Sunday 11 November 2012

Raw deals and other stuff

Okay, I wasn't sure if I was breaching some kind of copywrite if I copied the actual words on here so please bear with me while I try to explain this.
In a nutshell I checked out a website that is running a writing competition in conjunction with a publisher and when reading the T&C's discover that the winner gives over royaties, rights and basically any say, in any language, anywhere in the world. The tag line to the spiel is something along the lines of "Do you want to see your book in print?" and it just seems to me that the website are taking advantage of wannabe writers. If the story is good and presumably the winning one will be then they stand to make a lot of money from it and the only remuneration that the author would get is £500 and seeing their book in print. Seems like a bit of a raw dal if you ask me.
As for me I am still waiting to here back from the editor that I sent my article to but the last time it took a month for one of their colleauges to get back to me so I guess its early days yet. I also pitched another article to a different editor and I'm waiting to hear if they want to see it so fingers crossed. There is also another article that I want to write up this week but I want to iron out a couple of style issues first.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Any competition where the author has to give up their rights has a "bad smell", as far as I'm concerned. There are lots of scams out there too, so watch out for those. There are some web sites I use to check for known baddies, such as Writer Beware! and Preditors & Editors.

Colette McCormick said...

It wasn't a competition that I was thinking of entering I just came across it while reading a post on womag's blog. I agree with you Captain about the smell. I've foud Writer Beware very helpful in the past.