Fountain of Knowledge

That is a very good question. I've heard a lot of people talk about this, so I'll repeat what they've said. Posting your work on any public website is frequently considered 'First Printing' by publishing companies, and a lot of them will want to buy the first rights, so they won't buy something that's publicly available.

However, they do understand that people belong to writers groups, so as long as you are using one of the viewing restriction options, you can say it was as shared as part of a writers group or workshop (I think that's how it works), and not publicly available. That's why you'll see a lot of people here who are working on novels and put most of the chapters behind a passkey. That way, access is limited. but they'll still leave one or two chapters exposed, to help draw in interest and get them feedback.

It works pretty well too, at least it has for me. I have one of my stories under passkey and I get requests for access about once a month.

I hope that helps, anyone else is free to chime in and add what they know