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Guest Blog Post: Content Mills–Just A Stepping Stone in Your Career

WriterBeware — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:30:00 +0000

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Today: the second of two guest posts on content mills. In this article originally published at The WM Freelance Writers Connection, writer Angela Atkinson takes a more positive view of content mills, arguing that they can be a good way for new writers to sharpen skills and build experience. The down side: you probably won't make much money. And if you're focused on establishing a career, you need to treat them as a stepping stone, rather than an end in themselves.

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by Angela Atkinson I always knew I wanted to be a writer, and though I studied journalism in college, circumstances in my life pushed me toward a corporate job early into adulthood. I wrote every day back then--but it was either some corporate communication or publication, or something just for myself that I always pretended I'd work on getting published, but never did. After leaving the corporate world, I knew that I wanted to focus on my writing career, and even though I understood how to get started the "old-fashioned" way (sending clips, queries, etc. via snail mail, mostly), I was kind of clueless when it came to the "new world" of online journalism. Since I was lucky enough to have my husband's income backing me up, I was free to take things as slowly as I wanted to--and since I had small kids at home, I definitely took baby steps along the way. My Experience With Content Mills I found Ezine Articles online and published a couple of old pieces with them (and later, some reprints.) They paid me nothing, but the byline felt great. I wanted more, so I started doing some research. That was about the time I ran into my first content mill, Associated Content. AC paid me next to nothing for the 50 or so articles I wrote for them, although I still, to this day, get a little bit of cash from them each month for page views on those articles. I even used AC as a format to promote a couple of clients through articles which linked to their sites. And, though I don't use AC on my resume or website, I can honestly tell you that AC helped me to start my writing career. You see, with the samples I generated working for AC, I was able to direct other, higher paying companies to view my work. I also sharpened my writing chops working for AC--got my flow going again after years of only writing corporate stuff and fiction on the side. After I worked for AC, I worked for a few other content mills here and there. I did a stint with Bright Hub as a contributing editor--and while payments were slightly higher than AC, it was just another babystep for me, building my writing portfolio a little more. When Bright Hub decided to ask its writers to do more work than I thought was fair for the amount they were paying, I dropped the account. Using my AC portfolio, I got accepted as a Demand Studios writer, and later a DS title editor. DS fuels several well-known websites, including Answerbag, eHow, Livestrong and several others. Demand pays more than most "content mills" and even offers health insurance to writers, editors and filmmakers who contract with them. Contractors are paid twice weekly. They have high editorial standards and their editors even fact check each article they produce. And, unlike some "content mills," Demand doesn't accept every writer who applies. That's probably why they don't consider themselves a content mill. Along the way, I wrote for a few other "content mill" type places, but those were the most notable. I still maintain a relationship with Demand Studios as a writer and title editor, but only part time. The benefit for me is that when I'm working with a client or on a big project, I can step back from DS at any time--but when I need a little extra income or am between projects, DS is there. There are no minimum requirements. And, there's always work available. I'm not the only one who feels this way--DS contracts with many professionals who agree wholeheartedly. So, ultimately, my take on content mills is this: if you're going to write for them, do it. Build up an online portfolio, and move on. Use content mills as a stepping stone, and don't get stuck there forever. Like me, you might even want to keep a decent one in your back pocket to fill in the gaps between accounts once you build your business. What's the alternative? You can write articles free and submit them to sites like Ezine Articles--or publish them on your own blog or website. Or, you can go the old fashioned route and submit blindly to various publications via snail mail. All of these are effective ways to get started, if you're willing to work hard and be persistent. The Lure of Community A lot of times, writers find themselves so entrenched in the online communities that often come along with content mills that they don't want to leave. AC and DS, for example, both have really active and helpful writing communities in which writers can discuss anything related to writing, including but not limited to the content mill itself. As writers become familiar with their colleagues in these communities, it can almost become addictive. They stick around and keep writing $5 and $10 articles just to maintain their status in the community. Here's my advice on that--make connections with people who seem to be on a similar path and take those relationships outside of the content mill community. Email or chat via messenger. Networking is an important component of a successful writing career, and there's nothing saying you can't find decent writers in content mill communities. Join other online writing communities too. Or, just check in once or twice a week for awhile as you work on growing your career. Don't let yourself be held back under any circumstances. Bottom Line Though I am well aware that some of my colleagues will disagree with me, I don't think content mills are all bad. I think they're an ideal place to get one's feet wet in the industry--a jumping off point. Sharpen your skills, get used to working with editors, that sort of thing. Beyond that, I think you're wasting your time and talent if you don't try to branch out and move forward. The bottom line is that most content mills don't promise you the world. They tell you, up front, that the work is "write for hire" and in most cases, you know up front what you'll make. If you make the choice to write under those terms, then you know what you're getting yourself into. Don't quit your day job, though--because you won't make much without working 16 nonstop hours a day (though a determined writer could easily make $300 to $500 a week writing for DS working about 6-8 hours a day, five days a week.) Still, if you can write on the side, or if you're lucky enough to have a working spouse who can afford to support you as you start your career, content mills present one option to help you get moving in the right direction. I don't believe that content mills are the only way to get started--just that they're one way. You have to choose the path that's right for you. And, if you've got the time, inclination and determination to start with content mills, it just might work for you too. Angela Atkinson is a freelance writer, editor and researcher. In addition to writing and editing for websites and corporate clients, she is the co-founder of the WM Network, which currently includes The WM Freelance Connection and The WM Parenting Connection. She's also the author of an award-winning inspirational blog called In Pursuit of Fulfillment. Angela is happily married and has three beautiful children.

Guest Blog Post: Content Mills–Why Aspiring Writers Should Avoid Them

WriterBeware — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:30:00 +0000

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

A content mill, if you aren't familiar with the term, is a website that aggregates huge numbers of articles on a constantly-updated basis, written by freelancers who are paid by page views or ad clicks rather than wages or fees. A few examples: Examiner, Suite101, eHow, Triond, Associated Content, Helium.

I've written on this blog about a number of content mills, focusing mainly on their Terms and Conditions and the implications for writers of the legal language contained therein. But are content mills worth writing for? Can you make money? Will they help you start or build a freelance writing career?

This week I'm hosting two guest posts that address these questions (both originally posted at The WM Freelance Writers Connection). The first is by journalist Carol Tice, who argues that content mills are not a good way for aspiring writers to establish a sustainable writing career.

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by Carol Tice

As many WM readers and readers of my Make a Living Writing Blog may already know, I am not a fan of content mills. I advise the writers I mentor to avoid them, and many of my mentees approach me with the specific goal of kicking their mill-writing habit.

I think there are many types of people for whom these sites are a superb option -- but in my opinion, those types don't include writers who're serious about building a good-paying, sustainable writing career. To clarify, I mean people who want to earn $50,000 a year and up from their writing. People who ultimately want to have unlimited earning capability from writing.

Let me explain why I'm down on content mills. In my experience, here are the career problems writers may experience who rely mostly on content-site assignments:

1. It does not teach you to report. Most of the stories on content sites are written with light Internet research or off the top of your head. They don't help you develop newsgathering abilities, which are a bedrock skill needed for most good-paying byline reporting and corporate writing work. You don't develop interviewing skills since you generally aren't conducting interviews. If you dream of earning $800-$1500 for a single article, mill writing is not helping you get there.

2. It does not teach you to research. A lot of good-paying writing assignments call for extensive research. I recently wrote a $650 article for a regional magazine about all the stimulus money our state got and how it was spent. I wrote a $1,500 article about where Seattle's trash goes and what happens to it. I'm doubtful that anyone cutting their teeth on mill stories will ever be able to write stories like these. Writing for mills does not teach you how to do investigative reporting, how to dig deep into documents, understand them, interpret them, or synthesize complex information. Copywriting as well can demand a decent amount of research and ability to dive in-depth into a topic.

3. It does not give you nurturing editor relationships. I would be nowhere today without two or three amazing editors I worked with earlier in my career. Editing at mills is usually cursory at best, and not the kind of close, one-on-one relationship you want where someone will really take you under their wing and take the time to show you exactly what you need to do to improve.

4. It does not teach you to market. Many mill writers have spoken in ecstatic terms of how much they love never having to market their writing. But marketing your writing is a key skill for those who want to earn big. Generally, you go out and find the really lucrative magazine connections and corporate clients yourself...they do not fall in your lap. Every week you write for mills is a week you don't learn this critical skill.

5. It does not enhance your reputation. While some mill writers have reported they were able to parlay their clips into better-paying assignments...I usually find when I nail them down that their definition of "better paying" and mine are very different. They often mean something like they've worked their way to $50 an article. Know that many editors at quality publications discard outright the queries of anyone who offers clips from mill sites, so this work can slam a lot of doors for you.

6. It's a model that may disappear. There's been much discussion online of the possibility that Google may soon find a way to screen out mill sites in its search results. If that happens, the entire article-aggregator industry, which sprung up to serve Google's ranking analytics, will disappear overnight. As it is, mill sites go out of business on a regular basis, taking any promised "lifetime" residuals they owe writers along with them.

If you write for mills, ask yourself how you would replace that income if this model goes away? What other client types could you find work with?

There's already signs that even if it survives, the content-site model is changing -- check out ProVoices, the new site that wants professionally reported articles for up to $250. The trend is toward rates going up, and more work being demanded of mill writers as these sites seek to differentiate themselves in the marketplace.

Carol Tice is a business journalist, copywriter, blogger and Web-content author. A contributor to the WM Freelance Writers Connection, she also blogs about small business for Entrepreneur magazine's Daily Dose, and about the business of freelance writing at her Make a Living Writing blog. In addition, she mentors writers on how to find better-paying markets and increase their earnings. She has three children ages 7, 8 and 17.

Guest Blog Post: The Scam of Private Label Rights Articles

WriterBeware — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:02:00 +0000

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Today, Smashwords founder Mark Coker guest blogs about "private label rights" services, which make it possible for anyone to "author" their own ebooks or to populate blogs by putting together chunks of content from the service's database. The result: scads of badly-formatted, poor-quality ebooks and blogs, which are often used by SEO scammers to confuse Google Search results.

I'd never heard of these services before, and I'll bet a lot of my readers haven't either--which is exactly why I've been wanting to host more guest blog posts. Many thanks to Mark for illuminating yet another shady corner of the Internet.

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Did you know for only $24.95 a month, you can subscribe to a service that gives you access to a database of thousands of articles you can turn into ebooks?

If you're too lazy or too clueless to write a real book, now you slap your name on another person's work and get rich in the process. Or, so parasitic "Private Label Rights" services are leading an ever-growing number of suckers to believe.

Back on January 14, while reviewing recently uploaded titles at Smashwords (my company), I ran across an ebook about childhood autism. My first thought was that this was an important topic for our customers. But on second glance, something about the book seemed fishy. The cover image was a cheesy stock photograph of a parent and a child. No title or author name on the cover image. It was poorly formatted. The author obviously hadn't bothered to read our formatting guidelines.

I suspected I had encountered this breed of vermin before. A quick cut and paste of a random string of text into Google gave me another clue. The exact text string appeared word-for-word in multiple other places on the Internet in articles and blog posts under the names of different authors and publications.

Did this author plagiarize the content? I suspected not. Another quick check and I confirmed the author learned about Smashwords from a Private Label Rights company called Micro Niche Finder.

I clicked to their web site, which cheerfully greeted me with the heading, "Imagine Having a Library of 29,768 Niche Market Articles at Your Fingertips!” The service offers a deviously ingenious software application they license for $24.95/month that allows any dunce with a mouse to point and click and assemble random chunks of content into a custom ebook in seconds. And it's legal.

I've seen these ebooks and so-called authors try to sneak their way in to Smashwords before. They usually arrive with 3-D covers and sloppy cut and paste formatting. Our Terms of Service strictly prohibits such drivel.

I zapped the offender's account like I would any unwelcome spam. Ordinarily, that would be the end of it and I'd move on to the next task. But the incident bugged me. I wondered if the company was deliberately sending its customers to Smashwords. I soon had my answer.

Their web site offers a video narrated by a man who identifies himself as James Jones. In the video, Mr. Jones demonstrates how simple it is to generate an ebook about dog food (yes, dog food). Mr. Jones then confidently explains to the viewer how they can make money on their dog food ebook by publishing it in the Amazon Kindle store and... no it can't be... Smashwords (!!). So not only are they deceiving gullible suckers with false information (neither Amazon nor Smashwords allow such content), they're also sending these suckers my way, only to have their visions of sugarplums turned to vinegar when we zap them.

I contacted Mr. Jones and informed him of his video's false claims, and asked him to immediately remove the video and stop telling his customers they can publish with Smashwords. Nearly two months later, I haven’t heard back. The same video is still up, making the same erroneous claims.

Micro Niche Finder isn’t the only operation promoting these shady private label rights articles. There are dozens of others. Their insipid content is popular with SEO scammers who use multi-level marketing schemes and affiliate programs to confuse Google’s search results by polluting the web with vapid ebooks, blogs and websites featuring this content.

If you’re a real author, this content makes it more difficult for your readers to find you on Google.

A quick search on Twitter for PLR, Private Label Rights and Private Label Ebooks yields a frenzy of activity.

While it’s fair to criticize these companies and their affiliates for pushing such trash, the people who utilize these services to manufacture and market their ebooks deserve ample blame as well.

The real victims of these services are ebook customers who accidentally purchase this content, and real authors who must compete against them for search engine visibility.

Mark Coker is the founder of Smashwords, an ebook publisher and distributor of over 8,000 original ebooks. This updated post first appeared at the Smashwords blog. Mark also blogs for the Huffington Post. Follow him on Twitter at @markcoker

Supreme Court Reinstates Major Freelancer Copyright Settlement

WriterBeware — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:15:00 +0000

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Today, by unanimous decision, the US Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling that tossed out a settlement reached in a landmark case involving electronic rights and copyright.

In 1999, the National Writers' Union filed suit against the New York Times and LexisNexis, among others, alleging copyright infringement due to the companies' re-use of printed articles and photographs in electronic databases (New York Times Co. v Tasini et al). The Times and other publishers argued that the right of reproduction and distribution included in collective copyrights gave them the right to digitize content without permission or payment to the authors. The NWU argued that electronic rights were separate and distinct, and that, since their contracts had not included a grant of e-rights, the Times and other publishers had violated their copyrights.

In a 2001 decision, the Supreme Court sided with the NWU. In 2005, the parties (which now included nearly 40 publishers and consolidated several similar suits) reached an $18 million settlement that provided for compensation to the plaintiffs, in exchange for which the plaintiffs agreed to waive any future claims of infringement for works already in the databases. For the purposes of payment, plaintiffs were separated into three groups: Groups A and B, where individual copyrights had been registered (either timely or post-infringement), and Group C--by far the largest--where copyrights had not been registered.

A District Court upheld the settlement. However, ten freelancers appealed the decision to the Second Circuit, on the grounds that compensation for Group C (which was potentially much less than for Groups A and B) was unfair. Ultimately, the settlement was overturned--though not on the basis of the objectors' arguments. Instead, the Second Circuit ruled that, since US copyright law makes copyright registration a pre-requisite to filing infringement actions, federal courts don't have jurisdictional authority over claims involving unregistered copyrights. So the settlement should never have been approved in the first place.

Not wanting to return to the drawing board, the publishers took the case back to the Supreme Court. Today, the Supremes overturned the Second Circuit's decision, ruling that courts do indeed have authority in cases involving unregistered copyrights. According to Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, "[The] registration requirement is a precondition to filing a claim [of infringement] that does not restrict a federal court's subject-matter jurisdiction."

This is a significant ruling, it seems to me, not only because it allows a gigantic settlement (one of the first ever to address e-rights questions, pre-figuring some of the issues involved in the Google Book Settlement) to go forward, but because of the possible implications for authors and publishers. Although Justice Thomas declined "to address whether [the] registration requirement is a mandatory precondition...that...district courts may or should enforce...by dismissing copyright infringement claims involving unregistered works," it seems possible that there will be implications for the registration provision of copyright law.

US writers are more or less conditioned to believe that copyright registration is universal--but in fact most countries have no official registration process. The Berne Convention, the international source for copyright law, ensures full copyright protection without without requiring any formalities (such as registration) as a prerequisite for bringing an infringement suit. Countries may impose formalities if they wish, but most choose not to.

There's a detailed account of the legal historyof the case at the SCOTUS blog.

Another Vanity Award: The 2010 Creative Spirit Awards

WriterBeware — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:35:00 +0000

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Is it irony or coincidence that, only a few days after blogging about vanity awards, I should be spammed by one? Perhaps you have, too. It's an outfit calling itself the 2010 Creative Spirit Awards.

The 2010 Creative Spirit Awards™ Celebrating the Creative Spirit in Books, Film, and Music!

The March 1st Early Bird Deadline is approaching fast! If you haven’t already submitted, we invite you to submit today!

It's every Author, Musician and Filmmaker’s desire to generate notoriety, credibility and buzz about their work, and winning this significant award is the vehicle in which to make your creation stand out as the exemplary work it is. To further help winners achieve this recognition, following the close of the competition, press releases with information on the Creative Spirit Award™ Winners will be sent to key book sellers, film and music distributors, and other sales and marketing entities. Being a Creative Spirit Award™ winner will inspire confidence in buyers, distributors, readers and prospective clients that Creative Spirit Award™ winning productions are of high quality and worthy of their attention. The Creative Spirit Awards™ celebrate the individual artist as well as their work through a panel of judges who have excelled in their respective fields. As such, awards are only presented to those filmmakers, musicians and authors who create fresh, standout, and exemplary creations in their field. Each work is judged solely on its own merits and not in competition with other submissions. The Creative Spirit Awards™ honors its winners with Platinum, Gold, or Silver Awards.

Googling "Creative Spirit Awards" reveals that many blogs and websites have posted this announcement, some with approving commentary. But a visit to the Creative Spirit website turns up a number of red flags. The award, which is in its "inaugural year", offers dozens of categories in which film makers, musicians, and writers can enter (often a signal that an awards program is a moneymaking scheme).You can submit your work with the click of a mouse--in fact, that's the only way to find out how much the entry fee is ($50--high fees can also signal a moneymaking venture)--but you must send payment first, and only once your payment has been logged and confirmed will you receive instructions on submitting your materials. Now, I'm not suggesting that this is a ploy to take your money and run--but speaking for myself, I'd be a bit reluctant to pay for entry without actually being able to enter. Creative Spirit promises that "[o]nly industry professionals will make up the judging panels in all three competition categories creating a total and unique peer-based judging system." Those industry professionals aren't named, however, and that's a problem. The prestige of an award or competition has a lot to do with the prestige of the sponsoring organization (more about that later), but also with the credentials of the judges. If you don't know who the judges are, you have no way of knowing whether they're as qualified as the award sponsor claims--or even if there are judges. And the people you will want to impress if you win won't know either--so they may not be very impressed. Also, you don't actually win anything. Competition winners are eligible to receive a trophy (still being designed, so sorry, no photo), but oh dear--receipt isn't automatic. If you want one of these "exquisite statues" (the Awards page says they're created by "the same skilled artisans who create the Golden Globe Awards"), you must order it. Also from the Awards page: "After judging is completed, winners will be alerted...and instructions on how to order your statue(s) and other merchandise will be included." I don't know about you, but if I won an award (and hey--I have), I'd be just a tad surprised to discover that I had to send away for it. Granted, there's no explicit mention of money here, but it's a fair bet that if winners want a trophy, they'll have to buy one. And if the trophies are moneymakers for the awards sponsor, that's a powerful incentive to identify a lot of winners (which would explain why the email solicitation promises that "[e]ach work is judged solely on its own merits and not in competition with other submissions"), which in turn is a strong indication that these are not, in fact, the rigorous awards they claim to be. The opportunity to spend money doesn't end with trophies. Platinum and Gold winners (but not Bronze winners) can participate in Creative Spirit's Ad-Share program.

Available only to Platinum and Gold winners, each artist will be able to advertise their award-winning project in specially designed full page, full color Creative Spirit Awards™ advertisements in some of the top industry magazines. For a nominal fee per month, the image of your book, CD, or DVD cover will be featured as a Platinum or Gold Winner along with four lines of text below your image which will be comprised of 1) the title of your work, 2) author, musician or band name, or producer and/or director name, 3) the publishing company, production company or studio name, and 4) the work’s website address. There is no minimum or maximum monthly enrolment meaning you can advertise your award-winning work for one or twelve months.

This is very similar to the advertising that some self-publishing companies offer as part of their a la carte marketing services (here's an example). The costs can be high--and there's little evidence that such ads are effective. So let's recap. A brand-new award with no track record, no named judges, an entry fee that must be paid before you can actually enter, trophies you probably have to buy, and probable solicitations to buy other things as well. Sure sounds like a vanity award to me. According to Creative Spirit's About Us page, "[t]he competition was created by award-winning industry professionals, and not by a corporation." Its domain is registered to Dav Kaufman, self-published novelist and writer/director/producer of two indie films. Casting no aspersions on Mr. Kaufman's achievements, that's not really the kind of organizational sponsorship that lends prestige to an award. All in all, it's hard not to conclude that the main purpose of these awards is to make money for Mr. Kaufman. Caveat creator.

Beware of Fake Awards

WriterBeware — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:07:00 +0000

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Here's a story that, for sheer weight of irony, I wish like anything I'd been the one to break. But author and publisher Michael N. Marcus beat me to it, in a recent post on his Book Making blog. Everyone loves an award, right? Awards acknowledge excellence and achievement, raise the profile of the awardee, and garner the respect of peers (that's the theory, anyway). There are plenty of big prestigious awards whose names everyone recognizes, and lots of small, semi-prestigious awards that may be recognizable only within a particular niche or audience, and vast numbers of tiny, all-but-invisible awards that may make you feel good, but will provoke stares of incomprehension if you mention them to someone else. There are also--you guessed it--vanity awards, where the goal isn't to recognize excellence, but to entice entrants or winners to hand over cash to the awards sponsors. For instance, the awards given by the Small Business Commerce Association, which honor "businesses that we believe have achieved exceptional success in their local community." Sounds cool, right? Wrong. Like the infamous, and now-defunct, Poetry.com scheme, the aim of the SBCA awards is to identify thousands of "winners," and persuade them to buy stuff: in this case, plaques and trophies. In its own form of award, the BBB gives the SBCA a C-, based on the questions it has received about the business, and the company's failure to respond. You'd think it would be transparently obvious that an awards program that makes you buy your own trophy is not legit. And many people are wise to this kind of ploy--if you Google the SBCA, you'll find much angry, bemused, and amused discussion. But these schemes wouldn't exist if they didn't work at least some of the time. The same websearch turns up plenty of happy suckers. Including, as it happens, Outskirts Press--a self-publishing service/vanity publisher whose put-your-book-cover-on-a-stamp "promotional" service I made fun of a few months back. A sharp-eyed Michael Marcus--who is familiar with the SBCA, having been solicited for one of its fake awards himself--recently spotted a December press release from press-release-happy Outskirts, touting its receipt of a 2009 Best of Business Award from the SBCA. I couldn't put it better than Mr. Marcus does:

The number of news media that published the Outskirts press release is ONE. Oops! I'm sorry, folks, but the number should probably be ZERO. That alleged news medium that published the press release, called Self Publishing News, is actually a blog produced by (drum roll please) Outskirts Press. So, we have a vanity publisher, using its own vanity blog to publish a vanity press release bragging about a vanity trophy. I couldn't make this up.

No, indeed. Even funnier: It seems this isn't the first time Outskirts has been hornswoggled by a fake award. Last August, another press release announced Outskirts' receipt of the 2009 Best of Parker Award from the U.S. Commerce Association. The BBB has received questions about the U.S. Commerce Association similar to those they've been receiving about the SBCA, and it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that, like the endlessly proliferating Who's Who schemes, these very similar "awards" are in fact run by the same people. Check out, for instance, the nearly identical descriptions of the awards programs on the two organizations' websites. From the SBCA:

Each year, the SBCA identifies businesses that we believe have achieved exceptional success in their local community...Nominees are typically local businesses that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and community.

And from the USCA:

Each year, the USCA identifies companies that they believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and community.

The USCA is currently being sued by a Las Vegas company for trademark infringement. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...

Inspired Living Publishing: Another Vanity Anthology Scheme

WriterBeware — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:22:00 +0000

by Victoria Strauss

Here's an email solicitation currently doing the rounds, from Linda Joy, President and Founder of Aspire Media Inc., and Publisher and Editor of Aspire Magazine:

Will 2010 be YOUR year to embrace your wisdom, step forward and claim your dream of being a published author? If you answered YES then YOU may be one of the over 40 co-authors that I, along with my team of experts, will be working with this spring to bring your collective wisdom to the world!... Now, in a personal project of mine I will bring the same passion and commitment that I've brought to Aspire, to bring YOUR story, wisdom and insights as a co-author in my upcoming anthology: A Juicy, Joyful Life: Inspiration from Women who have Found the Sweetness in Every Day

The email includes a link, the clicking of which takes you to Inspired Living Publishing, publisher of the above-referenced anthology, first in the Inspired Living series. Here, "inspired, engaged entrepreneur[s]" who are "ready to move forward with the vision for your business and your desire to be a published author" can sign up for "updates on this exciting new opportunity." The update comes in the form of another email from Ms. Joy, with a link that whisks you to a different Inspired Living Publishing page--and here's where we get down to the nitty gritty.

"Imagine the words...Published Author *...printed underneath YOUR name on YOUR business card. *...being spoken as YOU are introduced as the key-note speaker in front of a full audience *...as you introduce yourself to a potential client. You’ve thought about it, envisioned it and NOW it’s time to ACT on it… It’s no coincidence that you’ve attracted this opportunity! You have been waiting for the divine opportunity to become a published author – one that is in alignment with your vision and that is with a well-respected brand in women’s inspirational publishing.

Let's leave aside for the moment the question of whether Ms. Joy's Aspire Media--which consists of an online magazine with a claimed circulation of 42,000, and a series of conference events in the New England area--is indeed a "well-respected brand in women's inspirational publishing," and concentrate on the "divine opportunity." There isn't actually much writing involved--all you need to produce is a 1,200-word story. Ms. Joy and her "team of experts" will then create the book, and provide "a variety of information products" to help you promote and sell it. It's a tried and true business model, Ms. Joy claims, that has been used before with great success--in fact, it's "the same business model that Mark Victor Hansen used to create the Chicken Soup for the Soul series." Well. Actually, not so much. Chicken Soup contributors receive $200 and 10 free books. For Inspired Living contributors, the money flows in the opposite direction. They can pay $5,497 for an "Ultimate Platform Building Package" (450 books, their name on the cover and a bio in the back, ebooks and CDs, plus a press release and assorted promotional items of dubious effectiveness) or $3,697 for a "Launch Your Brand Package" (300 books, a bio only, ebooks and CDs, and fewer promotional items than the more expensive package), or even $2,197 for an "Aspiring Author Package" (150 books, a bio, and nothing else). Writers who want to get in on this not-so-amazing deal must sign up for a 30-minute phone conference with Ms. Joy. Ostensibly, this is to narrow down the field of aspiring writers (writers must first fill out a fairly detailed questionnaire, including such questions as "What would it mean to you, both personally and professionally to be part of a best selling anthology?"), but mostly, I'm guessing, it's to sell potential contributors on the idea of paying several thousand dollars for a slot in a vanity anthology. I wonder if Ms. Joy is aware of another, nearly identical vanity anthology scheme that I did a writeup on a couple of years ago--the Wake Up...Live the Life You Love series. There, too, you can have your 1,200-word article included in an anthology, and pay from $2,700 to $5,500 for a few hundred books and some publicity materials. The come-ons for the Wake Up books tout them as "best-sellers," but this claim is not exactly supported by their Amazon sales rankings, which in most cases are 1 million and higher. Of course, with such books, the public is only an incidental consumer; the target audience is the books' authors. Whereas the Wake Up books are a long-running franchise, the Inspired Living series seems to be Ms. Joy's first venture into vanity anthologizing. But the bottom line is the same: The real "opportunity" in such schemes is not for the contributors, who must hustle their own books and who receive little meaningful support in doing so, but for the publisher, whose profit is assured before the anthology is ever printed.

MyFreeRead.com: Not Quite What It Appears

WriterBeware — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:08:00 +0000

Earlier this week, I received an email from a company called MyFreeRead.com, enticingly titled, "Authors: We Want Your e-Books & Articles!"

Dear Authors, We want your e-books -- and we'll pay you for them!! * e-Books * Newsletters * Excerpts from books * Self-Published Articles Now, there's a new idea... actually get paid for writing your e-books and articles! We're launching a brand new website, where visitors can download free e-books on everything from running a business to fixing a car... and WE PAY OUR AUTHORS US $0.20 every time an e-book is successfully downloaded!

Gee, 20 cents a download--who could resist? Me, for one. I might have written this off as just one more random spam--but then I began hearing from writers who'd gotten the very same email offer. The volume of questions began to suggest a sizeable spam campaign, which always gets my Writer Beware radar twitching. Visiting the MyFreeRead website, I learned that "MyFreeRead.com works with a leading cost-per-action ad network. Visitors simply take a fun online survey and look at a few ads, then they can download their favorite e-book ABSOLUTELY FREE! All offers are optional, and visitors never have to buy anything." (Per Wikipedia, cost-per-action "is an online advertising pricing model, where the advertiser pays for each specified action (a purchase, a form submission, and so on) linked to the advertisement.") I searched MyFreeRead's website, but nowhere is the "leading CPA ad network" named. So I emailed Lisa Davis, MyFreeRead's Coordinator, to ask. Within minutes, I received this response:

That's confidential. Why should it matter?

Well, I wrote back, because of concerns about malware, tracking cookies, and the like. There's a lot of that stuff about, and I wouldn't want to think my readers were targets. I wasn't entirely surprised when I didn't hear back. MyFreeRead appears still to be building its catalog, so there are currently no actual ebooks available for download. However, there's a sample download page, and if you click the "Download" button, a window pops up with a choice of surveys. Hovering my mouse over these surveys, I discovered that their source is CPAlead.com (warning: if you click that link you will be ambushed by audio), "a performance-based, online advertising network that develops technologies to promote incentive-based advertisements across niche websites." In other words, as a website owner offering products to the public, you can sign up to become a CPAlead "Publisher," which enables you to create a "gateway" that forces would-be consumers of your products to take a survey (examples: "Which Twilight Character Are You?" "Do You Shop at Target?" "Want a Free BMW?"), and then watch ads from CPAlead's advertiser clients, before they can download your product. You can see why this would be popular with website owners. Scroll down to the bottom of this blog post, and you'll see some examples of the kinds of payouts CPAlead provides for each completed survey--from a high of $4.50 (for "Win a Dell Laptop") to a low of 45 cents (for "Can You Spot the Frogs?"). This extremely long discussion thread at the Digital Point Forums contains testimonials from people who claim to have earned substantial income with CPAlead. Plus, per CPAlead's Terms and Conditions, you can set yourself up like a multi-level marketing scheme, recruiting "sub-publishers" to distribute CPAlead's offers and surveys, and, presumably, to give you a cut of their income. But how do consumers respond? Not well. Google CPAlead.com, and you'll find numerous conversations about how to block it. Worse, on the discussion boards at Web of Trust, a safe-surfing utility, there are complaints about phishing, malware, and adware associated with CPAlead's advertisers. It seems clear that MyFreeread.com is not an epublishing endeavor, but a way for Ms. Davis to make money via an advertising network. The 20 cents that authors are paid for downloads will, in many cases, barely make a dent in her profit. Authors, is worth 20 cents to you to annoy your readers in this way? Especially when you can self-publish to the Kindle, and set your own price?

DOJ Weighs in on Amended Google Book Settlement

WriterBeware — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:57:00 +0000

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Last September, the US Justice Department urged the courts to reject the Google Book Settlement, citing concerns about class action, copyright, and anti-trust laws. The DOJ's brief put the Settlement's approval process on hold, and forced the parties back to the negotiating table--resulting, in November, in the filing of an Amended Settlement. New deadlines were set for authors and for the filing of objections, and the Fairness Hearing (to determine if the Settlement will stand) was postponed to February 18, 2010. On Thursday, in a statement of interest filed with U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin in New York, the DOJ indicated that, while it continues to believe that the Settlement could provide a major public good, and acknowledges that the Amended Settlement Agreement includes "substantial" changes, it's still not satisfied. (The filing can be seen here.) The DOJ's strongly-stated concerns fall into the same areas it highlighted in its previous filing. - Copyright. Not to put too fine a point on it, the ASA violates current copyright law, by requiring rights holders to opt out rather than to opt in. "In its current form," the DOJ writes, "the ASA is inconsistent with the policy of the Copyright Act, as established by Congress, making the argument that the ASA furthers the purposes of the Act a difficult one. The ASA seeks to carve out an exception from the Act’s normal rules and presumptions, which require a rightsholder to affirmatively grant permission for the kinds of uses contemplated by the ASA. The parties claim that creating an opt-out exception would better serve the purposes of the Constitution’s Copyright Clause by promoting the progress of science and the useful arts. That, however, is a judgment better suited for legislative consideration, rather than one for courts to make in the context of approving a settlement." - Anti-trust law. The DOJ feels that the legal rights granted by the ASA "confer significant and possibly anticompetitive advantages on a single entity – Google. Under the ASA as proposed, Google would remain the only competitor in the digital marketplace with the rights to distribute and otherwise exploit a vast array of works in multiple formats. Google also would have the exclusive ability to exploit unclaimed works (including so-called 'orphan works') without risk of liability." In other words, although the ASA leaves Google competitors theoretically free to build a digital library by the same methods Google has used, it's highly unlikely that any entity would be willing to open itself to the infringement lawsuits that would surely follow. Google thus gains what amounts to a monopoly. "Nothing in the ASA," the DOJ writes, "addresses this concern." - Class action issues. "Although the United States believes the parties have approached this effort in good faith and the ASA is more circumscribed in its sweep than the original Proposed Settlement, the ASA suffers from the same core problem as the original agreement: it is an attempt to use the class action mechanism to implement forward-looking business arrangements that go far beyond the dispute before the Court in this litigation." In other words, while the original lawsuit was intended only to address Google's unauthorized scanning of in-copyright works, the ASA empowers Google to go far beyond simply scanning, enabling it also to become a dominant publisher and retailer of digital books. The DOJ is concerned that the class representatives don't have the right under existing laws to grant Google these sweeping rights. It also questions whether the class adequately represents absent members (foreign rightsholders and authors of orphan works), and whether class members received sufficient notice of the ASA and its terms. If the anti-trust concerns are resolved, and the Court decides that the class will stand, the DOJ recommends that a number of additional safeguards be incorporated into the ASA, including: - An "opt-in regime," or, if the Court approves an opt-out regime, a substantial waiting period before Google can exploit in-copyright works without permission from the rightsholders. - A delay in the acceptance of the ASA, to give the Book Rights Registry a chance to "set standards designed to further reduce the volume of unclaimed works after expiration of the waiting period"--i.e., to reduce the number of orphan works--and, to the same end, a "reasonably diligent search" for rightsholders of unclaimed works after the waiting period has expired. - Limiting Google's license to commercially exploit unclaimed works to a defined term, say five or ten years, with the option to renew. In conclusion, the DOJ reiterates the shortcomings of the ASA, but leaves the door open for continued negotiation: Despite the commendable efforts of the parties to improve upon the initial Proposed Settlement, many of the problems previously identified with respect to the original settlement remain in the ASA. The United States remains committed to working with the parties on the settlement’s scope and content. Will the parties return to the negotiating table, postponing the Fairness Hearing yet again? Stay tuned.

Are You a Published Author? Now You Can Tell the World!

WriterBeware — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:22:00 +0000

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Hey, Published Authors: Feeling artistically discouraged? Critically devalued? Culturally marginalized? Alternatively, are you just so full of self-admiration and self-confidence that you could absolutely pop?

A Customized Author Plaque from ZLS Publishing (“The Authorpreneurial Publisher”) might be just the thing.

That’s right, writers. You can get your book cover laminated onto a wooden plaque, along with “engraving options” such as “Bestselling Author – 5,000+ Books Sold + your name,” or “Author Extrordinnaire [sic] -100+ Books Sold + your name.” (Talk about faint praise!) The plaques come in a range of colors (white, black, blue, etc.) and a variety of sizes, from dainty to hefty.

Just imagine the many uses to which you could put your plaque! If you can’t, ZLS suggests:

1) To be used and shown during your book signings.
2) Picture of your plaque to be placed on your website.
3) To give as Holiday gifts to authors or family members you know.
4) To be used and shown during your speaking engagements.
5) Use as part of your overall book marketing package.

And the cost? A mere $125 for the dainty size, and a somewhat heftier $325 for the hefty size, plus a few dollars extra for engraving.

(ZLS also sells Customized Author Shopping Tote Bags, Customized Author Pencils, and Customized Book Signing Author Balloons. And if the demise of Poetry.com has you missing those offers to put your poem on a plaque, ZLS can help.)

So if the vanity shelf in your office with all your titles ranged upon it isn’t quite enough to sustain your self-confidence, or if your self-promotional arsenal is lacking that certain je ne sais quoi, or if you just want to say it loud, you’re a Published Author and you’re proud…you can now go plaque yourself.