We are genuine
My name is Olly Payne and I am the editor at
webooks. I want to reassure everybody that we are in fact 100% legitimate. Webooks is not a scam in any way shape or form. It is in fact a joint venture between
How To Books, the Oxford based publisher who publish the titles you'll find on the webooks sites in hard copy (you can buy them in Foyles, Amazon, Waterstones etc.) and ourselves On The Move Ltd, a London based internet company, established 9 years ago, which is quite a long time in the internet world.
We genuinely believe that webooks is a good thing. If you look at the site in its current form, you can read a large number of books (more than 150 and with more to come) published by How To, for free. These are books that you can buy in the shops and at webooks, you can read them for free online with no registration and no hidden cost. How that amounts to a scam I'm not clear. Have you all actually looked at the site(s)?
The articles are designed to make the site more 'alive'. The books that we publish are static - the content does not change. What we wanted to do was to get people writing their own thoughts / advice / information / ideas around the subject of the books that we publish to make it more dynamic and interesting to the wider community. This gives you as writers the opportunity to write for a legitimate and reputable site and to get paid for doing so and the wider internet community the opportunity to read what you've written.
To answer a question below, everything that is sent in to us and is used will be credited to the writer and even if that writer dropped out before the trial was over, they will be allowed their own bio page where they can link to other things they've done online, write something about themselves, put up a photo etc.
There are a number of reasons we have insisted upon a trial period.
Firstly we need control over what we are sent. Often the first articles people send don't fit with what we are trying to do and need some heavy editing if we are to use them.
Secondly and probably most importantly we have budget constraints. Yes I would like to be able to pay out more money to everybody, but we can't afford to at this stage. It’s that simple.
Thirdly, we want to weed people out who are not committed to writing for us. A lot of people respond to adverts and then drop out. Those aren’t people we’re looking to work with.
Lastly - yes - there is some truth in what you've said that it is a good way to build content for the initial launch at a lower cost. But remember - there are a lot of sites out there that do not pay at all. A couple of trial articles are not, I feel, an unreasonable request given the circumstances. There are a lot of writers who have responded to the adverts we ran that have completed the trial stage and now have formal contracts with us.
I hope I’ve helped some way to explain a bit about us and reassure you we’re not a scam. If you have any further questions, please email me and although I’m a bit inundated at the moment with emails, I will respond to you personally when I can. I can be reached at
[email protected]
Olly Payne
