The last time I argued with my muse, it landed me in a writing slump for months. I hid it well, bringing resurrected pieces to my weekly writing group, and sharing market news and contest announcements with fellow writers in lieu of new stories, articles or essays.
This is the time of year when everybody wants to visit us…because of the miraculous Fall show we get in Maine, of course. This weekend, Richard’s mom, step-dad, aunt and uncle will be arriving for a 5-day stay. The next week, his childhood friend, Scott, will be visiting with his girlfriend. And, on Halloween weekend, my mom is coming. We are so excited!
Two weeks ago, we pondered if AllVoices.com, which runs lots of ads for writers, is just another pay-per-click meat market.
Last week, the CEO and founder of AllVoices.com refused to reveal how much her contributors are (or aren’t) making.
This week, we’re going to wrap this up by letting readers weigh in on these types of services…including one who is a previous AllVoices.com contributor…
This week’s letters appear in: The Latest from Angela Hoy
From the time I was a kid, all I wanted was to be a published author. I think I was strongly influenced by the Peanuts comic strip that had a recurring storyline where Snoopy was writing his “it was a dark and stormy night” book.
I achieved my goal of becoming an author in 2001, but I didn’t reach the level of success I had planned until I made one simple change in mindset a few years later.
I’ve had lots of stuff published in the consumer zines and in professional journals. I’d like to take some of these and put them on my MySpace thingie, hoping perhaps it’ll generate more business.
My concern is that the articles and manuscripts essentially now belong to others and I was wondering if, even though I was the author and they would be going onto a social networking site, if plagiarism issues can result. If so, what if I added to each article or manuscript “This article/manuscript appeared in such-and-such magazine (or journal) on (whatever date)”? Would that cover me? Or, should I just drop the whole idea altogether?
Sometimes we writers, especially fiction writers, make our job harder than it needs to be. We would force feed our readers the literary equivalent of chicken Cordon Bleu when they would be happier
A few weeks ago, my laptop got sat on (don’t ask). A few days later, I noticed a small crack in the screen. The local, family-owned computer place (which we love, by the way) ordered a new screen for me. We planned for my laptop to get the new screen on Friday and, instead of moving files from one computer to another (which can take hours), we would take the day off and attend the Common Ground Fair. It’s very stressful for me to be offline for a day. I have a hard enough time delegating…but getting cut off completely from the business? I feel so detached!
Last week, we pondered if AllVoices.com, which runs lots of ads for writers, is just another pay-per-click meat market. I issued a call for AllVoices.com contributors to contact me, and to share their experiences. This is what I wrote at the end of the article:
So, this week I’d be interested in knowing how many writers Allvoices.com has and the total amount they’ve paid out to their “Citizen Journalists” since they launched. I’d also be curious how much the highest earners have earned versus the lowest earners. And, I’d be curious to know what percentage of their contributors have earned less than, say, $100 in the past year. I’m also wondering how long it takes to write a typical article for them and what the pay breaks down to by hour – for the average “Citizen Journalist”, of course. I bet they wouldn’t give me any of this info.
Surprisingly, not one AllVoices.com contributor contacted me with answers to my questions. However, I did get an email from the founder of AllVoices.com…
Hey Ang,
I followed a few links from this week’s newsletter and was just re-reading your Examiner article and the comments. I came across this:
Clark: $20 for 32 articles = $1.60 per article
The math is worse than it looks unless the $ sign was supposed to be on the 32!
And as bad as we thought it was for Clark – $20 for 32 articles = $0.62 each.
Oh WELL! Glad I’m not an Examiner (and yes, I was offered to be… no way!)
Marie
