I am thinking of posting one of my stories here on Wattpad. Someone has cautioned me that people could take it and post it elsewhere. How do people deal with that?
Also, I have a question about content and tags and a question about using your real name. Where would I ask that? I find it hard to navigate this site.
Thanks for any advice.
In the digital age you have to be wary of that whether youâre a published author or not. I could take a stephen king novel and retype it into wattpad under a different title and no one would be the wiser. Some publishers have bots that crawl the internet for material that matches their database but really you canât win that war in the end. Itâs like putting out a fire with a cup of water.
You can ask away pretty much anywhere here. Most in the forum are really helpful. You can also message me directly on wattpad (same user name) and Iâd be happy to answer what I can.
If you think this is likely to happen (although honestly, it probably wonât), you could occasionally put phrases from your story in a search engine to see if anything comes up. Thieves might change character names, but they probably wonât reword everything.
Then you report them to whomever runs the site it was posted on. It may or may not get taken down. Not a whole lot you can do about that.
You can also set up an automatic query to search for you and send alerts if anythingâs found. Obviously, thatâs more technologically involved.
There isnât really a way to prevent people from âstealingâ your story unless you simply donât share it, ever.
I think it also depends on what your goals are. If youâre just writing for fun and donât plan to ever publish anything, itâs surely unpleasant to have someone else rip off your work, but it might not hurt you as much as if you had plans to actually publish it.
If youâre seriously planning to publish anything, Iâd say only upload first drafts, never the final manuscript, at least not in full.
Also, keep in mind that copyright infringement only really happens to already popular authors as it means that someone uploads their story illegally but doesnât pretend itâs theirs. Like, if you find copies of Harry Potter on here for example. It hurts the author because they lose revenue.
Plagiarism, on the other hand, is when someone takes someone elseâs story and passes it off as their own. This one is much more dangerous and is targeted more at smaller lesser known authors.
So itâs the second instance you want to be wary of.
To be honest, if you post it online it can be stolen. Thatâs the same for any site like Wattpad, a blog, Amazon, wherever. Thereâs really no way to stop it except to keep it to yourself 100% of the time.
If it happens, wherever you post it has the original timestamp to prove itâs yours so you can get it taken down provided itâs not just a bot that stole it. So fear of being plagiarized isnât the reason someone shouldnât use Wattpad. There are other reasons why Wattpad may or may not be for a person so those are the reasons to give more thought (IE Fear of losing first rights if publishing)
Actually, most people here have had stories stolen and published elsewhere in physical form. I had someone suggest to me the other day to publish my debut novel on Smashwordsâthatâs like ringing the dinner bell to pirates and book thieves.
Iâm not that dumb.
Nonsense. Every word of it.
There are a few people here who have had their work stolen. A very few. I doubt many of those have had their books put into physical form since that costs money. Stealing and posting a digital copy does not.
Smashwords is a fine service. It is a good distributor, and it provides indie services. I, personally, wouldnât recommend their indie âpackages,â but I donât actually recommend those anywhere because theyâre ultimately more expensive than hiring freelancers.
Pirating is an issue all authors deal with, period. The only way to avoid it is not to publish or post your work. That doesnât mean you should roll over and accept it blindly, but nor should it keep you from publishing.
Completely false and yet again youâre making stuff up. There are millions of stories on Wattpad, if most were stolen and published elsewhere like you are claiming, Amazon would be swamped in a day. Have a few people encountered such an issue? Yes. But they are probably less than 1% of all stories on Wattpad. Less than 1% does not equal âmostâ.
What a load of rubbish. Amazon is the main source of files for pirates, because they can buy, download the file and return for a refund. Iâve not heard of any issues with Smashwords in the author groups Iâm in. I have heard of multiple problems with Amazon and pirates, especially for authors in KU who find their books offered elsewhere.
You have various ârightsâ to your work. Digital rights. Audio rights. Print rights. Etc. When you sign a contract with a publisher, youâre signing over certain rights. Like the right to publish your book in print in North America.
First Rights is another right. The first time your story is published, the first rights are gone. Magazines typically want First Rights (they want to be the first to publish it).
Iâm interested to know where you get your information from. Perhaps in future posts itâd be useful for you to post links to where you find your info so people whoâre interested in finding out more can use that information so theyâre fully informed about all aspects of the industry.
In this instance though I would note that youâre incorrect in your statement. A tiny, tiny minority of writers have their works fully plagiarised. Of those who do, theyâre usually posted in electronic form as that tends to be how people can most easily copy and transmit content.
And Smashwords as a platform has a good reputation to my knowledge and is certainly no worse than posting on Amazon, something that I understand you have done.
Welcome to the forums 
The people file a DMCA complaint. Wattpad takes copyright infringement seriously. You can read this article for more info- https://support.wattpad.com/hc/en-us/articles/204471770-Reporting-Copyright-Infringement
You can ask in this thread-
You can browse through this thread for more info-
Adding my two cents here. When you publish your work online, you are taking a gamble. A risk. There will always be someone whoâd try to steal your work. And itâs not limited to Wattpad alone. The fear of infringement/stealing shouldnât deter you from posting your work or following your passion of writing.
Good luck with your story
New writers are often concerned with their stories being âstolenâ but the reality is (a) it happens very rarely and (b) obscurity is a much bigger problem than copyright violation.
Once you put your work âout in the worldâ - whether that be in print or online (although online is easier) it has the potential to be pirated or stolen by someone who republishes it. But the reality is such things donât happen mainly because most work isnât worth stealing ;-). If it was stolen youâd never know because it would sell poorly and the chances of you finding it would literally be a needle in a haystack, but since itâs not selling, itâs like the tree in the forest that doesnât have anyone to hear it.
Now, if your book was stolen and it DID become a huge success, then ka-ching. You hire a lawyer you sue their asses off, you make a lot of publicity and youâll get a big paycheck. Itâs really easy to prove in court that the work was yours just by drafts, and emails and blog posts of what you were working on.
One thing I should point outâŠideas CANNOT be copyrighted. You can have two authors write two separate books from the same concept and both can be copyrighted and sold and there is no harm or foul. Why? Because ideas are a dime a dozen but itâs the execution of those ideas that really matter, and no one can copy your âexecutionâ (your words).
I hope this helps.
Ah, no. Because Stephen King is so famous, and so well read it would be discovered very quickly, youâd be sued, and your life would spiral downhill. Stealing a famous work gets caught. Stealing a work that is obscure - you could probably get away with.
Such bots are for finding pirating sites, so they can issue DCMA takedown notices. And, yeah, Iâd equate it to wack-a-mole. You get the book taken down in one place, it pops up somewhere else. In many ways, if your book is being pirated youâve âmade it.â Because books that arenât popular arenât worth someoneâs time to steal.
Yes, the only way to 100% guarantee that something isnât used by someone else (either pirated or re-published) is to never let it out go beyond your own computer.
