Comments on: Bringing Up the Uncomfy

By: Lori

Lori — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:34:10 +0000

My comments section went wonky on me Friday afternoon, so I wasn't able to respond to you ladies. Sorry.

Paula, his karma train ran him right over, didn't it? I guess lousy publishers are a dime a dozen, eh?

Devon, exactly that. If they're going to be business people, they need to value their suppliers much better.

By: Paula

Paula — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:42:33 +0000

Long ago, one of the first national publications I wrote for started taking longer and longer to pay writers. It was bad enough that they were a pay-on-publication organization, but when the checks started coming a month or more after publication I couldn't not speak up. I politely pointed out that my work never needed heavy editing, they'd never killed any of my articles, and they knew as soon as I turned something in that they would run it. Why should I have to wait two or three months to be paid for something they already had typeset? I even used the old, "You can't go into a store, take a shirt and tell them you'll pay them when you finally wear it," argument.

The publisher's reply was quite literally, "Writers are a dime a dozen, so I can treat you however I like." This was a guy who valued his sales department more than his editorial staff.

I have to admit I felt a certain sense of satisfaction upon learning that guy filed bankruptcy and had to sell off most of his worldly possessions, including his publishing mini-empire.

By: Devon Ellington

Devon Ellington — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:16:33 +0000

Writing is not valued because so many "writers" will work for pennies and content mill sites.

Writing is not valued because the client thinks "anyone" can do it, and they'd do it themselves if they could "get around to it."

They're wrong, and when their business takes a hit due to poor quality writing, they either learn or go out of business.