have there been any cases where web publication has caused
anyone real problems? am quite interested to hear if it has.

has any competition winner ever been de-prized because of it?

p.s.

i agree with Julie.

editors are a capricious bunch.

has anyone been barred for simultaneous publication? i mean,
its not like the worst thing that could happen. in the game of
cat and mouse, speaking as a mouse, the cats maybe deserve
the runaround sometimes.

I'm a proofreader for a journal that delayed publication of a recent issue that had already been typeset (and proofed), because the editor felt the need to pull two poems that had been previously published elsewhere. [Edited to say: The offending poems had previously appeared in other journals--it wasn't a case of simply having been workshopped at a site like Eratosphere, with which the editor in question has no problem.] Not sure if this was discovered by googling or not. The editor was unhappy enough that I believe the person was barred from future publication in that venue, de facto if not officially.

ah, ok. upsetting people is not good i guess.

though is it an integrity thing, protecting the reputation of the journal?
or the whole scoop thing as mentioned.

if it's a good poem, a really good poem, i'm not sure what difference it really makes.
chances are the readers/buyers of the first journal are not the same as the second
or third.

Conny, I did once have a poem pulled from First Things by an alert proofreader who discovered its previous appearance in a Canadian journal that you needed a password to read -- I couldn't even google it myself.

Like you, I am in favor of more relaxed rules about these things. (And even though I am a timid female, I do sometimes try to circumvent the rules -- and so far, was only caught once, as noted above).

I've always respected "no simultaneous submissions" guidelines, but until this thread, I never really thought about why. I haven't been in the publishing cycle for a few years, but next time I am, I think I'm going to ignore sim-sub requirements. It makes sense for editors, and that has to be respected, but in a bottom-heavy hierarchy like the po-biz, I suppose you have to cut whatever corners you can.

Having once waited over eighteen months for a (negative) response from a "no sim-sub" venue, I really appreciate sensible sim-sub policies like Rattle's. Theirs is essentially "We're all adults here, and can respect each other's needs. Just do us the courtesy of telling us--when we notify you of our acceptance--if someone else has already taken it." Can't beat that.

Yeah. Tim Green makes me wish there was an "editor of the year" award for small-to-medium presses. Besides printing some great poetry, Rattle is easy to deal with, and Tim isn't afraid to engage in a bit of back-and-forth conversation. And they pay now, which is a nice little bonus. There's a reason why it's currently the only po-mag I subscribe to.

I've just thought of the answer to this and related questions. All you do is to change the title of your poem. Change it completely. Then it will not appear on any search anyone cares to make. And presto! Back to selling your good stuff serially.

Incidentally, I once pulled a poem that had been accepted by the Times Literary Supplement because it had appeared somewhere else. I needn't have bothered. He told me later that he couldn't have cared less where it had appeared.

John, I hate to break this to you, but smart searchers will search on a line from the poem. They're on to the dodge of title-switching, alas.

The real cure would be pruning the crit boards more often. We should also prune the DG board rather soon after competitions. We've never done that; I think we might think seriously about it.