Topic: New Group for External Contests?

Hey. In the spirit of the new "new group" "policy" (or whatever you want to call it):

I'm wondering: if there were a group explicitly for "Outside Assistance," that was set to be private to group members only, would that count as "unpublished" for the purposes of submitting to contests elsewhere, like Elegant+, which have explicit requests for "original"? Since we're writing it for those contests, just sharing it for proofing and such?

Having readers for my potential book stuff is great. And having it for my previous short stories is educational.
But having it for stuff I'm actually trying to submit now would be most helpful.

2 (edited by Dirk B 2025-09-14 21:50:48)

Re: New Group for External Contests?

It should fall under unpublished since this is a private site behind a paywall. As long as you don't post your writing here with visibility set for the internet (i.e., widest exposure), you should have no trouble. If you want to go the extra step of only posting it to a private group to limit the number of members who can see it, that's even more secure as long as you again exclude internet when posting it.


From Gemini:

In most cases, yes, publishers will still consider a work that has been posted to a private, paywalled workshop site to be unpublished.

The key distinction for publishers is not whether a handful of people have seen it, but whether the work has been made widely available to the general public and thus lost its "first rights" value.

Here is a breakdown of why a private workshop site is generally not an issue:

Limited Audience: A private site with a membership or paywall is not considered a public venue. The audience is small, and the work is not discoverable by search engines like Google. A publisher is primarily concerned with the work having been put into the public domain where it can be widely read, which would hurt its marketability.

Purpose for Feedback: Publishers understand that writers need to refine their work, and they know that workshops are essential to that process. The purpose of these sites is to produce a better manuscript for submission, not to act as a public library.

The Free Trial Period: The short free trial period for new members is unlikely to be a problem. The audience is still limited to a select group of people who have signed up for the service, not the general public.

The most important thing to do is to be honest with a publisher or agent if they ask about the manuscript's history. You can simply state that it was circulated for feedback on a private, members-only workshop site. This is a very common and accepted practice in the industry.