When an editor does something wrong, they should apologize, make it right, and go on with their business. Yet, some editors aren’t that smart. They let their own pride and greed destroy their reputation. Here’s an example.
We contacted 982Press.com several months ago after receiving complaints that they were charging authors a reading fee for submissions to their syndicate service. You see, syndicates are supposed to PAY their writers, not charge them reading fees. When we contacted them, they responded quickly and stopped charging the reading fee. We considered the matter closed and dropped the investigation.
A few months later, we received another complaint about them. I surfed to their website and found they were once again charging a fee…this time, it was an annual one. We contacted them again. They did not stop charging the fee, so we posted a warning about them online. We subsequently received additional complaints about the firm, contacted 982Press (which had stopped responding to our inquiries) and posted those complaints online.
Later in the week, after the second warning letter was sent, an “anonymous” person started posting negative comments about WritersWeekly’s Warnings investigations online. The (not too smart) poster also submitted the threatening post to us directly through our website. We track IP addresses when posts are submitted. The IP address was from the same company as the IP address of our contact at that time at 982Press. Coincidence?
982Press has continued to post solicitations for writers online, but in many cases not list the name of their firm. Why are they hiding? They have also continued to charge writers a fee. This, of course, has brought them under fire in the online forums. Last week, WritersWeekly posted information about 982Press to one of these forums.
982Press’s response to the post was to openly accuse WritersWeekly of libel and slander (meaning they need to brush up on their vocabulary!). The humorous part was that their post was filled with libel, which was easy for us to prove. We simply posted email correspondence to the forum. Through their threatening and unprofessional posts, 982Press has managed to do more harm to their reputation than any writer could do while posting complaints about them online. One writer, a long-time reader of WritersWeekly.com, did an excellent job of pointing this out here: http://pub43.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm11.showMessage?topicID=139.topic
WritersWeekly.com takes great pride in fighting for writers’ rights and for enacting changes to industry standards that benefit writers, which are typically hard-working folks like you and me who are simply trying to feed their families doing what they love. Some editors should try to remember what we all learned in Kindergarten. If you do something wrong, apologize and make it right.
If you don’t treat people with kindness and respect, nobody will want to play with you.
You can review the complaints submitted about 982Press online at:
http://www.writersweekly.com/warnings/982press.html
http://pub43.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm11.showMessage?topicID=132.topic
http://pub43.ezboard.com/fabsolutewritefrm11.showMessage?topicID=139.topic
http://www.freelancewriting.com/yabbprivate/yabb/YaBB.cgi?action=recent