AP’s New Pay-Per-Quote and the Power of Asking “Permission”

If you work in the business world, you might have heard the phrase: “Ask forgiveness, don’t ask permission.” This phrase is supposed to reflect how you, as an employee, might take calculated risks in your day job to “get ahead” in your career.

As a writer, the reverse is often true, especially if you’re writing for the internet.

The Associated Press released a press release late last week dubbed, “Associated Press to build news registry to protect content.” Additionally, they’re also charging a sliding scale of $2.50 per word for a quote from one of their articles per this Mashable article entitled, “Quote 5 Words from the Associated Press? That’ll Be $12.50.”

In an earlier post, I talked about the Top Five Writer Misconceptions about Online Publishing. You might recall Misconception #2: My article will only be found on the site where I published it. The recent decision by the AP supports that misconception, by even charging for what I would call “fair and reputable” by offering commentary and then quoting and linking to the AP article’s original online source.

Most of the internet’s content is structured in that way. You have original content which is then spread via social media and blogging; people often take a critical or an editorial approach to the content and build around it. Many of the web’s most popular sites, for example, are primarily aggregators that pull in content from other sources or find links on the web and talk about them. (Boing Boing, the Huffington Post, the Drudge Report just to name a few.)

Between potentially getting sued for libel and now this new action by the Associated Press, I believe it is now (more than ever) vitally important to protect yourself as a writer and ask permission when you’re quoting an article. When I wrote my article for SFWA about personalization, I contacted the authors directly and asked them for a quote. Why? Two reasons. One, I wanted to offer personal examples of SFWA members to support my opinion. In order to do that, I felt I needed to ask permission because I was talking about someone’s online presence, which may (or may not) support their platform or reputation as a writer. Two, asking for permission gave me the chance to touch base with these authors and ensure that I was acting professionally. Did I need to ask them permission? Absolutely!

Asking permission to quote someone’s article can also help you network, too. I understand that you may be on a deadline (Read my latest post about the Hazards of Getting There First) but as I’ve mentioned several times before, there is a lot on the internet that is still uncharted and unexplored. Internet law is not set in stone. By establishing good, professional practices you can protect your reputation and the reputation of the source you are quoting.

No matter what I may think of the AP’s recent practices, I feel that this will not be the first (nor the last) major publisher/company to go this route. Content on the web has been published unchecked for so long; the rabbit is already out of the hat. As a result, the potential for bad PR is huge because content providers and readers both have years of established expectations for consuming and producing content which is, in many cases, “free.”

Regardless, as a writer I will continue to ask permission, even if I have personal opinions about whether or not a particular ruling is a good one.

August 3, 2009
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How to Make Your Voice Heard in a Sea of Content

fishing-boatEarlier I talked about the concept of content saturation, which spelled out the sheer volume of content added every month and how it’s affecting your writing. Do you have any ideas as to how you can navigate through this sea of content?

First, the cold hard truth is that no amount of yelling, screaming or crying is going to get your content read. Think about the amount of content added every day as an actual “ocean” of words and your potential visitors are akin to “fish” that you want to catch. If you’re on a boat, screaming your head off, are you going to catch a fish? If you tell your potential visitors that “This is the best article I’ve read in a long time. By the way, I wrote it!” will they come to your site? Probably not.

Instead, ask yourself why you are writing your content to figure out what kinds of fish you want to catch. Is it “just” because you need to write something down? Are you writing for SEO value? Customers? What?

Before you can catch the right kinds of visitors, you need to figure out what you’re going to write and why you’re going to write it. In other words, you’re determining which “net” of specific topics you’re going to publish to attract the visitors you want. Think about it this way: just because you have a great article about widgets, doesn’t mean you need to get as many eyeballs as possible on the page. What you need is to ensure that the people who care about widgets read your article.

Once you determine why you are writing your content, the next step is to figure out what action you want your readers to take. Do you want your readers to comment? Subscribe to your RSS feed? Or do you want your reader to contact you to find out more about these widgets you’re writing about?

Depending upon what action you want your visitors to take, you can develop a content strategy that will attract “qualified” visitors to your website or blog.

Build a Strategy Based on a Stream of Qualified Visitors

So now that you know why you want someone to read your content, you can build a strategy to help attract or “bait” those readers. Before you start second-guessing what your visitors might want to read, think about building a customer profile aimed at their behavior.

Customer profiles can be pretty challenging to create for new websites, but they are a bit easier to develop if you have an existing base of content. This is where your web analytics package comes into play. Start taking a peek at your visitor behavior through the lens of “visitor acquisition.” In other words, how do visitors find your site? What types of content are they reading?

After you’ve developed some basic impressions, you can figure out what types of visitors you’re looking for and begin catering content to them. This is a win-win for both you and your readers, because your reader is getting something of value and you are getting what you desire. On the flip side, if you discover that the readers coming to your site are not interested in your desired actions, you may want to re-think your content strategy and test new ideas. As part of your content strategy, I also highly recommend that you test your new strategies on a 30-60-90 day basis, especially if you are unsure of what kinds of content you want to create.

If you don’t have an existing website or blog yet, my best advice to you is to determine why you want to develop an online presence in the first place. If it’s to help manage your online reputation, then perhaps you don’t need to create a ton of content to achieve your goal. Perhaps all you need to achieve your goals is to set up your “boat” and cast a line.

Whether you start catering to visitors by creating more of a particular type of content or look for ways through social media to “spread the word,” you can make intelligent, strategy-based decisions to attract qualified visitors.

In summary, to make your voice heard in a sea of content I recommend asking yourself these simple questions:

  • Why are you creating content?
  • What action do you want your readers to take?
  • How are you determining what to write?
  • Who are you writing your content for?
  • When is the best time to publish/promote your content?
  • Where are you publishing/promoting your content?

Happy fishing!

April 4, 2009
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How Much Should You Get Paid to Blog?

Are you new to blogging? Do you know how much writers typically get paid per blog post? Back before blogging existed, most writers would get paid by the word. The higher the word count, the better pay a writer might receive, the more prestigious the publication. For example, publications with national distribution models might offer $1.00 a word on up. Fiction, on the other hand, ranges from free to 5 cents a word on up. You can see a huge disparity in how fiction is paid even through the two, free fiction directory websites that I had listed earlier.

Taken from the perspective that writers should “charge by the word,” I’ve run into the challenge of explaining not only “what” blogging is to some of my fellow writers, but how much they can expect to get paid. One example of this, is that I forwarded a job listing for freelancing to a writer who was looking for work. The job was pretty decent: $10-15 per 300-500 word post on a regular basis. The writer responded by telling me that the company obviously couldn’t afford them, even though they had never blogged before.
Read More…

January 26, 2009
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What Social Media Means to Me and My Writing

The term “social media” is something that has been used to capture social interaction on MySpace, Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, etc.

Social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives. Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. These sites typically use technologies such as blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs to allow users to interact. A few prominent examples of social media applications are Wikipedia (reference), MySpace (social networking), Gather.com (social networking),YouTube (video sharing), Second Life (virtual reality), Digg (news sharing), Flickr (photo sharing) and Miniclip (game sharing).–SOURCE: WebProNews Definition of Social Media

Even if you’re not tech-savvy or know the actual definition of what “social media” is, you’ve probably used the tools either for your personal or professional use. If you’re like me, you may also utilize “social media” for self-promotional purposes.

As you’re probably already aware, social media is a relatively “new” and “developing” concept because the tools that you interact with are always changing. There are articles upon articles telling you how you “should” use these tools, experts that say “you can’t do X,” and untold users who jump on the tools who only talk about social media.

Now, I’ll be the first to say that there is a difference between “best practices” and what these folk are saying, and it’s an important distinction to make.

Methods and techniques that have consistently shown results superior than those achieved with other means, and which are used as benchmarks to strive for. There is, however, no practice that is best for everyone or in every situation, and no best practice remains best for very long as people keep on finding better ways of doing things. See also best in class and leading practice.– SOURCE: Business Dictionary Definition of Best Practices

I love this definition, because this directly relates to the phenomena occurring with social media. You see, social media is about two things: tools and people. As the above definition represents, there is “no practice that is best for everyone or in every situation”. Since there are so many tools, I use them in several, different ways depending upon what I need them for. I also use them very organically and transparently, because I’ve made face-to-face contact with several of the people that are in my network. My Twitter account (@mlvalentine) is a reflection of my personality because I know that I might run into folk either at a convention or around town. Keeping that potential for face-to-face networking in mind, my social media interaction is the “real deal.” What you see is what you get.

So what does social media mean to my writing? Simple. It’s a way for me to share with readers, other writers and friends what I’m working on. It’s a good tool, because even if people don’t read my work it helps keep the idea fresh in everyone’s mind that I am a writer. Maybe someday they’ll follow up with what I’m doing, maybe they won’t. Since I’m using the tools to slowly grow a community of music lovers through my professional life for my day job, I’m also interacting with them to keep on top of changes and trends.

When you’re reading articles upon blog posts on the web about social media, keep in mind that those “social media best practices” are left to the “true” experts that can provide measurable (i.e. data-supported) results, and that those “best practices” are flexible according to what you need the tools for. Even then, some of those results may depend upon “who” you and your business interacts with through the tools. Not every customer or reader is going to interact with you just because they’re in your network.

When I think of all the content that I read about social media, I put it into this perspective: it’s quite possible to find an expert that really knows how the tool functions, but isn’t necessarily a “people expert.” For me and you, that group of people may reach far beyond our friends and family, it could also include your customers, clients and readers, too. Fundamentally, when we’re looking at these tools and how they relate to how we might use them, we have to consider not only how people interact with each other — but why.

January 15, 2009
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The Death of Copyright by Guest Blogger Chris Clark

Today my readers I’d like to feature a guest post by a hobby games veteran. Chris Clark from Inner City Games Designs gives us his thoughts on copyright. His thoughts were spawned by a very intense discussion regarding the Google class action settlement with the Author’s Guild. If you’re not aware of the lawsuit and subsequent settlement, you’ll want to read The Author’s Guild Google Settlement Resources and how it might affect you.

I’m an industry dinosaur. Inner City Games Designs (ICGD) is approaching its 30th year in business (est.1982, first pubbed product actually in 1981 – it was a smaller, kinder industry then). I frankly have 107 published IPs that could be in serious jeopardy if the courts allow this to happen. I’m working on two books and four games for the next quarter as well.

I do a LOT of things to earn a living, and always have.

I can build a car from scratch.

I can build a house from scratch.

I can build furniture from scratch.

I was a restaurant chef for 7 years.

I was a logistics (import/export) guru for 16 years (although I am now sadly out of date).

WHY do I write stories and games to make my living? Because, if I do that job well, that particular body of work should outlive me. The effect that said work will have on its intended audience will extend beyond the brief span of years with which I have been gifted. In short… those ideas, those IPs, are my legacy (not Google’s legacy, not some programmer’s legacy).
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January 8, 2009
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