retaining Reprint rights on nonpaid articles

[talkwrite]

I often write assigned and submitted articles for organizational newsletters geared toward my profession. I am also paid the standard feature rate by major national / international publications. I have worked hard to market my writing but I am happy to assist the free newsletters build content and expertise.
BUT. These volunteer editored publications do not protect my reprint rights and I am now finding my articles all over the web, some without my name and one even has it misspelled.
An organizational newsletter assigned me an article with a specific topic, deadline word count. In out initial discussions I told them I needed to retain reprint rights and explained why.
Now that they have the article the editor has responded that
Regarding your request to retain all reprint rights, I just wanted to be clear about what it is you want.

None of us is a lawyer here, but of course we do have certain legal obligations to the organization that we abide by. That said, we aim to be reasonable about things.



• If asked by another organization (usually other translation-related groups or translator groups such as ATA chapters), we in most cases grant permission to to them reprint an article in their own newsletters that they saw in Translorial. We see this as mutually beneficial: the author’s subject gets a wider audience by virtue of the other organization’s willingness to publish it, and NCTA (and our author!) gets some added recognition. (We always insist on an attribution line, along the lines of: “this article originally appeared in Translorial issue #xxx, and is reprinted with permission of NCTA.” The author’s byline is of course included.) Although we don’t have a stated policy about this (and we should!), it is (for now) implicit that when an author writes for us, he or she agrees to this. I should tell you that this doesn’t happen often. But it happens—and we’re happy when it does.

• We also want to have the right to republish an author’s article at some time in the future—for example, as a collection of stories about a particular subject. This would always be under the banner of some NCTA project.

• Thanks to the advent of the web, we—like virtually all organizations—have an online presence. All Translorial articles are posted to our website at translorial.com. Authors implicitly agree to this, as well. While this practice does indeed mean that your work would now be available to the world, so to speak, the fact remains—an unchangeable fact—that your article appeared first, in print, in Translorial. All (above-board) organizations would, or should, acknowledge this.

I want to have them require any reprints be subject to my approval.
Any advice from someone who has bridged the gap between professional writing and altruistic writing?
UPDATE 3/7/08: I have already responded defining rights and reprint rights and attaching the following link. http://www.asja.org/pubtips/wmfh01.php

[Stijn Hommes]

It is not the job of any publication to protect your rights. The one you contacted seems to want to do the right thing. What you need to do is educate the other ones.
Contact offending publications with a polite note about why what they did is wrong.
Unfortunately, a lot of people have no clue about copyright and think you can freely repost anything that is online.

Writing-world.com's most recent issue has a nice article about handling such 'favors'.

[Use Her Name]

Although we don’t have a stated policy about this (and we should!), it is (for now) implicit that when an author writes for us, he or she agrees to this. I should tell you that this doesn’t happen often. But it happens—and we’re happy when it does.


There is no policy unless you ask? That is strange. Don't ask, don't tell.

[talkwrite]

I was quoting the publication's response.
In all business interactions, I have found that for some business owners if professionalism costs too much in time they just decide to skip being professional.
And I can apply my red flag theory to publishers also. This is one such case where I saw a red flag in their lack of submission guidelines or policy. All remaining agreements between us were just as haphazard.

[KCH]

I''m going to say some things you probably know, but the beauty of the forum is its wider reach to members on earlier stages of the learning curve.

There hasn't been previous written agreement between you and the newletter organization. But that doesn't mean you don't have a contract. In the absence of a written document , a verbal contract exists. Anything not discussed presumably defaults to a common-sense, common-practice interpretation of rights and obligations of each party. Basically, a meeting of minds.

A contract is made up of 3 basic parts: offer, acceptance, consideration, which
means that each side must give the other something of value for the offer/acceptance to be valid. Since you're not getting paid in dollars, the consideration here has been "exposure" and "recognition." The publication's response to you indicates at least nominal recognition of the fact that consideration must exist.

However, "exposure" has no inherent value to anyone other than perverts in the park. Its value lies in potential to generate future income (more writing jobs.) Same with recognition. Other than for clinical narcissists, the only common-sense value of increased stature is its ability to generate higher paying consulting or writing gigs.

Has any of this generated any additional paid work for you that you otherwise not have gotten? Certainly, the original article in a respected journal has potential value as a clip, but its replication across the net, especially without a byline, offers you no additional benefit--and considerable downside. There's the matter of editorial control and reputation management. The websites on which your article appears say something about you.

A satirical piece of mine once found it's way (nice way of saying lifted, stolen) onto a website of a bunch of medical luddite whack-jobs who used it in a serious way to tout their own snake-oil, all for considerable commercial benefit. Total perversion of the intent and spirit of the original article.

That's not the kind of exposure any writer wants. Even if your byline is run on a respected site, how does it parlay to any benefit other than the nebulous "potential?" Do readers have a way of contacting you? Does it even offer more in the way of clips? No, it's the same article, so basically, not an additional credit.

The publication's response to your request contains reference to an 'implicit" agreement to have your stuff circulated without further approval or payment in perpetuity--all for the grand consideration of more exposure--and all the while acknowledging they've never really had a policy. Whatever argument can be made for the implicit nature of that original, one-sided implicit "agreement" is now immaterial. With your request, and their response in writing, it is no longer implicit, it's stated. So now both of you have to come to a decision. I know what mine would be.

It is neither common-sense nor common practice to provide a product or expert service for free, forever, to all comers--friends, strangers, and even foes. Only in the art and business of writing is such a concept ever seriously suggested--and almost always by the non-paying publication. Even the ladies in the hairnets at the supermarket with their tidbits on a toothpick know when to cut things off.

Bottom line, you own the copyright. They either agree to your conditions, or you agree to theirs. And, right now, all the benefit falls to them, so who stands to lose more if you politely decline to provide the world with free content? They'd be nuts not to agree to the very reasonable request that your gift to them not be given blanket distribution on the net. You'll be happy to grant approval on a case by case basis. If that's too much for them to concede, well, only you can decide if the value of the "exposure" is worth it.

[talkwrite]

Well said. And your message is good advice for those considering the benefit of adding clips to their files, too.
This issue is now 2 months of water under the bridge for me. But I know of several other similar cases involving professional association newsletters.
Another point is that when your rime and talent deserve compensation you need to feel that you haven't wasted it. As I was doing this to help educate colleagues I can just as easily offer a formulated continuing education class and use the article to market the course- as I have done in the past. Lately trade publications don't include any marketing references whatsoever.
Thank you for your response.

[KCH]

Talkwrite--

You're welcome. Glad you moved on and have settled on a practical solution for your own career...and especially glad that it

I didn't note the orginal post date and probably wouldn't have responded if I had. The content of your original post told me you probably had things well in hand, and just needed confirmation that you were on solid ground. But hopefully, the re-upping of the post will help others facing a similar situation, either on these boards or within professional circles. Nice talking to you.