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My practice: I don't consider web publication as the same category as print publication, so I just submit. Someday someone may complain. Till then, that's my tacit decision. Mark At 11:24 AM 6/1/2009, you wrote: >The whole issue of whether print media poetry editors consider various >forms of on line appearance to be "previous publication" is very >confused, and in general editors have done little to clarify it. >Most submission guidelines simply specify "previously unpublished." >But there's no common sense or generally accepted answer to whether >"previously published" includes internet publication, since there's >no common sense or generally accepted definition of what "internet >publication" is. For instance, a poem might appear on the internet: > >1) in an email sent by the poet to an individual > >2) in an email sent to an email dist list maintained on the poet's >email account > >3) in an email sent to a centrally maintained email dist list which is >not archived anywhere > >4) in an email sent to a centrally maintained email dist list the >archive of which is only available to registered members > >5) in an email sent to a centrally maintained email dist list, the >archive of which is not indexed by Google but is available to anyone >who knows where to look for it (like poetryetc) > >6) in an email sent to a centrally maintained email dist list, the >archive of which is indexed by Google so that anyone can find the poem >by a Google author or title search > >7) on an internet poetry web site where anyone can post their poems >(like poemhunter.com, which is a particularly good example of the >uncertainty, since that site has characteristics of both an on line >anthology and an on line workshop) > >8) on the poet's own personal web site > >9) on someone else's hobbyist literary web site > >10) on a formally edited on line poetry magazine web site unconnected >with any print magazine > >11) on the web site of a print magazine (while not being included in >the print version) > >12) on a web site of any one of the types mentioned above that was >taken off line five years ago, so that the poem is no longer available >on the internet > >13) any combination of the above > >14) other situations I haven't thought of > >Which of the above constitute "previous publication on the internet?" >Almost no one, I think, would include 1) or 2), almost everyone >would include 10) and 11), and there would varying degrees of >disagreement about the rest. > >If you ask print media poetry editors about this, they will usually >just say glibly, "If it's on the internet, it's been published," >because that's the easy answer to a messy question and since they get >so many poems anyway, they're glad to have one more category to >summarily weed out. This means that poets who want to submit poems >to print journals need to keep those poems off the internet while they >are being considered by those print journals; and since response times >are typically measured in months, and many poems are only finally >accepted for publication after being submitted to a series of print >journals, this could easily mean keeping them off the internet for a >year or more. > >I suspect many poets either tacitly follow their private definitions >of what constitutes "internet publication" when submitting to print >media -- "the guidelines say 'no previous publication' and this has >been on poemhunter but I don't have to mention that because that's not >really publication" -- or else look on this issue as one more reason >not to deal with the humiliating gauntlet of "submission" (what a >wonderfully albeit unconsciously apt word for it!) to print journals >and to just put everything on the internet themselves in the first >place. > >-- >=============================================== > > Jon Corelis http://jcorelis.googlepages.com/joncorelis > >===============================================