Hey guys,

It looks like “The Cons of Writing.com” post I wrote last week sparked some controversy with a reader. Originally, they commented on the post, but some of their concerns meritted further discussion, so I’ve posted it here.

Here is the comment in its entirety with my own comments in return.

>Writing.com only works because writers post their work >online to get critiqued,

That’s a nice statement, but blatantly untrue. Why? Because not everyone that posts there has any desire to get their work critiqued. I’ll use myself as just one example. I have a lot of stuff online there, and quite a bit of it is public. I really couldn’t care less if anyone reads it or not. I’m using it as an online portfolio that I can refer people to for examples of my writing. There are far more people that do this than there are who are trolling for crits.

If you are doing this, you are creating content for a for-profit enterprise (Writing.com) for free. You are far better off driving traffic to your website or blog. How to you drive people to your Writing.com portfolio? By inviting critiques, of course.

I’d debate your last statement. The site is geared for critiques (every story has a review tag on it, and readers are often rewarded for their reviews with the site’s cash equivalent). If you want exposure, you’re way better off posting your port on your own site.

>If you post your work at Writing.com, many editors won’t >buy it. This is because when you publish your work at >Writing.com, you have to grant them non-exclusive rights >to publish your work (or they wouldn’t be able to display >it).

This is true but it stops short of making the real point. Anything you post on a public forum any where online CAN (and is by some) taken as ‘first publication’. That includes posts to a forum on SFReader, posts in a blog (such as this one) and everywhere else.

Now we get to the blanket statement ‘publishers won’t buy it’. While this is true of some, it is not true of other.

Sword Review, for example, requires you submit anything previously posted online as a resubmission. They’ll happily consider it then. Bewildering Stories could care less if you posted it any where else and doesn’t even ask if you did. Every publisher, be it magazine or book publisher, is different. Before posting something online, it’s a good idea to find out whether the publisher you’re interested in submitting stuff to will have a problem with that or not, but to make a blanket statement like the above accomplishes nothing other than scaring newbie writers into not posting anything at all.

You are talking about selling your “reprint rights”. The Sword Review, which you quote, has this to say about Reprints:

We do consider reprints, but we do not favor them, so they must be exceptional. Further, recent reprints (within the last year) are of little interest to us.

For the many student and new authors, it is important to keep in mind that stories and poems posted on blogs and discussion boards has been published.

Why would you shoot yourself in the foot like that? If reprints ARE accepted, then they pay at a far lower rate than first run stories. Bewildering Stories is a non paying market, so in effect you are “donating” your work to them, they aren’t purchasing it.

As for scaring newbie writers, I’d say many of them run afoul of the legal issue without knowing it (judging from the number of submission guidelines from places like the Sword Review that specifically mention it). You call it “scaring”. I call it “educating”.

>Another downside is that the site is only really effective >for the beginning writer. Why? Well, the site is full of bad >writing (Except, of course, for your writing [I heart my >readers]).

Everywhere is full of bad writing, including a lot of printed items in newspapers, magazines and even books. That’s got nothing to do with why the site is effective for anyone or not.

Again, another blanket statement which isn’t true at all. There are a lot of professional, published authors on writing.com who use it for a number of things, and who find it very useful. Just the amount of exposure from the large number of visitors is useful for advertising.

Again, and I can’t say this enough, you are better off driving readers to your own site. As for professional published authors, I would challenge you to produce one traditional published novel that appeared on Writing.com after it’s been traditionally published (ie. while it’s still on the shelves, not out of print). There are some professionally published authors on there, true, but everyone I’ve come across has removed the content (often at the request of their publisher) after it’s been picked up.

I think authors like John Scalzi have proven that building your own brand name is the way to go. Since Writing.com treats all authors the same and doesn’t even give you the flexibility of a MySpace page, I still contend Writing.com is not a good tool for self-promotion.

>Nothing that’s good enough to actually get published is >on Writing.com. Now there are exceptions, chiefly among >the writers that fudge on the legal issues as mentioned >above, or with those too afraid of rejection to sub >anything.

now we get into slander and liable. And another blanket statement that is blatantly untrue. Jordan can possibly be forgiven as I’m pretty sure he hasn’t taken the time to read every single piece on the site, but a number of my pieces which have been accepted for publication are on WDC, as are plenty of other people’s works. Still up there even after being published some where else.

Not every publisher requires that pieces online some where else be taken down if they accept them for publication.

It’s certainly not “slander” as I haven’t spoken anything to anyone. As for liable, well this is a blog and is, by definition, simply my opinion. It is impossible for one’s opinion to be considered “liable”. As for publication, I was referring to professional, paying publications (5c a word according to SFWA). Again, if you have examples, even of your own work, that fit this criteria, post a link in the comments.

I’ll stop now. It’s evident that Jordan is angry at WDC, that he feels he has cause to be and that’s fine. But to make blanket statements and stand on a soapbox shouting about things which are perhaps true in his experience, but not true in someone else’s, does everyone a disservice. The simple addition of ‘in my opinion’ or ‘as far as I have experienced’ to the blanket statements would go a long way toward fixing that.

Now this is where I start to take offense. I’m not sure you’re qualified to know what’s going on inside my head. Frequently, I don’t even have a clue. The simple addition of “in my opinion” that you are talking about is inherent in the fact that this is my blog, on my page, on my domain. If you read the “about this blog” link on your right, you’ll notice that nowhere do I claim to be an expert. In fact, quite the opposite.

That fact that you commented on my negative post and not on the positive betrays your own bias. By creating the two posts, I was trying to be as fair and even handed as possible. You have not done the same.