What you should keep in mind is that there is no 'real' unique idea. IE; When our daughter was a baby I thought it would be neat if there were a carseat which would fit on a stroller. I never said a word to anyone about it.... and now there are car seats which fit on strollers. That was twenty years ago.

Gather has been a great learning tool for me, and I hope you find what you need here as well.

There are two ways how you hypothetically could lose money's worth by publishing on a place like gather. They are quite different risks.

(A) Somebody steals your idea (from your synopsis or a few initial sketches of your work), makes a great best-selling commercial success out of it and doesn't give you any share.

(B) Some publisher (or agent) refuses to accept your finished work, because he knows that in part or completely your work has been "published" already, and many publishers insist on having "first rights" (or whatever the technical term is).

I see the risk (B) as much more serious than risk (A).

I agree with most of the others: Fiction ideas have little economic value; the execution makes the difference. I would guess that the idea - everything you can descrbe in a synopsis - is less than 5% of the value (and the effort). Why would somebody steal something where he/she would have to invest the remaining 95% of hard work in order to complete it?

The question of publication on the web affecting later paid publication is different for short works than for novels. If you published part of a novel on the web, that wouldn't be likely to affect an agent or publisher's willingness to take it on, though, to be certain, you could always remove any web presence when you began to send it out.

Short works, however are vulnerable to this. You should definitely remove or at least limit the exposure of short works on the web before you submit them. If you wanted to be careful, you would probably not widely post anything you intended to submit eventually, because much on the web gets archived.

Hi,
Everything on gather that you publish, will eventually (like most other sites) show up on a google search. Though you can't copyright an idea, if you're also writing short pieces on here or other places, you can copyright a collection of them and it won't cost you much - a friend of mine who's published has done that for a few years - as he writes short one page pieces and then when he's got a few, BEFORE putting them on the 'net anywhere, he copyrights them all as a collection. He had no problem getting his first, second, third or fourth and I think fifth book published.

Though a synopsis works a little differently and you might want to be a bit more careful if you're thinking that someone will steal your idea - it probably won't happen, but one can never know. Just be careful what you put on here and always copyright what you can, first. Good luck,
Marilyn

PS: My heath articles (aromatherapy, herbs, etc's) all show up on google searches and I've never had a problem, though I have been published prior to writing here. Just to possibly ease your mind a bit.

good discussion

I agree with Charles's comment that with short works you should definitely remove or at least limit the exposure of short works on the web before you submit them.

Be aware that there's an afterglow on Google. I removed something I had posted here before I submitted it to a contest. That was several months ago and the article still comes up on Google. However, when you click, it goes to Gather and another article that had some of the same key words.

Meanwhile, I didn't win the "prize" but the publisher sent me a contract and said they wanted to publish the article in their fall issue.
So, I told them it was on Gather briefly and was removed some time ago. Haven't gotten their response yet.
Too much on the job training in this writing racket.

As a new member of Gather, I appreciate the feedback Jonathan received from many of you. I will be cautious when posting my writing. I love the
site! Thanks for the words of wisdom.

Carolyn F., June 25, 2007, 12:29pm EDT

Perhaps ideas aren't deliberately stolen.
You will recall the famous Mr. S-berg and another author sueing each other over the script to Amistad.
While helping my mother move to a condo, I recently ran across a scholastic books paperback called "the long black schooner" and it was the story of the Amistad.
Hmmmm. I don't know the age of the author, but Mr. S and I are a year apart in age. I got that book in Junior High. Is it possible he read it too (for less than a dollar you could order scholastic books each month) and interalized the story thus causing the script he later writes to look very similar to the author who may also have read that paperback years ago?

I do worry some, but this is exposure and we need that to get started, I think.


Please stop by . . . Dancing with my Dream (Vote Round Two)"