The Stupidity of Lashing Out

You feel an editor treated you roughly. A review of your novel angered you. A "competitor" gets some notice by a market that seems indifferent to your work. What do you do? If you're like novelist Alice Hoffman, you lash out publicly, in this case on Twitter. And if you do, unless you have a sizeable and unreasonably loyal following, you're burying yourself.

In Hoffman's case, she took particular offense at a Boston Globe reviewer's view of her latest book:

In a series of Twitter posts, Ms. Hoffman fired back with her own opinion. “Roberta Silman in the Boston Globe is a moron,” she wrote. “How do some people get to review books? And give the plot away.” Ms. Hoffman also lambasted The Globe and went so far as to post Ms. Silman’s phone number and email, inviting fans to “Tell her what u think of snarky critics.”

There was only a story in the New York Times because the subject was high enough profile. But it doesn't take such a strong media lens to inadvertently damage yourself. I've seen writers go on at length about idiot editors, unappreciative clients, uncooperative sources, and all manners of other things on various forums.

Guess what? Also on those forums are editors and people in a position to recommend you, or not, for work. This is about the worst type of PR you can create for yourself, so why do it? If something is bugging you, complain to a close colleague or two. But even then, remember that conversations can be repeated, often inaccurately, and emails can be passed on. Better to forge ahead on a new project, close a sail, send an invoice, or do something else productive.

Is Media That Delivers a Market That Isn't?

I often hear about freelance woes with various publications, and on rare occassions I do some investigation into them. That just happened today when Lynne Meredith Schreiber posted on a writers' board about a problem she was having with getting a payment from Estates West, which is published by Media That Delivers. She is not the only writer alleging problems with the company, and back in February WritersWeekly had a something about the company owing a writer $2000. Lynne has given me permission to use her name and mention the details. Here is an outline of the saga as she relates it:

1. Lynne wrote a "huge story" and submitted it on January 2. "[T]he editor loved it. They had said they paid on publication and the story was worth $975 - but the editor said she'd try to issue payment early."


2. In March she got a PDF of the story but no check. By April she began to email the editor "incessently" and was referred to the publisher, whom she quotes as saying, "It's a bad economy. A lot of our creditors are not paying us so we can't pay you just yet." She says that the publisher, Mike Dee, offered to send "less than half up front and then the rest when he could. He did not."


3. She had a lawyer contact the company, which sent a check for $100. The lawyer returned the check as inadequate and was told it was all the company could afford for now and that it wanted to set up a payment plan.

I wrote Mike Dee the following:

I write a reasonably well-read blog on the freelance business. I've been hearing that writers are being asked to wait very long periods for payment from your company, and so wanted to ask you about this before I put something on my blog.

I got a response today, as well, from Hayley Gudat, "Director of Estates West & Custom Publications Media That Deelivers, Inc." Here is the response:

Thanks for contacting us about your blog before making any comments about Media That Deelivers. While we cannot stop you from posting about us, we of course hope you will not, simply because we have always maintained excellent relationships with our freelancers, and in most cases have been using the same writers, photographers and stylists for years, which we believe is testiment to our reliability as a publisher of magazines. We have been in business over a decade and have probably the best reputation in our state, be it for our editorial content or the way we treat the people we work with.

In some situations, freelance payment can be late, but never, ever has an invoice gone unpaid. We try at all times to pay any freelancer on time, and in most cases we do, though of course there will be occurances of slight backlogs. We always communicate with our writers, should a payment be late, and from my experiences they appreciate the dialog and we have not had any problems to date. I hope this helps you. Please contact me if you have any other concerns or questions.

The related story and the response don't seem reconcilable to me, but perhaps there is something that I am not getting. At least what I'm missing is not a check, which is an unreasonable situation for any freelance writer to be in.

Warning: Natural Solutions Paying Slowly

If you write on alternative medicine and other non-conventional approaches to health, Natural Solutions (formerly Alternative Medicine Magazine) might seem a natural, but according to recent reports from freelancers, doing so could do some serious damage to your cash flow.

What brought the topic up was a flood of posts on the Freelance Success board from people who said that payment was taking upwards of five months. For example, one writer told me that she had written a piece in the summer and told to invoice on September 2007. The contract, which I've seen and reviewed, says that payment is supposed to come in 45 days. This writer was finally paid in early February. Even if we assume that the invoice arrived toward the middle of the month, that is still 4 1/2 months to be paid for a piece that was already accepted.

Another writer mentions having completed two pieces in November. One of the pieces, slated for the April issue, was a short for which the writer had heard no feedback. "I repeatedly attempted to get feedback or invoice info from my editor, and finally did on 4-Feb, when I was told to send my invoice," the writer says. The person has not been paid. However, the lack of feedback meant that acceptance was withheld, so payment was now not technically due until mid-March (it still hasn't arrived as of the time of writing). As there were no questions to the writer, the piece could have been accepted as was back in November, suggesting that a January payment would have been reasonable. Yet a third writer completed a "rush job" in November, and the piece ran in the March issue, but as of yet has not been paid. Even more disturbing was a writer who had pitched a story idea in November. Three months later, in February, she followed up. Apparently the magazine decided to use the pitch as is as a short piece, and the writer says she was never contacted about this. She immediately sent in an invoice but has yet to be paid.

I spoke with Natural Solutions editor in chief Linda Sparrowe, who came in about three years ago when the magazine, under the former name of Alternative Medicine, was going through a change in ownership and many writers were complaining about late payments. She admits that there have been "some absolutely slow payments," though she says that at least some writers have been paid on time. Sparrowe says that payments have appeared to get slower over the last few months, which coincides with a redesign, which apparently has caused the company to be "short of cash."

"Of course I know who gets paid and who doesn’t get paid," Sparrowe says, though she also stated that she was surprised that many writers were complaining. "It is a concern to me." She does stress that everyone has been paid, though obviously not under the terms of the contract. Sparrowe also says, "I try really hard to get [freelancers] paid," but that she is not in control of cash. Check runs are every two weeks, and she puts in a list of who she needs to pay, but the ultimate decision of who is paid and who isn't is up to company management.

I brought up the issue of the contract. I double-checked with publishing attorney Anthony Elia about my suspicion that when payment continues, on a wide basis, significantly beyond the contractual terms, then there may well be grounds of claims of fraud. Generally contract breaches do not rise to the level of fraud, but when there is a pattern of behavior that shows a company is making promises that it reasonably well knows it will not keep, that it is not doing business in good faith, and that could make the breach a fraudulent action. She expressed surprise and concern about that and said she would talk to management and alter the contract going forward to include a more realistic payment deadline. She said that without speaking to management, she could not say what that period should be, but that I could contact her next week for an update.

I've never done business with the magazine or editor, and don't know the inner workings. However, I will say that a significant increase in time to payment is a classic indication of financial trouble, particularly when the editor says, "We're paying out as much as we're taking in." In my opinion, that would mean there is no cash cushion to allow for smoother operations, and that puts business operations into a risky state. My suggestion would be first to not query the publication until a contract showed a realistic time scale for payment. That might be a longer time than you are willing to wait, but better to know it up front. Second, my own inclination in such a situation would be to hold off for a significant period of time - at least six months if not a year - and wait to see if payments started to come more quickly. Continued slow payment would suggest consistently poor cash flow, which could mean that the client was not financially stable and you could potentially find yourself lining up with many others, dealing with a bankruptcy court. Just ask the people still waiting well over a year for payment from the company that used to publish Pages.

Filing DMCA Complaints

If you've ever found some of your work posted on the Web without your permission, you know it can be an upsetting experience. Someone is taking and using your property without so much as a by-your-leave. Many writers will try to track down the site owner and either threaten legal action (impossible to do if you haven't registered copyright) or send an invoice (often ignored).

There is another choice: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. Under US law, if the ISP that hosts the Web site is in the US, then it must respond to a demand from a copyright holder to remove material that is posted without permission. I've added a file under Writer Resources with a summary of what you have to include in such a request and a short primer in how to find which ISP hosts a site.