Suite101.com no longer paying for content

[erik_kosberg]

http://www.writersweekly.com/warnings/suite101.html

Oh well, I had thought at one point about signing up there but never got around to it.

[pluckyduck]

Oh, I'd forgotten they did pay.

I signed up with them pretty early on, but the categories I wanted (can't remember what they were now), were already taken, and I would have had to drum up really bizarre ideas to find a spot.

Anyway, am I just old and cranky, or did you find the Writer's Weekly response just a wee bit pretentious?

Before the internet, before all of these Evil and Wicked Writing Sites that Writer's Weekly likes to rail about....before them, what kind of chance did somebody like me have at, relatively effortlessly, getting nearly 18,000 reads on her work?

What a load of garbage! Hey, if you can't afford to pay for your most valuable asset, it's time to close your doors and stop asking for freebies from people who need to feed their families. You can bet Suite 101 didn't also ask their management to work for free, nor their ISP, their doctors, their grocers and their mechanics. Nope, just the writers…

Okay, well I guess then Epinions should just close their doors too...you can't describe anything anyone gets as "pay". Fine. We'll shut down Suite101, we'll shut down Epinions, we'll shut down Mouthshut...let's shut them all down. The "real" writers can go back to their real contracts for their real pay and I'll just go off and do needlepoint.

I don't see anything wrong with the decisions Suite has made or the (rather well written) press release that was issued.

But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Andrea

[AuntieEmma[$]]

Originally posted by pluckyduck
Anyway, am I just old and cranky, or did you find the Writer's Weekly response just a wee bit pretentious?

Before the internet, before all of these Evil and Wicked Writing Sites that Writer's Weekly likes to rail about....before them, what kind of chance did somebody like me have at, relatively effortlessly, getting nearly 18,000 reads on her work?

I agree, but I think that's more because of the internet itself than the writing sites. You can get the same kind of readership -- I would say you could actually get a higher readership -- by posting to your own private web space than by posting to a writing site. The readership wouldn't be as personal as it would on a read-and-rate site, but the sheer numbers would be as high or higher -- and it's true, before the internet, there was no way you could have done that.

On the other hand, I think Writer's Weekly does have a point:

What a load of garbage! Hey, if you can't afford to pay for your most valuable asset, it's time to close your doors and stop asking for freebies from people who need to feed their families. You can bet Suite 101 didn't also ask their management to work for free, nor their ISP, their doctors, their grocers and their mechanics. Nope, just the writers…

Suite 101 said "This program will require the Community to pull together in the common cause of having a place to be published and have their voices heard and words read. If my passion were playing golf I likely would have to pay fees at a golf course." But they stop paying the writers because they know they can get away with it. Their doctors might also have a great passion for their work, but they wouldn't dare try and make their doctors pay them, instead of the other way around, just because the doctors loved their work.

I don't know. I'm confused.

I guess the most telling thing that Suite 101 said was this: "This lust for gains offered by Internet companies drove the investors to invest in companies that did not have revenue models as part of their going ahead business plans." It's kind of funny.

I guess what's most confusing is that the whole relationship has switched: They (and by they I mean writing sites generally) started off paying the writers -- meaning, that the writers were providing a service to the site -- and now they're coming up with golf course fee analogies -- meaning that the site is the one providing the service to the writers. That's really a huge flip-over in roles, and it's not easy to digest -- even if the original relationship was doomed, being based on a "Duh! You mean I have to go get some revenues?" fantasy business model.

I mean, if tomorrow your boss started charging you (instead of paying you) to come into work, and said it was in exchange for his giving you such a nice desk and chair and a telephone and a computer and heat and electricity to use all day long, it would be kind of a shock, even if your boss was a total idiot whose business was doomed from the start.

Even if you really liked the people you worked with and valued the sense of community there, even if you found your work meaningful and exciting and fulfilling, you would still be in total shock if your boss starting mumbling about golf course fees and said he had to start charging you to do your job because his primary responsibility was to his shareholders.

So I kind of admire Writers' Weekly for trying to work up righteous indignation. But I'm still confused. I think there's a flaw in my argument here, but I don't know what it is.

[conradd]

Originally posted by AuntieEmma
I mean, if tomorrow your boss started charging you (instead of paying you) to come into work, and said it was in exchange for his giving you such a nice desk and chair and a telephone and a computer and heat and electricity to use all day long, it would be kind of a shock, even if your boss was a total idiot whose business was doomed from the start.

Even if you really liked the people you worked with and valued the sense of community there, even if you found your work meaningful and exciting and fulfilling, you would still be in total shock if your boss starting mumbling about golf course fees and said he had to start charging you to do your job because his primary responsibility was to his shareholders.

So I kind of admire Writers' Weekly for trying to work up righteous indignation. But I'm still confused. I think there's a flaw in my argument here, but I don't know what it is.

If I controlled what services I performed and how often I performed them, and the service I provided brought in no revenue and ended up costing the company money with no forseeable profit in the future, I wouldn't blame my boss for charging me rent for the use of the facilities. I wouldn't like it either. If the boss controlled my activities and told me what to do and how to do it, I'd be out the door.

Writer's Weekly has long been a critic of the on-line writing sites. They've blurred the lines between professional and amateur writing, and since amateurs are willing to work for pennies, I can understand the concern. They have a point . . . but Suite 101 does too, I guess.

Deb
who mostly agrees with Auntie

[pluckyduck]

Even if you really liked the people you worked with and valued the sense of community there, even if you found your work meaningful and exciting and fulfilling, you would still be in total shock if your boss starting mumbling about golf course fees and said he had to start charging you to do your job because his primary responsibility was to his shareholders.

I didn't make the part where I found that laughable very clear. Yes, vanity presses make some money and people avail themselves of them..but if Suite is thinking they can get in some kind of vanity press online business, well, they are going to be really disappointed. As you so aptly point out, Auntie, there are plenty of ways to publish yourself online for cheap or free.

What irks me, I think, is the part where folks like whoever wrote this blurb for Writers Weekly completely disregard the business economics. The going rate for writers may be "X", but if a business can't generate 2X revenue from the product, they can't afford to pay X. Maybe they pay Y, or maybe they pay nothing, but supply and demand rules in our economy.

Okay, the people who set up Suite were (IMHO), pretty stupid/naive/greedy/caught up in the .com mania. I could never, ever figure out what their business plan would possibly be. (Our buddies at Epinions, out of all of the writing sites, have been the only ones who appeared to have a small plan about how they could make eventually.)

But how was anyone taken advantage of? I mean, other than the investors? How is anyone being taken advantage of now? Wherefore all of the indignation?

A whole bunch of people got a chance to write, and "publish", and get readers and make friends and get feedback....and, they got a little bit of change in their pockets for doing so. All of us here know the way writing over a period of time increases your confidence and your skill.

Themestream was a righteous indigination disaster. They were irresponsible with money they didn't have...the writer's. They knew they couldn't pay what they owed, yet they continued to let people rack up "money" and then shut their doors. Bright Idea (not a writing site, but in a similar realm) was a righteous indignation disaster, same deal. Weasels, deadbeats, etc.

But sites like Epinions or Suite that reduce or eliminate their payment with notice, and don't write bad checks, what crime have they committed? When they say "Ooops, we thought we might be able to make a little money on your stuff that we paid you for. Turns out we can't, but if you want to to still keep writing, go ahead, we just can't pay you for it anymore. The choice is yours." -- how is anyone wronged? Essentially, the blurb from Writers Weekly is saying "Don't set up a site where people can publish their work unless you can pay them a going writers rate."

Okay --- how does that apply to Easily Addictive? We're not paying anything.

The return argument could be, well, Easily Addictive doesn't grab any rights to anything, and these other people do...fair enough, but that's not the point Writers Weekly is making.

My only point is, if the people who write at Suite want to continue to do it for free, where's the harm? I wrote a weekly column for our community newspaper for free when I was in high school. Was I being taken advantage of? Assignments and pay scale (nothing ) were clearly negotiated in advance.

Wanna know what I think? I think that Writers Weekly's problem is not with the businesses, but with the people who write for those businesses --us. The world of real publishing where you really get paid for your work is demanding and intimidating and most people who would like to try to go that route are scared away. (I know I was/am.) Places like Suite bring the barriers down, for better and worse, and that puts a whole lot more bodies in the "writing" game....and out of that, a small percentage will gain enough confidence and experience to actually go for it, real writing gigs. Ups the competition, yes?

Andrea
who will not be in the small percentage

[kurt_messick]

I have far more respect for Epinions and Suite101 than for Themestream, who not only closed owing lots of people lots of money, but without sufficient notice for many (including me) to take things down. I had an award-winning short story there that is lost forever (the computer upon which is was composed lost all its data, and that was the only other copy )

I wish things happened a little differently at Epinions, and yes, I was very upset as most were at the edit/delete change without notice. But still, at least they're here and trying to make things go in some semblance of order.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

Well, what Themestream did was certainly a lot worse than what Epinions or Suite 101 did. But I can still be righteously indignant if someone robbed my house even though it could have been worse because they could have hit me over the head too.

I don't think the writing sites are exactly like vanity presses. Well, I guess writtenbyme is -- just look at the name! -- but I think the other sites really did think they were collecting material that would be of interest to the general public, outside of the membership.

As for Epinions in particular, I don't think they were really intending to be a writing site. But what people posted there was still of some value to Epinions, at least in the beginning -- not as writing, per se, but as unbiased consumer opinions. It reminds me of consumer focus groups. I've done a few of those, and they pay about 50 bucks for an hour, plus they feed you sandwiches and candy -- and they're fun to do. But if the focus group company called me up and said, gee we really appreciate your coming in before and we need you again, but our business is really bad this year, and you wouldn't believe the rent we have to pay to get this prime downtown office space, so we can't pay you this time, and in fact we need you to pay us $50 to help offset our exhorbitant rent and the salary of your focus group leader plus my salary to make all these phone calls, but we know that you had fun doing these before, so we hope to see you again soon, and by the way, this time it's your turn to bring the food -- bring enough for ten people. Well, I would be kind of outraged -- and that would have nothing to do with whether or not I thought I was a professional consumer opinion-giver, which is sort of an absurd concept anyway.

Andrea wrote: "All of us here know the way writing over a period of time increases your confidence and your skill." Well, one of us here (me!) feels that her writing has gone way downhill since she started writing at Epinions, and her confidence is at about the same dismal to neutral level as it always was. I guess that's neither here nor there, except that I don't think that confidence-building or skill-building is necessarily one of the services that Epinions provides to its contributors. It's sort of a by-product for some users (maybe many, but not all), and the writing sites shouldn't try to use it, in my opinion, as payment in lieu of cash.

Andrea: "Okay --- how does that apply to Easily Addictive? We're not paying anything." The difference is that you never did pay anything. No flipping of roles, no demoting people from contributors to customers. No promises made and broken.

Wanna know what I think? I think that Writers Weekly's problem is not with the businesses, but with the people who write for those businesses --us. The world of real publishing where you really get paid for your work is demanding and intimidating and most people who would like to try to go that route are scared away. (I know I was/am.) Places like Suite bring the barriers down, for better and worse, and that puts a whole lot more bodies in the "writing" game....and out of that, a small percentage will gain enough confidence and experience to actually go for it, real writing gigs. Ups the competition, yes?

I don't know how much it ups the competition. The number of people who are actually doing freelance writing on a regular basis is only a tiny percentage of the people who could be doing it, in terms of having the ability -- the skills involved are not particularly esoteric -- and I think that's always been the case and still is. And I don't think that it's mostly because people lack confidence. I think one thing that both Writers Weekly and the discussions here tend to overlook is how much of the freelance business is driven by personal contacts. A lot of the freelance magazine writers, for example, are people who used to work on magazine staffs. There are all sorts of barriers to entry for people without the contacts. They're not insurmountable, and once you're in, you're in, but it's a royal pain to deal with, and considering that being a freelance writer, unless you're way at the top of the food chain, can be a miserable way to make a living, a lot of people who could do it don't bother. Yeah, I agree confidence would help -- or, rather, lack of confidence is a total deal breaker -- but I think that patience and persistence are really the key qualities you need, and if anything, getting used to contributing to writing sites, with their instant gratification, could make someone less likely to make it as a freelancer, rather than more.

[quasar]

Just one note - I'm mostly going to stay out of this thread because I'm involved at Suite101 - but Suite101 is not asking anyone to pay to publish. They are just no longer getting paid.

Further they are looking into ways to generate income so writers can start making some money again in the future (but are rightly making no promises). The powers that be at Suite101 have apologized for the golf analogy which everyone agrees was a mistake.

Janice

[pluckyduck]

Originally posted by AuntieEmma


I don't know how much it ups the competition.

You know, that portion of my post was remarkably sloppy thinking/writing. I don't even agree with myself, not the way I wrote it at least. I don't believe that professional writers are sitting around sweating that more writers who will compete for jobs are being created by these online writing sites. Wonder why I implied that then?

The other thing that bothers me about what I posted is that I sound like I'm mad at a group of people who are trying to protect writers from getting ripped off in general. I love Writers Weekly's warnings. They serve two purposes - 1) giving writers a heads up as to who the deadbeats are and 2) giving a writer some little bit of leverage in getting a freelance bill paid - I would assume that the prospect of being posted as a freelance writing deadbeat has to be some deterent to people who order writing services and then don't pay.

Their warnings on those poetry contest scams alone are worth an award.

I don't take back my original point that I found the Writers Weekly blurb about Suite to be high handed and full of misplaced righteous indignation, but I'm going to consider my argument more carefully before I continue to make it.



Andrea
off for coffee

[AuntieEmma[$]]

Andrea, I started off this thread saying I was confused, and I guess I still am. The confusion is because I do admire Writers Weekly for drumming up the righteous indignation about Suite and other writing sites, but at the same time I also agree with you that the indignation does seem somehow misplaced or overdone for the situation.

When you look at what Suite wrote in their press release about how they never made any plans for revenues, it's so breathtakingly stupid (at least in retrospect) that it almost doesn't seem right to get mad at them -- it's one thing to get angry at someone who is ripping you off in a deliberate, sneaky, clever way and another to get angry at someone who is being destroyed by their own incompetence.

I think I can look at it in a more neutral way if I think about my experience using sites from the other end, from the shopping end. At the same time that the writing sites were paying (and Epinions and Themestream were paying a lot), you could get all sorts of things for free or almost free on the shopping sites -- they were literally giving away the store, and for the same reason that people were setting up sites like Suite 101 -- they thought it would all work out in the end because the internet was a magic money-making miracle machine, so what they did didn't have to make any sense.

Anyway, I did get a lot of stuff from these sites for free or for a dollar or two, and I had a lot of fun with it. But I never thought it was going to last. I just took advantage of the situation while it existed, and when it was over I went back, for the most part, to shopping at regular physical stores instead of on the internet, and I didn't resent the sites raising their prices back to a normal level.

It was a very uncomplicated interaction. The shopping sites said, "Pssst ... wanna buy a new hardcover book for 50 cents including shipping?" and I would say "Sure, why not." No problem. But what if they had added ego to the mix? What if they had said "We're going to sell you a new hardcover book for 50 cents because we know you're the sort of person who can really appreciate a good book. You're very special that way. Most people read junk, but you have an eye for quality. It's a very rare talent. And I bet the people in your life don't even realize what a talented reader you are. And that's so wrong! But we here at givingawaythestore.com understand talent and we will give you the rewards that you should have gotten a long time ago!"

So now getting that cheap book has become a big emotional thing, not just a way to save twenty bucks, but a validation of my entire existence. You could say I would be an idiot to fall for it, but that kind of thing can be very seductive. And when the shopping sites stopped letting me buy books for 50-cents, it could feel as if something very important was taken away from me. And if I had become at all financially dependent, as well as emotionally dependent, on the shopping sites -- if I had been reselling the books and making a living or part of a living off of that -- I could be in big trouble. And my first impulse would be to give into righteous anger, but then the next thing that would happen would be that I would think it was my own fault, that I should have seen through them in the first place, and I would just be confused.

And I do think that's the way a lot of the writing sites have worked.

And now I don't know if I'm more or less confused than I was when I started this messge. I do think that Writers Weekly is right in pointing out that once the sites decide to cut costs, they take it out of money paid to the writers just because the writers will put up with it. The writers are a vulnerable group in that sense, and the maddening thing is that it is a self-created vulnerability -- it's true that the site's web space provider won't continue to provide space, no matter how much fun the web space business may be, without getting paid. But there is something unreal about the whole Writers Weekly argument -- even if the writers did get mad enough to organize and insist on payment, there's no money there, or if there was, it's not going to last very long. The writing sites are on their last legs -- how much effort do people want to put into squeezing out the last few drops?

The thing is though, even in what we've been calling "real" writing and "real" publishing, writers do get taken advantage of -- a lot -- and pretty much in the same way, by publishers playing writers' egos. And if writers did get mad enough to do something about it, things might change. So even if fighting the writing sites seems like a waste of energy, it may be part of something that is a good fight ...

[adonna]

Originally posted by pluckyduck

Before the internet, before all of these Evil and Wicked Writing Sites that Writer's Weekly likes to rail about....before them, what kind of chance did somebody like me have at, relatively effortlessly, getting nearly 18,000 reads on her work?

Good points and discussion all around, but I had to comment on this one.

BI (before internet) I occasionally would write a few poems, illustrated, photocopy them off with a limited run (say 100 or 200 copies) and then post them on the wooden lamp posts around San Francisco. Called it performance art. About the same time, other people were doing stuff like chalking in pink body shapes on the sidewalk, or other performance arty stuff. Documentation of my installations actually made a few galleries/magazines dedicated to performance art.

I'd imagine they got at least 18,000 reads.

The point being what? That there's a way if there's a desire.

A point made aptly by the comment that you'd get more from a website posting.

About the arguments that are being offered that we bring down the going rate for writers, sorry to scoff, but it's never been great anyhow. The pennies a word being offered by mags today isn't much different than the pennies a word being offered ten years ago.

Still, I guess people need something to feel vehement about.

[pluckyduck]

BI (before internet) I occasionally would write a few poems, illustrated, photocopy them off with a limited run (say 100 or 200 copies) and then post them on the wooden lamp posts around San Francisco. Called it performance art. About the same time, other people were doing stuff like chalking in pink body shapes on the sidewalk, or other performance arty stuff. Documentation of my installations actually made a few galleries/magazines dedicated to performance art.

Surprisingly, I've never seen anything like that in South Jersey.

Okay, there are these homemade lamp post signs that say:

Lose 20 pounds in just two weeks! Call to find out how!

But I never knew they were performance art. :p

Andrea
the uncultured

[kurt_messick]

pluckduck (chicken?) wrote:
Surprisingly, I've never seen anything like that in South Jersey.

Okay, there are these homemade lamp post signs that say:

Lose 20 pounds in just two weeks! Call to find out how!

But I never knew they were performance art.

Will this kind of art figure into tonight's trivia?

[THMeeks]

Wanna know what I think? I think that Writers Weekly's problem is not with the businesses, but with the people who write for those businesses --us. The world of real publishing where you really get paid for your work is demanding and intimidating and most people who would like to try to go that route are scared away. (I know I was/am.) Places like Suite bring the barriers down, for better and worse, and that puts a whole lot more bodies in the "writing" game....

I know later on you said you weren't sure about this statement, but I had a healthy exchange of several e-mails with Angela at Writer's Weekly, and I can assure you that you are right on target -- Their problem is with us -- but it's not because they are concerned about competition. They feel those of us writing for free are driving down the going price of writing over all. She stands strong that writing for free cheapens the profession & she insists that there are plenty of other other paying markets out there that we should be searching out as opposed to giving it away.

Has anyone out there checked out the January issue of Writer's Digest? They've got 25 online markets and at least a couple of them publish reviews. Haven't checked 'em all out yet, but a few do look interesting. http://writersdigest.com/25online.html

And, as an interesting side note, my largest billing client right now (I freelance as a profession), has not paid me depsite my gentle reminders. Wonder if she knows I write for Epinions?


Terrisa