I googled my name to find if there were any more WW pieces still out there. I hadn't ticked the right box before and three former good friends are not speaking to me.

I was surprised to find two articles that had been published, and paid for, on a regular feature page called 'Expats' Eye', in a magazine called Beijing Review. I was quite glad, in fact, to see one of them because I never got a copy of the magazine - they were delivered to the office where I worked in China and it disappeared. I knew they were copies of the magazine articles on the web, because they had pictures alongside added by the editor.

Is it usual for a magazine to do this? I looked at the Beijing Review home page and saw that some other Expat Eye archive articles were also accessible for viewing.

It occurred to me recently that I might want to recycle the material to sell to other magazines - the outlets for China-related articles about working there, rather than travelling, are quite limited.

My questions are:a) Is the magazine entitled to publish my work on the web without permission, and b) What are my rights as regards re-using the material? There was no contract, just an agreement to write so many words for a certain fee.

I would be glad to know if anyone has any similar experience or advice to give.

Sheila

Hi there

I am glad you asked this question although I don't know the answer. As you know I unticked the hide your profile box after your very persuasive thread. I have checked it back again because I posted a few poems and although I got very valuable feedback, I felt that my profile had influenced the way the work was viewed. I was also not prepared for the fact that my name and my user name would be public and on the internet. Which begs the question of why we have a user name in the first place. S

I think I may not have highlighted the nature of my concern very clearly. I wasn't concerned about my profile. My post was about work I had already sold to print media - articles which had apeared in a Magazine called Beijing Review which now also appear on the Internet.I thought the magazine had only 'primary rights', that is, the right to publish the articles in one print issue, which people have to buy, not the right to publish on the Internet. I may want to use this same material again. I wanted to know if it is worth writing to them to ask them to remove the articles or if I have any right to do so.

As for the profile and it influencing people's reception, yes, of course, that was the point I was making- readers should have this information as an aid to reading the work. I was trained to study literature, first at degree level, and then as a teacher. An important aspect of understanding a novel or a poem is knowing something about the circumstance in which the work was produced, and this inevitably means knowing something about the author. The other point I made was it just makes people more receptive generally if the author has some kind of profile - it's more friendly.

I see that more and more people are choosing to hide profiles, and I can understand this, but I think it's a pity. When a book is about to be published the author is asked to provide a profile and the information inevitably appears on the Internet Adverts for books very rarely say nothing at all about the author. So you can google my name and learn that I used to teach film at a certain college - that's to make potential buyers think I have some kind of authority to write about the subject, I suppose, and appears on the back coverof the book, so is quoted. As I said, a WW profile need only be a line or two, and most manage much more than that - they are informative and amusing, and some even have a comic photo, which makes me feel well-disposed to the writer. A friendly reader is, in my view, better than a hostile or even a neutral one.
Sheila

Hi Cornelia,
I'm a journalist and have very often had stuff re-printed on the web. I've never been asked first, but almost all magazines and papers now make you sign away your rights at the onset.
But when they don't, as soon as the piece has been published, I send it to an organisation called Planet Syndication
Link below: (sorry, don't know how else to do it)
http://217.155.66.86/planet/planethome.aspx

They flog them all over the world. You don't make a lot of money from it, but it's really nice to get a cheque out of the blue when you've already been paid once for it!

I had a strange experience recently in that I was researching something I'd written about before, and the first one that popped up was my own piece! I think I actually jumped!
Hope this helps. Feel free to email or whatever if you think I can help anymore.
Caroline

Thank you for this, Caroline. I am about to start a journalism course at Goldsmiths, so I hope soon to have more knowledge about such matters, but no doubt there will be other queries. A good tip about getting paid more than once occasionally!

Sheila

<Added>

Good luck with finding a home for your novel.

Hi Sheila

Sorry for the misunderstood response. I have had a similar experience with articles I wrote years ago appearing in all sorts of incarnations on the net. There doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it. S

Not, I think, the first time I've suggested it, but the Society of Authors is very good at this sort of question - they have booklets to order and info on the site, and if you're a member they'll fight your corner for you.

Emma

Thanks, Emma, for rmeinding me. I am a member and I will have a look at their site again. I think the the last time I looked I must have been in a hurry and couldn't find out how to contact them forwhat I wanted,which was a much more serious question of someone fraudulently claiming to have done work on my book, aided and abetted by the publishers, who had their own agenda. I'll look again.

Sheila

Hi,

I've been published on the web more than I've been published on paper. It depends on the contract. For most of my web based work, I sign away those rights very clearly in the contract.

I've had a couple of things where I've retained copyright. That's always clearly marked on the web page.

a) Is the magazine entitled to publish my work on the web without permission, and b) What are my rights as regards re-using the material?

The answer can be fairly summed up by this:

There was no contract, just an agreement to write so many words for a certain fee

So, with my basic understanding of contract law, there is a contract, which states simply that they give you cash, and you give them words. They can then do whatever the hell they want with them, but the 'contract' does not explicitly state that you cannot use the words again yourself.

That's assuming, of course, that the agreement was as simple as you state.

It's a delicate issue, which is why I asked the question here rather than of the magazine. The situation was indeed quite simple:I was working as an editor for a publisher in China when a colleague's contract came to an end. He landed himself a coveted job on Beijing's leading English Language Magazine. From time to time he'd email about the sophisticated entertainments of the capital and ask about life in the mountains. Some months after departure he sent an email saying he'd been appointed editor for a backpage feature called 'Expat's Eye', and he was hoping to get together a pool of writers to reflect on particular aspects of life in China.As I'd mentioned I liked to write, would I like to contribute 800 words on a topic of my choosing; the pay would be 800 yuan. I sent a couple of articles which were duly printed with added titles and pictures and I was paid. That's all - no mention of restrictions on either side. After that I returned to the UK.

Previously, I'd written an article on Chinese film for a magazine in London but I wasn't paid - they said they coudn't afford to pay contributors.As it was an organisation of which I was a member and which had been helpful to me I was willing to do this. Again, no contract except a verbal agreement, but I didn't find that particular article on the web.When I'd previously written a book and some articles for an encyclopedia there were definitely contracts, with duplicates to sign.

Is it usual for UK magazines to present contracts?

Sheila

Sheila,
With the big companies like Natmags, IPC, Emap etc, they send you a commissioning form at the outset. You sign and send it back before (or with) your invoice. It usually says something like '....the work will henceforth belong to us and if you try and sell it anywhere else we'll hunt you down and kill you.'
Or something similar.

If you haven't signed anything like this you can do what you want with it afterwards. But likewise, if you haven't made THEM agree to anything then they might think they can do what they want with it too.
hope that makes sense!
Caroline

Thanks Caroline. I had a quick look at their rules and regs and they do seem a bit draconian, but I've sent off for more details. I am hoping to string together some articles for a book eventually, so I wouldn't want to sign away the rights.

Sheila