As a regular contributor for Mobile Philippines, I sometimes republish stuff that I wrote in this blog. The main disadvantage of the print medium is that though page planning and editorial content are done one or two issues in advance (so if it is late January now, we are working on February and March) it still takes a while for an issue to be laid out, printed and circulated to the many stands in the country.
As a writer, publishing your work online is a good thing for you and your publisher, but you also need to take into account certain exclusivities that you owe the magazine you write for.
Although there are no policies engraved in stone with several publications in the Philippines, it would be fair to try and republish only a part of your article – a preview or teaser if you may, that will whet readers’ appetites to buy the magazine. These columns / reviews usually come with a “for a more detailed review, do check out the latest issue of *insert magazine title here* coming out next week.
For articles that you want to republish that are considered archived in print, you may actually publish the whole piece because someone reading it on your site may actually decide to buy the magazine for that article you have written. And besides, the exclusivity period is over since the article has lost its scoop. The safest rule to follow would be to always cite the main source of that article – similar to blogging, except that the source was yourself however written originally for another publication.
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