What once was free....

It may just be me, but it is bothering me.....

I used to read a lot of online m/m fiction - through sites such as Literotica and nifty - now fair enough there is an awful lot of crap out there, but there were some genuinely good stories, some of which hung around online to be read for several years but which have now disappeared.

Now whilst I appreciate there has been some problems with people stealing these works and passing them off as their own when they self publish them, and I understand that any author would want to protect their work, but I am finding more and more stories that I liked are being pulled and then appearing as soon to be published books (well novellas some aren't very long) on Goodreads.

Don't get me wrong, some of these stories are good enough to be published and do deserve a wider audience..... some of these are stories I've read and enjoyed and in some cases gone back to re-read ....but do I really want to pay for a copy now?

Caveat here - there is one story that was free online that I know the author is in the process of editing and re-working for submission and I will be buying that if it gets picked up as it was one of my all time favourites and comfort reads.

I respect the right of the author to do what they want with their story...... but I also reserve the right not to pay £3 - £4 for something that I've read before for free.  Okay, so if the author has made changes from the original free version before publishing I might be tempted to buy it - but if it's exactly the same story??  Trouble is, I can usually only find this out when I've bought it and then it's not returnable.

I also wonder if this sort of thing, particularly when the stories haven't been reviewed and edited (and there are certain publishers accepting these stories that I will be avoiding), is contributing towards the decline in the standard of M/M books being put out generally?