How to Find Out if Your Work Was Published without Your Knowledge

Keep publishers honest! Issuu.com has changed everything about their site and now writers can't find their published work anymore.

Updates as of 2023:

One member of the Parenting Magazine Writers Facebook group shared: "I just checked Muckrack and it only shows 5-10% of publications at most of my articles. So it's a minimally helpful resource."

Another shared: "One thing that seems to be working is searching my name and the word 'magazine' and filtering by image. This shows a good amount of my stuff."

One member shared: "Given that my experience is that 20-25% of regional publications try to get away without paying writers (unless you spot your article and invoice them...and even then a few require months of begging), that's a lot of money we're losing out on..."

Below is the old information about Issuu.com. Back when they actually were amazing and helpful.

I stumbled across Issuu.com years ago when I was Googling myself. It's a publishing service like BlueToad, only you can put in your name (best to put it in quotes), and magazine covers will come up that most likely contain an article of yours because you may have simultaneously submitted a regional parenting magazine. You can then click on the cover and see your piece! Using Issuu.com I was able to find a piece of mine that was published that I wasn't aware was going to be used at that time. I usually find at least one piece per month that was used without my permission.

Just type your name in the search bar like this: "Kerrie McLoughlin" (in quotes)

If I find what I call “borrowed work,” I contact the magazine and send an invoice for $50 (unless I know from my own book of markets, guidelines, and pay information that they pay more than that).

I thank them for using my work and ask them to ask me next time just in case there are competitors in the area who might have also snapped at the same piece only they were considerate enough to let me know first.

Happy searching!