Ink-Smith:
From what info you gave us your short stories would most likely be considered public domain now. Yes you still have rights to it but you allowed people to publish it freely for 10 years. whether that was your intent or not there is no going back.
That is absolute bollocks. It will be the terms of the correspondence that establish the basis on which the publisher had rights to publish the work and in what format the work could be published.
The issue here relates to the terms on which the OP made the original contract with the publisher. It's unfortunate that the OP didn't keep their correspondence (and FWIW, my advice is that you should always keep records of all sales and correspondence relating to the same so that you can refer to it in the event of an issue and you should always make sure that you sign a contract if you're selling works).
It seems to me that the exchange of correspondence here created an implied licence to use. If I were the the OP, I'd try emailing the publisher and say that this licence only applied to electronic rights in the story and not to print rights so if they want to use the story, they have to make an additional payment. It would then be for the publisher to prove that they have those print rights. What would help here is knowing whether the publisher was releasing print works at the time the work was originally licenced - if not, then they're going to find it hard to argue that print rights were within the contemplation of the parties.
Ink-Smith:
I am well aware of the rights an author has, but he can claim you gave him permission for anything when you accepted payment.
No.
The publisher has to be able to prove that s/he has the right to use the work in the medium in which they're using it. If print rights were never discussed in the correspondence, then they're going to find it bloody difficult to argue that they've got those rights.
Ink-Smith:
if a copyright isn't enforced from the beginning he can make a claim that it is public domain. There are Strong legal precedence.
You clearly aren't a lawyer. If you were a lawyer, you'd know that the word is "precedent" and not "precedence".
Also, it simply isn't right to say that copyright has to be enforced the moment you're aware of a breach of you face losing it. You always own copyright in your work period. That cannot be taken away from you unless you assign your ownership (which in the UK can only be done by a signed, written contract). In fact, you can wait years after a breach before deciding you want to enforce your rights - the only affect this would have is on the level of damages you can claim.
You're confusing loss of copyright with loss of trade marks. This is a common mistake made by people who aren't legally qualified but believe they can give advice on the internet.
It is certainly the case in
trade mark law that failure to enforce your right can be deemed to be acceptance of a breach, enabling people to challenge that your mark has entered the public domain. Think about the word "Hoover" which has become a generic term for vacuum cleaners.
I am aware of cases in England where people have sought to argue that an awareness of a breach but failure to enforce has been deemed to amount to permission to use and there are complications when it comes to derived works (which is where the whole argument over publication of fanfic comes into play) but the general position is pretty clear.
Ink-Smith:
Everything i know would indicate that the publisher in question has absolutely no claim to the exclusive rights, but what does the OP do about that? try to get another publisher to publish it along side?
If the OP has (as they say) correspondence from the publisher saying that the OP can sell the story elsewhere, then it seems that the publisher believes it has a non-exclusive licence to publish (i.e. what started as an exclusive licence for x period of time then became a non-exclusive licence). Again, you'd have to look at the original correspondence to establish whether this was correct.
However the issue here is not with regard to exclusivity. It could well be that the publisher has a non-exclusive right to electronically publish the story on their website. That, however, is very different from having a right to print publish. If the publisher can't establish that they have that right, then they have no right to publish in that format and they are in breach of copyright.
Please stop giving legal advice on this thread. You clearly aren't qualified and the misinformation (and ignorance) you're displaying here is damaging.
MM