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Topic: Re-Selling a Story After Initial Publication
| Author | Message |
| Team America | Posted – 12/16/2007 7:27:39 PM | show profile | email poster Wonder if any of you freelancers out there have had success reselling stories after initial publication... Did you use an Agent of some sort. If so, do you have any you would recommend? If you resell your stories how did you obtain a list of pubs that accept stories that have previously run elsewhere? Thanks. |
| Village Gal | Posted – 12/17/2007 8:28:09 AM | show profile Can you be more specific? What are you talking about? journalism? fiction? Agents usually only represent books. Also, I don't think it is realistic to expect writers to give agent referrals on an anonymous board. Have you tried www.agentquery.com. check it out. |
| maphop | Posted – 12/17/2007 10:43:26 AM | show profile This is a topic that's been covered lots and lots of times on this board - you might want to try going into the archives to see what others have had to say. With the assumption that you're talking about freelance magazine or newspaper non-fiction, almost no one (less than .0001 %?) use an agent - unless you're a wildly successful non-ficiton or fiction author, almost no one uses an agent for resale - you're on your own to resell a piece, either in its original format or reworked. Personally, I resell perhaps as much as 25% of my work in reworked format. |
| Team America | Posted – 12/17/2007 8:33:29 PM | show profile Is there a business to be built pimping to 2nd Tier papers? Actually, I'm interested in 2ndary publication of nonfiction work. And if you're making any money off your fiction you don't need public forums like this. With regards to the archives, I've taken a look. I see some yap, but I don't see any references/referals to anyone who agents for 2ndary publication of nonfiction. So as I look to pimp my own stuff, the question then becomes is there a business to be had pimping other peoples work. In general what we're talking about is placement in 2nd tier publications. |
| maphop | Posted – 12/17/2007 10:42:17 PM | show profile Yap? Pimping? I'd say you have the attitude for sales... |
| writesonwater | Posted – 12/18/2007 8:46:35 AM | show profile Selling other people's work is either publishing or agenting, no? In either case they have to assign the rights to you. There's one area I think is rather gray -- there are writers who rephrase other people's stuff, give them credit for it, and sell it on -- is it Associated Content, and other sites like it? This has been done with my work several times. It looks like this: "Writer Writesonwater says ... blablablabla" While it's flattering to be quoted, I'd much rather they paid ME for using my stuff. |
| Team America | Posted – 12/18/2007 7:39:48 PM | show profile | email poster Creating a Business Pitching is sales. Dating is sales. Everything is sales. If you don't sell you don't eat. There's nothing romantic about poverty. You also don't create a legitimate business without obtaining proper rights. Some of you people are ridiculous, but maybe that's more to the point - that while selling other people's work to editors would be painful, perhaps working with freelancers would be more painful. So, again I ask the question would freelancers (and do I really need to specify we're talking about nonfiction?) use an agenting service, which resells their work to papers that don't require first publication rights? If that kind of agenting service could put money in their pockets what would a fair split of revenue be? Remember we're talking about, what $200 - $300 for a pc max. Could you even get $300 for a pc? Then there are all the rights headaches, accounting headaches, headaches obtaining content, etc. Hmmm... |
| reporterwriter | Posted – 12/18/2007 9:12:16 PM | show profile Do you realize how much reprints pay? What would possibly possess a writer to give a cut of such a pittance to an agent? |
| reporterwriter | Posted – 12/18/2007 9:15:24 PM | show profile I just saw you're talking about newspapers. The pay at second-tier newspapers -- if they accept freelance at all -- is even worse than pay at second-tier magazines. You have to be kidding. A suggestion: Learn something about freelancing, and study those second-tier markets; then come back and ask questions based on what you discover. |
| reporterwriter | Posted – 12/18/2007 9:16:08 PM | show profile P.S. What is "a pc"? |
| reporterwriter | Posted – 12/18/2007 9:21:21 PM | show profile Also, the pay at second-tier newspapers is more like $20-$50 an article, sometimes less for a reprint. You want a cut of that big pay for performing work that basically totals two minutes' time, including opening the bookkeeping ledger? Okey-dokey, then! Go for it. |
| Team America | Posted – 12/19/2007 10:09:00 AM | show profile Type First Think 2nd You people are REALLY funny. I can see Belinda thinking really hard 10 minutes after she posts. No wonder you're paid so poorly. Just a suggestion... Engage brain then type. |
| maphop | Posted – 12/19/2007 11:11:23 AM | show profile BBelinda, don't take offense. He (and I'm pretty sure it's a "he") just doesn't know the game yet. Just take a look at his first post, his "yap" post and then the final post. If he knew the industry, he wouldn't have asked the questions in the first post; if he knew writers and writers' personalities, he wouldn't have used the terminology he did in the second post. As for the last post? See my comments on the first two posts. He's just turned off 2/3rds of all the successful freelance writes who might have been potential clients. "Yap" indeed. |
| Village Gal | Posted – 12/19/2007 2:09:50 PM | show profile Belinda and Madhop are both right. I was thinking. the same thing. Not only is Hey hey a novice but his tone is downright condescending. This is what happens too often on this anonymous board. |
| reporterwriter | Posted – 12/19/2007 9:52:00 PM | show profile I can't be offended. The poster doesn't seem to know anything about freelancing, freelancers or newspapers, or want to know. That's his problem, not mine. |
| Team America | Posted – 12/20/2007 10:13:11 AM | show profile Novice Sometimes people ask naive questions on purpose. |
| Mr Media | Posted – 12/23/2007 11:24:51 PM | show profile Yes I have had work republished before plenty of times. I think the key is whether or not your article is current and interesting. Just surf the web and try to find a publishers you think would be interested in republishing your piece. This year I had one article published and then an alternative piece to the second article. The reason I got the second article published is because the publisher was interested in the first piece. |
