How much stolen?

[Sharion]

I see so many posts about stolen content. I'm curious about something. The submission guidelines state that you must include 1/3 of the article as the excerpt.

So are the thieves stealing one third? Or are the authors including the whole article instead of just an excerpt?

[Celeste Stewart]

The thieves steal whatever they can get - a third, the whole thing, whatever. They're idiots, probably automated. I still put the whole article in the summary because I believe that content theft is still a relatively small risk compared to the potential benefits of making a sale. I think that customers are more inclined to buy when they can see the entire article, not a teaser. Other writers have different thoughts on this but that's my opinion.

[Sharion]

Familiar with the concept. One of my personas is a shareware author. Figuring out how to actually sell shareware and not be gobbled by pirates is a major topic in the shareware community. Another of my personas designs t-shirts and such, same problem. Those pirates steal our designs and peddle them over on eBay for peanuts. Internet piracy? Know it well. I had an entire web page stolen one time, word for word, and it was a long one.

I wonder how many here put the entire article in the excerpt box?

[jadedragon]

I'm posting about 1/2 of the articles but I'm new. Do we have to put up the first third or can we post the first 1/3 to 1/2 of each paragraph cutting off mid sentence with "...(article clipped for preview purposes)"?

[Celeste Stewart]

Yes, you can do that. Just make sure that it's clear (like with the 'article clipped' comment) that these are excerpts. I've seen short summaries where it's not clear and the article feels disconnected. Customers may not be aware that what they are reading isn't the full article.

[Sharion]

I wondered about that, too. If everybody has a different tactic on how much to put in the excerpt box, how does the customer know whether he's seeing all, half, a third, etc.?

[Celeste Stewart]

Make it as clear as you can if it's an excerpt. For example, if you put the first third, at the end of the last paragraph type in:
*********** Article Continues *******************
or something to that effect.

[Sharion]

This all leads to another related question. If unique and full rights guarantees the customer that the article doesn't appear elsewhere, what happens if someone steals it and suddenly, it appears elsewhere? Even if only on another content site?

[Sharion]

Thank you, Celeste. Took your advice and added a notice at the bottom of the summaries.

Even went thru a bunch of other summaries here to see what other folks did. Saw several variations of how to handle this. Good to know about the options! Especially for longer articles. Good tip!