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Edit 11 March 2021: It took 5 or 6 days, but the website has finally credited my work.
Edit 20 March: The link now takes you to a re-written article on the topic, written by someone else, basically half of my material re-worded. I removed the direct link from this post so that they can’t make money off the clicks.
Back to the story, which was preceded by a link originally.
Isn’t that nice, that information they’re presenting to you? No author name, though. I wonder who wrote it? OH, THAT’S RIGHT–ME.
RIGHT HERE:
Now, before I go any farther, I want to tell you: A common problem that creators (writers, artists, etc.) face is being expected to produce work for free. It’s actually one of the shittiest parts of being a writer, how much uncompensated work you put in. Bloggers often face this dilemma: Do I let someone republish/promote my content, without compensating me?
But when a blogger says Yes, and then you republish it and don’t even credit the writer, that’s abhorrent.
(AND ILLEGAL)
Details: I was approached by Expatica.com back in 2013. They wanted to talk to me about “promoting my blog posts”. The original request came in through WordPress:
I replied:
And they replied:
And so it began. They re-published several of my posts, though I’m not sure which ones are still out there (OR WHETHER THEY ARE CREDITED). I honestly don’t know how recently or how long ago they removed my name from this article–whether it was in February at their latest update, or five years ago.
Regardless, they’ve stolen my work at this point, and it is now on their monetized website. They are making money off of posts that they have stolen.
They lead into the article with, “We give you a few pointers” as if they had put in the hours of writing, researching, and linking. This wasn’t a five-minute Hey, look at me having fun post; it was a researched post that I leaned on my academic and professional backgrounds to produce. Obviously the post was well-done, as it also was re-published on Germany, Ja! (WHO COMPENSATED ME FOR MY WORK, I SHOULD NOTE, AS WEBSITES SHOULD DO WITH THEIR CONTRIBUTORS.)
Anyway, I don’t know what my next move will be, but this definitely isn’t over. I don’t know how many other non-staff, uncompensated bloggers and writers aren’t being credited on Expatica.com, but someone needs to find out.
Here are some screenshots so they can’t suddenly insert my name and say “Huh? What’s she spouting off about? Her name is right there…“
Some screenshots:
I don’t have anything else to say. I’m too mad. The steam coming out of my ears is affecting my ability to type. MORE LATER BYE
Hi Kari,
This is Marie, the editor in chief at Expatica. I’ve never met or spoken with you since I started at Expatica in 2017, way after you wrote for us, but I’d have been happy to chat with you about this or other contributions. It’d have been nice to get a chance to explain and fix the issue rather than be the subject of secret internet rage! We redesigned and restructured the site a couple of years ago, and during that process an intern made a terrible mistake that I did not catch in time: she erased many of our authors’ names instead of adding them to our brand new author field. Without these records, there was absolutely nothing I could do but wait for writers to contact me. Many have — some politely, some with understanding frustration. But in either case I was glad to have the opportunity to explain and add their credit back to their content. I’m not sure why you chose to write this public rant instead of simply talking to me. As a writer myself, I have much respect for people’s work and that incident made me feel awful, especially because I was powerless to fix it. I’ll make sure to take your article down ASAP. All the best.
I wrote to Expatica through the website form.
Also, the second you realized you didn’t have author names and you chose to leave the work up as coming from Expatica–on your monetized website–you knowingly stole and profited from other creators’ work. You left up my work and the work of other writers knowing that they were not being credited. For, apparently, YEARS.
I am an advocate for writers–that’s why I “chose to write this public rant.” There was nothing secret about this rage–it’s public and you were tagged on Facebook and Twitter.
I don’t accept your response as an excuse, because this was a choice you made: to continue to publish the work of others, for your profit. Rather than take down the work and wait for writers to contact you and ask why their work was gone, you chose to leave the work up and profit from it whether they contacted you or not.
You might have been powerless to fix the technical error, but you were not powerless in the realm of seeing that creators are credited for their work. You had the power to cease publishing uncredited work–you just chose not to exercise that power.
Kari
Many writers write or have written for us without credit. Since I started as editor in chief, we pay for every article published on the site, but I don’t know what we paid or what the deal was for all the content that already existed. Therefore, I had no way to know which articles had an author removed or not, which ones had been paid, which not. I was not going to remove all our content – 1500 articles – because I knew a dozen blog posts had their authors accidentally removed. I trusted they would contact me. I apologize that your message did not get to me. The others did and got their credit back. You can vilify us if you want, but we treat our writers well; we pay them, we train them, we support them, we credit them, we respect their wishes if they want their posts taken down, and we even have a team page where we link to their personal websites in the hope to bring them traffic and more work. I am very proud of our current practices and I’m pretty sure that if you ask any freelance author who works with us, they’ll tell you they are happy with how we treat them.
1) The fact that many writers write for you without credit is a choice that some writers make. It’s NOT an excuse to be used when defending yourself for leaving up the work of OTHER uncredited writers.
2) I’m glad to hear that you now pay writers, unlike when I allowed my posts to be promoted.
3) I’m not villifying you–I’m calling you out. You are making money off content that was never paid for in the first place, and is no longer credited. And you don’t even know how many folks are still being uncredited for their work on your website. You can try to minimize it with “because I knew a dozen blog posts had their authors accidentally removed,” but it’s still the work of writers. You can try flipping it, to make me out to be the villain, but expecting writers to be compensated or credited is in no way villainous.
4) I truly want to know: How did you expect people to realize you were no longer crediting them for their work?
I just looked at one of your uncredited articles. I googled one single sentence, and immediately was taken to the original blog where the content came from. I have a hard time believing you put any effort into identifying the authors of your articles. Even 1500 articles, I could myself have done within a day.