Confidentiality insert

Members of the Workshop will under no circumstances share the following outside the Workshop

passkeys,
chapter or book links,
chapter or book contents,
plot out line or character arcs
or any other material related to another another author's copyrighted material

Why is this important?


Members seeking publication will want to sell first rights to their novel in various markets to a publisher. Most US publishers what to secure "first North American rights" and "first online rights." "First rights" means in particular that the work has not been previously published in those markets.

Authors own the copyright of things they post on Writing.Com--there's even a copyright notice placed at the bottom of each item. But if the item is posted in the clear--without a passkey or other restriction--then the author has used the "first right" to online publication and cannot sell it later. For this reason, our chapters all have passkeys on them.

For novels, most publishers will permit sharing up to 5000 words or so for marketing purposes. You will find some Workshop members have the first two or three chapters of their novels on Writing.Com for this purpose. Also, publishers encourage sharing early drafts of your work with a small, select group of beta readers. The Workshop constitutes such a group. In fact, it can help you find a publisher if your query mentions that your work have been vetted by a Writers Workshop.

In addition to passkeys, Writing.Com also lets members limit who can see their items by group membership, so some authors have both passkeys and and share with the Crosstimbers Novel Workshop Group.Sharing with the Group avoids the necessity of sharing the passkey with the Group. However, if a member is in more than one workshop--there are several on Writing.Com--they can only share with one group at a time. In this case, they must use the passkey system for all the other Workshops they might be in. If a member reveals the passkey, it must not be shared outside the Workshop.

Likewise, Workshop ciritiques may not be shared outside the Workshop under any circumstances.