On Womanâs Weekly, and why we should all care about their new contract policy
Anyone who has ever written for Womanâs Weekly will already be aware of the fact that the magazine group, which also includes a huge raft of other magazines, has been taken over by a giant firm called TI Media. What the rest of the reading and writing world may not yet be aware of is what that firm is doing with rights.
Rights are what an author sells to a publisher, be it a book or a magazine publisher, that allows them to publish the authorâs work. There are also film rights, stage rights, media rights, foreign rights, which are sometimes bundled into a contract as part of a publishing deal, or negotiated separately, depending on the author. It is generally accepted that if you sell the rights to a short story to a magazine, youâre only selling them the magazine rights. You shouldnât also be giving them the right to republish elsewhere without paying you, or to adapt your story for TV, or make it into a movie, or recreate it as a game, or translate it into different languages, without paying anything to the author.Â
And yet, thatâs what TI Media are doing with the short story writers at Womanâs Weekly.Â
Hereâs a bit of background from one of the womag writers concerned.Â
https://womagwriter.blogspot.com/2018/06/bad-news-from-womans-weekly-guest-post.htmlÂ
As youâll see, Womanâs Weekly writers were originally paid ÂŁ150 for a 2000-word short story (which is already a very low rate of pay for original fiction). Most writers, barring a few bestselling novelists, are already very poorly paid. The average professional writer, according to figures from the Society of Authors, earn less than ÂŁ11,000 a year. Thatâs a drop of 40% over the past ten years, even though the publishing trade is doing better than ever.
And now, hereâs a giant media corporation offering only ÂŁ100 per story, and demanding all rights, including moral copyright. That means that if they then sell the story to someone else, the author doesnât even have the right to have their own name shown on the piece.Â
This is a completely unfair and exploitative deal, and in most other EU countries, wouldnât even be allowed. But as we prepare to leave the EU, companies like TI Media are starting to circle the wagon train, hoping to snaffle whatever they can from authors already facing a dramatic cut in earnings.Â
In real terms, it means that, as an author, youâd be giving up all the valuable rights to your work, forever, including the right to have your name on the project, for no more than the initial sum of ÂŁ100 (or whatever youâre left with after income tax). That means:
If TI Media ever decided to sell those rights to make a multi-million-pound grossing movie, youâd get nothing. Not even your name on the credits.
If TI Media ever decided to syndicate your piece to all its other magazines (and it has many, including Marie Claire, NME and Country Life), youâd get nothing.Â
If you ever wanted to use your story in a collection of your short stories, you wouldnât be allowed to. It would belong to TI Media.
So if you care about justice, you should be watching what âs going on here. If you care about reading, whether or not youâre not youâve ever read a TI Media magazine, you should be watching whatâs going in here. If youâre a writer of any kind, you should be watching whatâs going on here. Because this isnât just an attack on a handful of womag writers. Itâs an attack on all writers, and on the very concept of authors having rights at all.Â
Iâve been trying to raise awareness of this situation through my various social media platforms, and Iâm afraid that some authors (especially male authors of literary fiction) havenât been what youâd call quick to react on behalf of these womenâs magazine authors. But hereâs the thing. Womag writers are the canary in a very deep literary mine. If we, the more influential and better-protected folk of the literary world, allow their rights to be exploited, then sooner or later companies like TI Media will come for the rest of us. Tomorrow it could be your publishers theyâre taking over. And when that happens, youâll be glad you stood up for the rights of those Womanâs Weekly writers.Â
So please, all of you: make some noise. Whether or not youâve ever written for Womanâs Weekly (and I havenât) make some noise. Protest. Resist. Donât write for them. Donât sign their exploitative contracts. If youâre a new writer, be forewarned. Donât let them scoop you up, easy prey, in the place of more seasoned writers standing up for their rights. There are other, better magazines than Womanâs Weekly out there. Donât be lured by false promises. Keep control of your moral rights.Donât sign away your future.
Readers, donât buy their magazines - and thereâs a full list of all of them here on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI_Media - until they agree to better terms for their short story writers.Â
Writers; talk to your trade union - be that the Society of Authors, the Writersâ Guild, or any other. Call out @TI_Media_UK on Twitter. So far theyâve ignored every attempt to communicate or negotiate - and thatâs because they think our voices can safely be ignored.
Letâs show them theyâs wrong.Â
Because, fellow-authors (and Iâm looking especially at you, white, middle-aged male writers of litfic), this isnât just about the rights of womag writers. Their rights are your rights. Their business is your business. And what unites us makes us stronger in the face of those giants who think they can bully us.Â
Weâre writers, for fuckâs sake. We know how to use words. So letâs use them to make this right. Because thereâs no place for âIâm all right, Jackâ in the writing community. Bestseller or not, womanâs writer or not, we all know the difference between right and wrong. And this is a wrong that we can right, together, and for all of us.Â
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