Urbis is building on top of the Facebook platform. The initial application will be up later this week.

• showcase the work you have on Urbis to facebook friends and strangers
• invite facebook friends to review your Urbis work
• invite facebook strangers to review your Urbis work
• Use facebook mobile. This means getting text message notifications of new reviews, comments, friend requests, etc.
• more varied work in your queue—working with facebook means more users, more diverse writings, and more diverse reviews.

This announcement is only relevant to Urbis users who are on Facebook. It will not affect the Urbis experience in any way.

Why are we doing this?
1. Because there are some things Facebook has that Urbis doesn’t, like mobile notifications.
2. Because Facebook is viral. Working with facebook will bring us new members at a low cost.

And for those of us who don’t know anything about Facebook?

“And for those of us who don’t know anything about Facebook?”
Don’t worry about it. ;-)
-Steve

I am a little concerned. I joined this site because it wasn’t open to the public. Some publishers consider any work open to the public as “published” and will not accept it as a submission. I do not want my work open to everyone. I am in the process of getting a portfolio and this could damage that attempt.

Facebook platform… see Steve I was justified in asking what about us that don’t know anything about Facebook. If Fin’s point is valid, that it will make Urbis open to general public – meaning anyone can assess our works via a search engine – then I am 100 percent behind her concern. I, also, would like to have my items not to be considered published when I am ready to start sending them out for consideration.

Is there other “benefits” going to this platform we should know about that may be a source of concern for some of us? Where do we go to find out more about Facebooks, what it is, does, and is capable of doing.

“I am a little concerned. I joined this site because it wasn’t open to the public. Some publishers consider any work open to the public as “published” and will not accept it as a submission. I do not want my work open to everyone. I am in the process of getting a portfolio and this could damage that attempt.”

It won’t affect you. Those who want their portfolio shared on Facebook will need to opt in. If you don’t opt in, you’re work stays only on Urbis. That said, your work is actually more public on Urbis than it would be on Facebook. Facebook has closed networks. Urbis is open (even to search engines) unless you set your items as private.

We may display the review queue on Facebook at some point, but this will work the same as the queue here. Just means that Urbis members on facebook may review your item from the queue on facebook.

“Is there other “benefits” going to this platform we should know about that may be a source of concern for some of us?”
The main benefit is more exposure. When your friends view or review your work on Facebook, their friends know about it and may also want to view or review it…and their friends, and so on. The other benefit is mobile features—getting text message notifications for new reviews, comments, etc.

There are no benefits that should be sources of concern.
-Steve

I thought items were always considered private. I didn’t think the site was open when I joined. So now I am even more concerned. If you say someone can read my work right now, I will pull all of my work.
For people who want to published, this should be shared at the beginning.
I have done searches of my screen name and it doesn’t come up. So should I have done a search for my poem’s titles?

Well, first of all Publishers don’t really care if you’re work is online. If they think it will sell, they’ll publish it. If anything, they may ask you to take your work off of Urbis before they publish, which can be done. A friend of mine has a website, http://overheardinNY.com, which publishes funny quotes people overhear in New York City. Penguin published a book of these quotes. All the quotes in the book can still be found on his website.

If it really is a concern, you don’t need to take your work off Urbis – just mark your items as private.

I like the idea of Urbis on Facebook. I personally do know about facebook and it’s incredibly easy to learn about it (considering that fact that the website is simply www.facebook.com). Of course I want to have my work published. I’m here at Urbis, however, to become a better write and to see what a community of writers thinks about my works. To submit your work on Urbis for the sole reason of having a publisher see it seems unrealistic to me. When I think my work is ready to be published, I will send it out to publishers and the like. I’m not going to be waiting around hoping on the off-chance that a publisher will somehow see my work online. Because of this, I see no problem with Urbis being on Facebook. That’s just my opinion though. And, like Steve said, you have the choice anyway. Also, like wordwan said, Urbis has always been open, and, I can’t remember where, but there is a place on the site that tells you this.

The only boundaries I have in my head are those imposed upon it by the knowledge I have gathered. As more knowledge is sowed, the larger the field of my mind is reaped, and the greater the harvest of creativity. It is not what we expect that cause the issue, it is what we didn’t know or, in some cases, didn’t realize that did. So don’t judge us for our ignorance instead glorify us for seeking to shift that ignorance further away.

Heather – agreed. I have googled my moniker, a poem line, a title (and a few of you others as well) and came up with this site and several others. It’s the internet. C’mon. However, even if it weren’t open to the mass general public, anyone on here could feasibly steal your work, if they wanted to badly enough.

I wouldn’t have known about this site if it were not for Facebook. One of my former professors joined Urbis and that is how I found out about this fantastic website. It has the potential of being a really awesome creative writing workshop, or so it seems to me. :-)

Steve,

using writer’s market, and I have been for about six years or so now, they now do say, “No work sumitted on the internet. I also did some researching and that is what they mean, even if it’s on some harmless, innocuous site.

To wordwan:

When I joined, this site wasn’t know to everyone. I think i found out looking for a site when another I was using and hadn’t been in was shut down. This site wasn’t open to everyone as far as I knew when I joined. So only members saw people’s work.

Given that many people ask for critiques with the mind of being better and getting published, this should be a concern for everyone. And unless you ask, you don’t get answers. So maybe you can understand people’s concern.

“they now do say, “No work sumitted on the internet. I also did some researching and that is what they mean, even if it’s on some harmless, innocuous site.”

Writer’s Market says that or some publishers in Writer’s Market says that?

yes. I belong to the Writer’s Market books as well as I belong to the site. And there are some that say, “No previous publishing” and some include “electronic publishing” I did some searching and that is what it means. So I have not submitted some works because of that. Now that I know that when I search my screenname which is also my performing name, I can google my screen name and some of my poetry comes up. I haven’t seen it while on this site. So, I had my works removed from most sites.
I am cleaning up some poetry now, reworking and working on presentation and I should be ready to submit at the end of the summer and I have to make sure that none of these works can be searched on-line. Especially if they say no “previous submission” or “published on line/electronically published” I also go to a writer’s group and they informed of this as well.

My concern is that friends on Facebook will mark friends reviews as top quality reviews and there is nothing in place to stop this like here where urbis knows who your friends are to shut them out .
And I am careful about everything I say; I don’t see anyone who isn’t, here, hardly ever… as far as saying something that might make them look less than mature to others. Those who tell the author of a filthy-mouthed diatribe on aimless violence he wants to comit, filled with the nastiest visuals imaginable, and every 4-letter word invented, through review, that they agree with every word and feel the same way about people—skipping guidelines to only address the content of the piece.. are who seem to me the ones who should worry. If there are any such folks.

“My concern is that friends on Facebook will mark friends reviews as top quality reviews and there is nothing in place to stop this like here where urbis knows who your friends are to shut them out .”

Not a concern. It will work the same as Urbis. If a friend reviews you, they will be flagged as a friend in both the rating and the review.

The internet has great things, and anyone can go to deviantart and see great art, youtubeand see amatuer video, the photoshop contests and see fun pictures that have been fooled with, photobucket and see people’s best photography. It would be a crime for us not to be able to also see nonpublished poetry, articles, and stories -why leave our chosen craft out ? Granted there are a lot of magazine websites with extensive archives of great writing, and the words anyone wants to say about or to these writers/writings, but other than the often really lousy fanfic stories, we don’t want to be the only art form without a natural, anyone can , other-side-of-published (copyrighted, and media-owned already ) presence .
(I’m not counting blogs as they are not so big on fiction , poetry, etc.) We make the web dynamic, and keep it out of control of the media. We write wikipedia articles, we help with the Gutenberg project to get as many great novels online as we can . wordwan is right, we can’t hesitate in fear. Another thought-maybe you won’t find a publisher. But long after you’ve died, the world will notice your works on the web and extol them. Cool, huh?

Yes, the internet is all very nice. There are positive points to posting work online and such. However, the truth is that many (if not most) piblishers will not publish something that has already been posted online, because it’s considered previously published. While it may not be the best system, it’s the truth of how things are. I’m glad that we now know that anything we post will come up on a google search. This way we know what we need to mark as private, or not post in the first place. It’s very nice if people adore my works after I’m dead, but I’d like to eat while I’m alive, and if I can afford that through my writing that makes me happy. As far as I can tell, getting involved in facebook won’t change anything except it will bring more members. That’s great and I’m all for it. However, if you have any works that you plan to publish, marking them as private is the smartest thing you can do.

Not many use their real names here, although I realize someone said they are using the actual psuedonym they intend to publish all their works under. And what if we change our titles here from what we intend to publish the works as? A publisher could search by the first line, but he’d find it is a writer’s workshop type-place it’s at, being “workshopped” , not “published.” We can pull them from here anytime-it’s not very likely someone would leave it here in 5 versions once it is accepted for publication (everyone who’s complained has mentioned their intent was already to remove it from urbis before trying for publication). If they see “archived” pages of our work, it’s still not the same as us having submitted it to be shown to the public here. I can see them requesting it not be available free , under your name, once they have bought serial rights, but that would be when everyone , not just on urbis, removed it from their website and etc. I would think that would be what they’d be asking. Get it off now, not never have had it being worked on at a writer’s site. Just don’t have it on your website now that we are engaging in a sale. Stayfree’s website has archived a lot of discussion following an article they did on copyright laws; I’d check it out if I was worrying. I just don’t see how a story that will be rewritten before corporate media ever see it can be called the same work the publisher is considering purchasing. The difference, plus the fact that it was being workshopped here, not posted indefinitely as a finished work, should totally cover you legally, and intellectually the publishers will not give urbis the parity they’d give the writer’s personal website, where it is visible to those looking up the author so they don’t have to buy his work (“I’ll just read it at his website.”)It’s a whole different baby. Internet searches for the copyrighted property would only find it , in an earlier form, on archived pages of a writers’ “workshopping” site. And you have to actually know which one, as the search engines bring up a page and then offer “see an earlier , archived version of this page.” You’d have to know right where it used to be. If it can ever be found months after you’ve taken it off here-the archived sites don’t show you every instance of how urbis once looked-just one that was previously indexed by the search engine crawler. It’s not like urbis is a magazine that is putting every item it ever had here for 5 minutes into a dated archive of their own. The search engine archives just give you an earlier example of the page you ask for. That is why the people who post slander on their websites receive notice to remove it-removing it is “good enough” to satisfy the wronged party. Most people never click on the link to see an earlier version of the page they are requesting, but if they do, your piece may not have been up the day that “snapshot’ was made-it may have been made 5 years before you arrived, or 5 weeks after your piece came down. I know because 7 years ago when I had a business, a competitor had on his site that he’d been in our mutual business longer than anyone else in our state. Our concern was 35 years older than his and he was forced to remove those words. When I tried to see them again by going to a saved previous version of his site, the bit he’d had to remove was not on the indexed archived page, either. But had it been, what could he have done? I doubt anyone would have let me sue for that; he did take it off when told to, and I am sure that would satisfy any judge.
I do not think that the guys in Writer’s Market mean what we do here, at all. They just don’t want you to have sold it to or gotten it accepted by an internet site, an e-magazine, etc. who has control over it and can repost it anytime they care to. They want it unencumbered of any of that.
Urbis is not going to put up a site in 5 years called “The Best of Fifteen Years of Urbis” or whatever and publish your work on it and it be totally out of your control. I really think they mean those “electronic”sites some people here say they already “published” the piece at (usually when a reviewer suggests major changes, making me wonder why they have it here then for review , if they “can’t change it ” because it’s already been published ). I am sure they don’t mean a site where folks hone their craft and can take the piece down -still own all rights to it-and indeed have removed it from urbis before submitting it for publication. I bet the stuff on Stay Free covers this, too.

Urbis might even be a good thing for your piece. If someone steals it from anywhere, myspace, etc. and you have to prove you wrote it, your having “printed screen” with it on urbis and its reviews dated etc would definitely be the proof you wrote it first (although then it may be wise to still be an urbis member so someone can vouch that this is your user name ).

“I belong to the Writer’s Market books as well as I belong to the site. And there are some that say, “No previous publishing” and some include “electronic publishing” I did some searching and that is what it means.”

“No previous submissions” means you cannot submit the same item to the same publisher. “No previous publishing” means no work that has been published by another publisher. “Electronic Publushing” typically means e-books.

I really want to be clear about this as it’s one of the most unfounded fears about submitting your work to Urbis. Publishers view books/works of writing as products. If they see a product they think will sell, they’ll acquire it and try to sell it. Sure, if they feel a “free version” of that product is competing with their sales, they may be concerned. Even though this is rare, we remove that fear by giving controls to users to set their work as private or remove it altogether. However, this can just as easily be done after you have a deal with a publisher.

I’ve given one example of a friend of mine who started http://overheardinnewyork.com. Penguin published his book even though the entire content was and still is on the web. Why? Because Penguin filtered/packaged the content and used their distribution channels to sell it. Penguin is not afraid that someone will see the Overheard book in a bookstore and run home to view the content online. Unlike film, music, and photos, people still like to hold books and prefer reading them offline. They also respect Penguin’s ability to fitler the content and find the best.

There are assistants at agencies and pub houses who spend much of their time scowering the web to find writers. If they’re looking for writers online, they’re not afraid to publish writers who are online.

Most publishing houses now publish the first 20% of all their own books online. I met with one of the big four houses yesterday, and they will start publishing 40% of their books online very soon.

Steve-

I do use Facebook but not much because I don’t neatly fit into any real networks other than a geographic one. Would there be a possibility of a specific network for members of Urbis, or is that already part of what you’re talking about?

“Steve, I would even go so far as to suggest, while we’re talking Internet, that film, music and photos are not any less applicable in this issue. I still feel the Internet is about: exposure. And that includes films, music and photos, along with reading matter.”

Yes, indeed. In fact, we plan to grow into other media forms to give artists, musicians, etc the same tools we’re offering writers. My point about writing vs. other media, in the context above, is that publishers fear internet distribution less than a music label, film company etc. People are more likely to watch a free movie or download free music on the internet than they are to read a free book.

I totally agree with you guys! Exposure is the new key to success in almost any media field.

When I was gigging with my band we discovered the power of using the likes of myspace as an advertising platform. We would search areas of the country very close to where we were gigging and would send people PM’s telling them where our gig was. It allowed us to target an audience with similar tastes in music to our own – thus increasing the number of successful hits per message sent. People could then hit our myspace site and see if they liked our music before commiting time to come see us. Amazing new ways of doing business are opening up every day. What you have to remember is that people are lazy. Why will the pay money for an uncertainty when then can make sure they like an author, band or artist before they hand over thier hard earned cash?

The same goes for the likes of us. Budding authors are no differnent. I’m going to start working on several short stories that will interweave the major plot line to my novel. I will host these on my website to give people both a taste of the world I’m creating and my style. For publishers I hope it will be attractive because they get to see if they like what I do without having my actual novel being given away for free. This will only work because the world in which I am writing is an utter fantasy – like LOTR and Star Wars there are a million other stories to be told in my world that aren’t covered in the main plot.

This way I hope to build up a fan base without compromising my viable retail potential. There are a thousand ideas like this – get your caps on! The Internet WILL transform the business YOU want to work in. Embrace it, it’s yours!