Huffington Post doesnāt pay its authors. You realize that an average copyright is 5,000 dollars minimum if held up in court. You usually get paid around 5 cents per word. If their word count minimum is 1,500, thatās 75 dollars. If the average story is 3,000 and the pay rate is 150, for only North American rights and electronic, then youāre selling yourself out and the rest of us, too. Youāre telling that art is worth nothing. The hours of skill you worked honing your craft is worth nothing.
Get paid for your work. Let the magazines that pay nothing, get off their sorry butts and actually set up a paypal account and pay their authors. Itās not that hard. It takes 2 hours max. And if they say crap like, āWeāre exploring our optionsā and theyāve been āexploring their optionsā for over a month, that usually means theyāll never do it. (Case in point, āWe Need Diverse Booksā said they were exploring their options with adult books, and then sold out adult books, failing to realize if they want a connected eco-system where the longevity of diversity is not treated like a fad, they need to tackle diverse books, especially the stuffy genres like Historical and Literary. I love you, genres, but sometimes, the preaching about how you canāt do whatever and canāt change cramps my style. Of course you can, but you just wonāt.)
So get paid--donāt make the rest of us suffer--and donāt believe the "exploring optionsā especially when itās an easy fix. And if they donāt, then let that venue die the way its supposed to in the first place.