Thanks, Michelle, Storm and Crys for your advice

This whole problem really only arises because agents and publishers are, generally, lazy paranoid cretins.

In theory, I could only ever give one other person access to my novel, and that person could copy, paste and spread it as virally as he pleased. On the other hand, if I made my novel 100% free and unrestricted, without any promotion, ten years from now, if would still only have been read by 0.0000001% of its potential market.

My best guess is that agents and publishers, with slush piles that reach to the ceiling, couldn't give a stuff if they hamper the efforts of writers circles and workshops trying to encourage more writers to write more and better stories to make the slush piles even higher.

However, if they're rejecting dazzling stories with terrific market potential, just because 1000 people read the latest drafts (not even the final manuscript) on WDC, for free, THEN, in theory, some smart entrepreneur should come along, harvest the gold mine of rejects, sell them, and make a fortune!

I believe this was part of the thinking of the guy who founded Smashwords. He felt his novel had been rejected for idiotic reasons, so he founded the site, published his novel on there, and sold a million e-copies. So he was able to blow a big fat raspberry to all the stupid agents and publishers.

But the lazy, simplistic, absolutist policy of rejecting manuscripts out of hand, just because a handful of people read them on WDC, is not the Story Master's fault, and not a problem of his making.

However, including part or all of an author's original text in a public review, so it gets seen by a wider audience whom the author has NOT PERMITTED to see it, is not an issue of marketing strategy; it's just plain bad manners, and an infringement of what SHOULD be an author's right to decide who gets to access his/her work in progress, and who doesn't.