A Lesson Learned

Okay, I placed a story with a non-paying ezine. Cool. Nice of them and all that. So, here it is a few months later and I'm thinking "Reprint?" So, I search about and find another ezine that takes reprints, but they kind of want exclusive web rights. Okay, fine. I contact Ezine #1 and say "Can you take that story out of the archive?"

Then I wait, but no response. I emailed them again and finally got a sort of huffy note saying that they took the story down but somehow or other my decision has totally ruined that issue of the magazine while putting some photographer's photo off the ezine as well. I apologized for the inconvenience and suggested they simply just wipe out the story text and put in "Removed at Author's Request."

Now, I know this isn't rocket science. They don't have to completely break the link to the story. They just have to change the text. What is so damned hard about that? I could do that with any of the posts I've put on this blog.

Obviously, I'm a bit peeved by the ezine's inability to handle something which should be a perhaps not common, but at least a sometime occurrence.

I loved that ezine's format and dedication to making it a very nice venue. But, their assumption that nobody would ever request that their work be removed is simply naive on their part.

I think this whole internet publishing thing needs to get some standards set up so that authors and publishers will know how to handle simple things like this.

Well, I learned that ezines that don't pay you a penny for your work, somehow feel that they own it and not you, the author. They need to understand about copyrights and infringements on same. When I say "take it down" I ain't messin' around. The ezines need a procedure to handle it.