Someone Posted My Poem On Their Blog! What Do I Do?

Jacob asks:

"I write poetry and post it on my blog, but people are taking my poems and post them on their own sites. What can I do to stop them? I don’t want people to steal my poems. I’ve been reading your site for a while, so I was wondering if you had any advice."

If you want my answer summed up in five words, here they are: Don’t try to stop them.

There are plenty of reasons why the idea of letting people repost your poems might make you nervous. When I started this site nearly three years ago, I worried about it too. I didn’t want filthy plagiarists taking my work. I was afraid that if people read my poems on other people’s sites, they wouldn’t come find the rest of my work. I worried that I’d miss out on sales or ad revenue. I thought it meant I’d lose control of my work, and I was annoyed that people would use my content to fill their blogs when I’d worked so hard to produce it myself.

Perhaps worst of all, I worried that it meant no publisher would touch my poems -- all the books of writing advice and all the writing blogs tell you that publishers will reject work that appears in too many places online, because publishers like to have exclusive rights to a piece of work.

It’s not stealing, it’s sharing.

See that big bold header? Read that again. You’re worried that people will steal your work, but your perspective is totally wrong. Here’s what’s really happening. People like what you’ve written, and they want to share it with others. It’s probably one of the best things that can happen to a poet.

Plagiarism isn’t as common as you might think. Most people are decent folk who just want to share things they like. My poems have been reposted on hundreds of blogs, LiveJournals, and Tumblr accounts, and only twice in the last three years have thieves actually plagiarising my work -- that is, they took my poems, posted them on another site, and tried to claim them as their own. A strongly worded message quickly fixed the problem each time.

Every time someone posts one of your poems on their blog, every one of their readers gets exposed to your work. Whether they have five readers or five hundred, that’s free publicity for you, and if people like what they’ve read, they’ll seek out the rest of your writing -- quite a few of my most loyal readers found my poetry through the blog of a friend.

Here’s something to remember about the Internet. Sharing is inevitable. If you post something cool online, it will be copied and shared on another site, and this is not a bad thing. It’s what’s made the Internet such a great place, and because poetry is something that people really like to share, it’s what makes the Internet such a great place for poets.

Don’t hoard your poems

There’s a scene in The Hobbit where the narrator describes how the dragon Smaug knows every piece of treasure in his hoard and the thought of anyone but him having a piece of it drives him mad. Poems aren’t pieces of gold and although they may be personal and very dear to you, being possessive or territorial of them won’t encourage people to tell others about your work. If you get angry with people for trying to share your work, they’ll stop sharing it. There’s a reason Smaug was alone in his mountain.

The more people share your poetry, the more people will start to recognize your name, and that gives you credibility. Think about it. Knowing nothing else about them, would you check out a poet whose work only appears on one little blog on the Internet, or one whose work keeps popping up on blog after blog? That leads to more loyal readers, and loyal readers are what drive book sales.

Publishers don’t like to share

It’s true that quite a few publishers won’t accept work that shows up on lots of blogs. Many publishers want exclusive rights to a poem, at least for the first printing, and they can’t get them if a hundred other people have already published the poem online. On the other hand, publishers want to publish authors that their readerships will enjoy reading, and if they already know who you are because your name is popping up on tons of blogs, they’re more likely to want a piece of that action. Just because your poem has been shared frequently doesn’t mean no publisher will touch it.

Really, though, whether or not a publisher will accept your poem after it’s been shared on a lot of blogs is a moot point, for one simple reason: you can always write another poem. If there’s a poetry journal you really want to get into and they won’t accept your previously published work, all you have to do is write something new. If they accept it, you get published, and if they don’t, you can put it on your blog.

Make sure people know who you are

Now, there’s a caveat to all this talk of sharing. You have to make sure that when people post your poems on their blogs, they identify you as the author. Here’s a few tips that can help with that:

• Identify yourself. I can’t count how many poetry blogs I’ve come across where the author failed to properly identify who they are. You can have a cute, clever, or poetic name for your blog, but make sure you have a name, pen name, or identifiable handle somewhere that’s big and visible on your site. If you don’t identify yourself, how can you expect anyone else to do it?
• Add a copyright notice. At the bottom of every poem on this site, you’ll find a copyright notice that includes my name and the date the poem was published. After adding that notice, people who reposted my poems where 35% more likely to include my name in their post than they were before I added the notice. Many pasted the copyright notice in its entirety.
• Be visible. Beyond your own website, be visible elsewhere on the web. By having a presence on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, you make it easier for people to find you. It helps your credibility, and it makes it easier for people to get in touch with you -- and for you to get in touch with them.
• Ask them! If someone has posted one of your poems and failed to identify you as the author, send them a polite message asking them to edit their post. If they don’t have a contact page on their blog, look for a Twitter link or other social network. (This is where having a varied web presence comes in handy!) Most people will oblige quickly and add a correct attribution to you. Be sure to thank them!

Finally, you’ll need to make sure that you can find people when they repost your poems, so you can check up on them and make sure they’re crediting you properly. In another post on this topic, I’ve discussed some ways I locate reposted poems. Check it out.

Have a question? Ask away!

I love hearing from my readers, and I don't mind conversations, so if you have a question about poetry, or just want to say hi, send me a message. I can't guarantee I'll make a blog post out of it, but I'll do my best to reply to every email.