The Review Club Forum Nom de plume

Hey all,

I've created a pen name, Invisible Writer, for this site. Reason is that some publishers deny any work posted on the Internet regardless of the site. Even if you delete the work it still comes up on a Google search that the piece was once on a Web site.
I'm not concerned about the novel as much as the short stories. The magazine editors seem to be getting anal about a submissions appearing even on personal blogs.
Thanks.

Thomas ean Carney

Alright, Tom. If we see a publisher, we'll be bewy bewy qwiet, (in the best Elmer Fudd tradition) and tell them you went thata way. ::cool::

I did the same thing. I changed to my real name and within a week a google search had everything up...and for the same reason I went back to an online persona. Now if they were smart they could do a "title" search -- thank goodness my title's are always generic. ;-)

Good food for thought here. Electronic rights are a big battle ground right now, and it is certainly worth everyone's time to learn more about it. Because writers don't generally have a unified voice in which to fight things, the publishers are trying to take everything they can get and then some. So, while my first thought on this was "Don't sweat it. No need to get too paranoid." I then remembered the great Woody Allen line: "I may be paranoid, but that doesn't mean someone is not out to get me."

Along the same lines, I learned at a writers conference this weekend the importance of authors getting their domain names. If you don't already own it, get yourname.com sooner rather than later. A respected NY agent clued us into the fact that there are now squatters out there who actually read the trades to learn of book deals and register the domain of the book and author's name as soon as they learn a contract has been signed. You don't have to put up a website, but she said it is now a common practice, so at least register your own name or your nom de plume.