As a writer, I provide quite a bit of content on the web for free, mostly on my blog. It is content meant to entertain or spark a conversation or thought. I’ve never tried to sell it, nor do I make any money on it. It is meant to be read, enjoyed and shared with friends. However, I’ve started to notice a trend that I don’t think I can quite jump on board with. There are now programs out there that make it really easy to put together a virtual newsletter or newspaper, and people are making them left and right. However, some of them, instead of creating the content themselves, troll Twitter and the internet and pull other people’s work to fill the inches of their newsletter. I’ve noticed that my work is popping up in these more and more. When I saw the first one, I got a little bit of a thrill. I won’t lie, it was a nice ego stroke. But as it happened again, and again, and again the glamour of it wore off.
When someone shares a link on Facebook or retweets one of my pieces on Twitter, awesome! Thank you for sharing. When someone mentions one of my pieces in their blog piece, or even better provides a link to one of my pieces, awesome! Thank you for sharing. But at what point does it stop being sharing and become a re-appropriation of work? When somebody puts together and shares a newsletter that is composed entirely of other people’s work, is it still considered sharing? They call it their newsletter, but it’s my work, and the work of others, filling the space. I was never consulted nor asked if that was okay, I’m sure the other “contributors” weren’t either.
Even worse, I actually had a newspaper take one of my theater reviews and run it in their paper. I was given the byline so it wasn’t plagiarism, but you can bet your sweet ass that my editor was up in arms about it when I told him. The other newspaper was told that under no uncertain terms were they to ever run another one of my reviews unless they had specifically asked me to review for their paper. It never happened again. So what’s the difference? I write my blogs for my website. I write my articles for a specific magazine. I have never had any contract or agreement to write for a newsletter and yet I keep finding my work in them. So I’m left with the conundrum or whether I should be upset about this, or just appreciate the extra exposure.
Let’s face it, I’m not making millions of dollars off of my writing. Hell I’m not even making a living off of my writing. I provide my blog, free of charge for whoever wants to read it. So why does it stick in my craw every time I see my work in one of these newsletters? I think it’s because, unlike a retweet or share on Facebook, these people are trying to benefit off of my work. Whether they want to get thousands of twitter followers because of their newsletter, or the link goes back to a website where they sell ad space, they are getting personal gain by re-appropriating my work and they’re doing so without ever contacting me to ask permission. There’s the rub. But I don’t know if I’m being overly sensitive or pragmatic, or if this is something that bothers other people too. When does it go too far? When does sharing turn into an inappropriate re-appropriation of work? And the better question, what do we do about it?
What do you think? Am I making a mountain out of a mole hill, or do I have a legitimate beef?