This classic Harlan Ellison rant comes courtesy of Steve Davey, a travel writer and photographer who has been asked for his share of freebies.
You may want to watch Harlan explain his philosophy on providing free content before you read the rest of the post. Or not. He’s talking specifically about the studios, but he raises an interesting point:
“They always want the writer to work for nothing. And the problem is, there’s so god-damned many writers who have no idea that they’re supposed to be paid every time they do something! They do it for nothing. [raises shoulders and flaps arms] Guh, guh, ghuh, look at me, I’m going to be noticed, huh, huh, huh-huh.”
So all you bloggers out there, according to Harlan, we’re all “assholes”.
I say guilty as charged. What do you think?
Free content provided by YouTube. (Oh, the irony!) Link provided by Steve Davey. If you believe this is a funny blog — sorry about the lack of monkeys today — you should go to humor-blogs.com and vote. You can also find more humor at alltop.
I think Harlan should head back to 1976 and shut the hell up.
While I would love to be mailing off type story treatments to editors who are all high on cough syrup and making beautiful bonfires out of unsolicited material, I think that actually writing for an audience is probably not a bad idea.
If you write something that’s worth it, you’ll get paid eventually.
Mark,
Can you ad “carpenoctum at hotmail dot com” to your safe email list and then delete this comment?
I have a question … 🙂
Not Me! I never write for free. I pay people to read my stuff.
Asshole… eh I’ve been called worse. The thought that someone might actually pay to read something I wrote scares me a little.
“I don’t take a piss without getting paid for it…”
LOL.
He seems a little upset by the whole thing…