Do you need source your own blogpost in a novel?

[bayamo]

If you made a blog post, that you later incorporate into your novel, do you need to source it? I made a post once that I want to expand into a chapter. My blog is read mostly by my family, but this particular blog post was one of the more popular ones, that one that gets the most "hits" off certain google strings. i doubt it will ever be an issue, but do I need to mention that it appeared elsewhere?

[monkquixote]

If/as you own the copyright, no. You can mention it in your acknowledgements if you like, but think of it another way - how many sample chapters do you see online - everywhere from amazon to author sites to your aunt fanny's aggregator.

It would only normally be an issue if you were submitting that blog post as a short story to a competition or publisher that specified 'not previously published'.

Or the blog itself was published by another entity, to which you had contributed. Even then it's debatable that they would care.

And as much as we enjoy the analytics, getting a dozen/few hundred visits to a web page is no shakes at all in the grand old scheme of things. In another context I read earlier that a publishing house will only consider a 'trad' deal for a self-pub author if they can shift 5,000 units in 6 months.

[Hugh]

I've been trying to think of reasons that you'd feel this necessary. No legal reason - I assume the copyright is yours. Similarly, no moral reason. No cross-referencing reason - it's hard to imagine that you'd drive eyeballs to your blog. No story reason, unless you want there to be one, for verisimilitude, say, but the risk is that you'd take the reader out of the story world, for no benefit; novels are artefacts, even those bits that seem to be striving to be "real".

So in my opinion, no.

[bayamo]

thanks..

[LindaJeanne]

I've been trying to think of reasons that you'd feel this necessary.

There are cases where "self-plagiarism" becomes an issue. One could run into difficulties for failing to cite their own previously published work when submitting to peer-reviewed academic publications, for example.

For this, however, those issues don't apply. You can "self-plagiarize" with impunity .

[vic-k]

"self-plagiarize" with impunity .

That sound awfully auto-erotic

[bayamo]

Childhood trauma. In 6th grade I did an awesome report on Alaska. In 7th grade we studied the 50 states and each kid got to pick a state to do a report on. Since I had an A+ on Alaska sitting in the attic I took Alaska and just updated stats and handed my report in. Got into a bit of hot water over this and heard some stuff about "resubmitting work without proper citation", which is a load of bunk to give a kid in the 7th grade, but I remember them telling me "If you were in College you could be expelled for this .."