When writers get angry

As Judy’s predecessor, I feel duty-bound to point out that our payment policies were even more high-handed during my eight-year tenure. In Judy’s defense, I’m publishing below a few excerpts from my confidential email correspondence with our writers when I ran the show here.

I trust these writers will forgive me for violating their confidences. And if they don’t forgive me — well, as Donald Trump would put it, “What are you gonna do — sue me?”

A mere token

May 16, 2006

Dear Leo,

Sorry I didn’t respond sooner to your question about your latest fee. It appears there’s been a misunderstanding.

It’s true, as you note, that our original policy called for payment of ten cents a word for all posted articles. By that formula, we would indeed owe you $58,728.70 for your recent posting of War and Peace. However, we abandoned that policy one week after our launch in favor of a flat-fee payment schedule, which explains the $100 check I sent you last month. This policy is clearly posted in our “Guidelines For Writers,” which you apparently overlooked.

In any case, let me stress that your fee is merely a token. No one writes for us for the money. They write for the freedom, the sophisticated audience, and the professional editing that we offer. Think of BSR as an incubator where you can polish your works-in-progress before sending them elsewhere.

War and Peace, for example, strikes me as something you might expand into a book some day. So good luck with that — and when you do, don’t forget to give BSR credit!

Incidentally, some parts of War and Peace sounded familiar to me. As you know, we post only original material — no reprints. Are you sure you haven’t posted this elsewhere previously? If that’s the case, please return your $100 fee.

Essay or review?

August 15, 2007

Dear Hannah,

You ask why we paid you only $50 for Eichmann in Jerusalem after paying you $100 for The Origins of Totalitarianism. I appreciate your confusion, but if you’d consulted our guidelines you’d see it’s really quite simple: We pay $50 for reviews, $100 for essays.

Hope that answers your question!

Gaming the system

February 17, 2008

Dear Jane,

Your suggestion that I construe Pride and Prejudice as two separate submissions at $100 each strikes me, frankly, as a clumsy attempt to game our payment system. As you surely realize, nobody would read an article simply titled “Pride” or “Prejudice” — it’s the contrast between the two that makes your story so appealing, don’t you see?

More to the point, I operate here with a limited budget and a board of directors who are constantly breathing down my neck about every penny I spend. If I make an exception for you, every writer in Philadelphia will be submitting titles like The Naked and the Dead or The Sound and the Fury or The Red and the Black and asking for the same double-dip treatment. Before you know it, we’d be out of business. Then where would you be?

Charles Dickens vs. Bob Levin

June 10, 2009

Dear Charles,

You ask why we paid you our standard $100 rate for David Copperfield but let Bob Levin stretch out his “Diary Of A Heart Attack Survivor” into nine installments at $100 each.

Here’s the difference: Bob’s series was a true-life drama in real time — we never knew whether he’d survive from one month to the next. David Copperfield, by contrast, required no great risk or effort on your part. Unlike Bob, you enjoyed the luxury of just sitting in your parlor and making the whole thing up as you went along.

Don’t get me wrong — Copperfield is a compelling read. Nor am I wishing you a heart attack!

Thanks for understanding.

P.S. — Nice try, but A Tale of Two Cities does not qualify as two submissions. It may deal with two cities, but it’s only one tale. Capisce?

Dostoyevsky vs. Myra Chanin

September 14, 2010

Dear Fyodor,

You accuse me of cutting special deals with some of my writers but not with you. It’s true — and let me explain why.

Put yourself in my shoes. I’m the editor of a new arts-and-culture website. To get exposure, I need credentialed writers who will boost our reputation and drive traffic to our site. Myra Chanin is a successful cookbook author and a very funny lady, too. Food and fun — what’s not to like? Robert Zaller is a humanities professor with an encyclopedic knowledge of the arts and a polemical style that always generates letters and, consequently, traffic. Tom Purdom is the Pied Piper of Philadelphia’s classical music market — wherever he goes, serious music lovers follow. Wendy Rosenfield is an elected board member of the American Theatre Critics Association, whose fellow members bombard us with letters whenever she appears on our site. Roz Warren is not only funny, but she also promotes her posts aggressively on Facebook and Twitter.

You, by contrast, possess no professional credentials other than an engineering degree. Your last few submissions — like The Idiot, Demons, and Crime and Punishment — were downers that appealed only to niche audiences, like psychiatrists and criminologists. You seem unwilling to lift a finger to promote yourself. And as far as I can tell, you lack influential friends or institutional contacts. Like, do you have any?

I know, I know — good writing should stand on its own merits. And you’re a very good writer, believe me! But I’m between a rock and a hard place here— forced to weigh literary quality against our commercial survival. So I’m afraid you’ll have to accept our standard published rates, just like everybody else.

April 8, 2011

Dear Ernest,

You ask if I could bump you to $125 for The Old Man and the Sea, up from the $100 we paid you for The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms. Sorry — no can do. Remember, I promised to make you a star — not to make you rich!