Outgoing SFWA Vice-President, Howard Hendrix has declined to run for his position again. He's posted his reasons for this here. The nugget that is causing all the controversy, is this:
I'm also opposed to the increasing presence in our organization of webscabs, who post their creations on the net for free. A scab is someone who works for less than union wages or on non-union terms; more broadly, a scab is someone who feathers his own nest and advances his own career by undercutting the efforts of his fellow workers to gain better pay and working conditions for all. Webscabs claim they're just posting their books for free in an attempt to market and publicize them, but to my mind they're undercutting those of us who aren't giving it away for free and are trying to get publishers to pay a better wage for our hard work.
Jo Walton commented on Mr. Hendrix's rant here. Before you finish here, read the other comments as well. I am participating in this. I will post a previously published article here on April 23. Don't know which one yet, but it'll be here. And I do have previously published work already up at a couple of locations - one is my website - Bev. Cooke. ca and the other is up at Author's Den. Click on "short stories" on the left to get to it.
First - this is the extension of an argument that's been going on in writers circles for as long as there have been publishers who have underpaid their writers. Basically the argument in the print world has been: "Don't work for free". Contributor's copies, pride of publication, free T-shirts, unending gratitude of the publishers does not constitute payment. Payment consists of cold hard cash, delivered in the form of bills, cheques or money orders. For print, you betcha - I agree, with certain exceptions. I have my freebies I happily write for and probably always will. I choose to do it because I believe in what they are doing and want to help out. But in the main, I don't work for free.
However, for electronic media, I don't agree with him. First, we are not in a union situation and never can be. Even if every writer in the world was somehow convinced, coerced or forced to join a writer's union, there's no way we can enforce a "don't work for free" policy - the way the publishing industry functions, it's almost a given that part of the dues you pay as a writer are to write for free for a while. It sucks, but that's the way it is. We are just too scattered and diffused throughout the world for that to be able to work. And, face it. We are peasants, like it or not - ink splattered or pixel stained, we sell our work for what the market will pay or we starve.
Second, this is not a product we're selling here in the same way that a widget is a product. If I withhold my widgets from the market, then the buyer (the publisher) will simply go to Joe Blow to get widgets and then sell them to the consumer (the reader). But if I withhold my story from the market, a reader won't go to the publisher and buy Joe Blow's story instead of mine. My writing isn't a widget that is exactly like Joe Blow's widgets. The reader wants my work, or Joe's work, and our work isn't interchangeable. What I write is unique, and it can't be duplicated, and my reader wants what I write, not what Joe Blow writes. Third, the marketing potential of the web is just beginning to be understood. There are writers out there who've published on the web, made money at it, been picked up by the print presses and made even more money off it. If the print publishers think that it's worth paying good money for even when it's on the web, that kind of undercuts Mr. Hendrix's argument. And, given the fact that our work is unique, how does my posting previously published work on the net stop Joe Blow from being paid the going rate for his work? It doesn't. And finally, the kicker. While there are professional writers out there whose work is of good, great or excellent quality, I suspect the vast majority of the web posted work is substandard, for the same reason that POD books tend, in the main, to be substandard - the writers don't realize they aren't publishable, and can't wait to improve to a publishable standard. So if most of the work out there is bad, it might do one of two things - lower the slush piles as newbie writers post instead of subbing, and actually increase the benefits for those of us who do publish for money - because if the editors see what's out there, then read our stuff, our stuff looks even better than it did before they read the unpublishable posted work on the web. For other rebuttals to his argument, see the rest of the comments on the above link.
So, show up here April 23 and you'll have a piece of my previously published work to view. Why previously published? Cause I'm not stupid. Published on the web is still published, and if I try to sell a new piece after having it up here, I'll get reprint pay for it, not first rights pay. Others can post new work - they obviously know how to make money off it, but I don't, yet. So previously published it is.
Oh, and final note - techno-peasant is a word that is being redefined in this context - it's true definition is: people who are unskilled at using computers and who prefer to remain unskilled. I'm not sure that applies to all writers, especially in this situation. But it applies in the sense that we writers, are by and large, peasants who have to accept what we're offered or starve.
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