Submitting chapters of larger works

ajoker

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Hello everybody,
I am getting ready to send my queries out for my recently finished novel. In the meantime, I'm thinking about submitting a chapter to an anthology. (I seem to remember George RR Martin submitted just Dany's story as a novella before Game of Thrones came out.)

The anthology states: By submitting your horror short fiction work to Dark Moon Books, you are assigning Dark Moon Books exclusive First World Rights for both print and electronic versions for a period of six months after publication. After that time period, you are free to resell your story as a reprint as long as first publication information is included. You keep all other rights including the original copyright.

Assuming they published my story, what would the impact be of mentioning in a query that an excerpt had already been published? And would it interfere with the rights at all? In short, is this an advisable course of action?

Thanks!
 

Drachen Jager

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Most magazines won't even look at excerpts from an unpublished novel. The only exception would be for known authors.
 

BethS

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First, you would need to revise the chapter so that it reads like a complete story, not an excerpt. Otherwise, they're not likely to give it a second look.

Second, to the best of my knowledge, the anthology claiming exclusive rights for six months is normal and only prohibits you from selling that same story to a magazine or another anthology during that period.

Meanwhile, you can still query agents for your novel. When you eventually get a publishing contract, the fact that you published a rewritten excerpt from that novel in an anthology will not be a problem, and may in fact work in your favor.
 

Susan Coffin

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I think Drachen brought up a good point.

Beth, will agents even look at a novel with a previously published chapter, even though it has been rewritten to be a short story? If so, wouldn't it depend on which magazine it was published in?
 

ajoker

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Thanks, Beth and Susan! I should have said, but I realized I'd have rewrite so that it worked as a short story. It sounds like it's not worth risking it, especially as I don't think it's a particularly noteworthy anthology.