An Explanation of Our Legalese

Today Paul Constant posted about our public launch and party over on The Stranger's SLOG. (Yay!) In the comments, someone noted that our legalese is confusing, and I have had a few people express concern over our lengthy mumbo jumbo. So: what are we doing? What is our motivation? Are you signing away your firstborn?

Here is the response I posted to this person:

Here's our goal: let writers do their thing, use their work as they want. We also want to be able to be able to promote Typetrigger by promoting the work that people create on the site (unless they are in private mode). Should be a win-win, but we wanted to cover our rears. Still tweaking our leagalese, but we want to work in writers favor, not rip them off and profit by selling their work without their permission.

So why do we have all that stuff?

As a bootstrapping entrepreneur, I want to be protected. I want to make sure that everyone is prepared for the fact that their work might be featured somewhere else on our site. We will never post someone's work for nefarious purposes, and we won't post any portion of someone's work without attribution. I started this site because I am a writer and I care about writers, and it is my first and foremost goal to promote them.

If a third party comes to Typetrigger in hopes of purchasing rights to writing they see here, we will do our best to facilitate that, with the writer's express permission. If we want to publish a Typetrigger anthology and include your work, we will notify you and give you the option to decline inclusion.

But if we are laughing so hard about something we read and we want everyone to see it on the blog, we want to be able to act in the moment. We will let you know so you can tell all your friends. If you are an established author for whom this sort of unauthorized promotion is a bad thing, choose a new pen name or let us know that you are specifically concerned. If you have a chance to sell writing that YOU wrote on Typetrigger, huzzah! Rest assured, we would rather get our money from sponsors than from damaging our relationships with our most important friends.

I hope this explains our position in more human terms.