the real real story
Below is the note I just sent to Joshua Dinnerman. Boy, I'm sorry I missed this whole dialogue earlier! It sure was exciting!
Dear Mr. Dinnerman,
In response to your recent e-mail and the thread, to which you contributed, on AbsoluteWrite, below are my replies:
1. In no way did I ever say anything that was untrue. I never called you names. I was only exposing the truth in my dealings with your company so that nobody else would have the same problem I was encountering. The same can not be said for you.
2. I never set a price on my work. You sent me an e-mail, which I still have, stating that you would pay me between $50-300 for my first article. I then asked several times for you to pin down a price on that work, which you did not do for 7 months, when you finally delayed payment even further by asking me to wait for that payment until I wrote 3 more pieces for you. And, since I was so lucky as to get 3 more articles from your fine company, you asked me to accept $50/piece for them and $75 for the first one. I agreed because you implied that yours were start-up magazines and you really needed the help. That is a total of $225, which is what my invoice reflects. Of course, we agreed to this on the phone; there is no e-mail evidence of this. So, it’s my word against yours, and all I can do is say that I do not make it a practice to lie.
3. You asked me to invoice you after the pieces were published, which I did. The pieces were published, as per you, in September and October 2004, and I invoiced you on November 1, 2004. You stated in the closest thing I could get to a contract from you, an e-mail I still have, that you would pay the invoice 60 days after it was received. By my calculations, that should have been sometime in January.
4. In February/March/April, I sent several e-mails to you, reminding you of your outstanding invoice. You asked me to restate the amount of the invoice 3 times, and even once asked me to send it again by postal mail. You stated once that it would be paid the next month (that would be April). When I e-mailed again in the beginning of May because I had not received the promised check, you asked me again for the invoice amount and my address. When I responded with astonishment and threat of legal intervention, you accused me of getting hostile and being unprofessional.
I am interested in how your “story” differs from mine. The thing that I have been able to discover about you is that you have more than *my* unpaid invoice for work done for your magazines. I am truly interested in what your steps are when you encounter a person who does not pay you for the work that *you* do. You stated on AbsoluteWrite that my work was good. You stated in your e-mail that I was doing damage to your company, and that I had no right to do so. I want to know what right you have to steal the rights to my work, print them for your own profit, and then not pay me a fair rate for the work that I did. At the time we decided on those prices (notice I said “we,” not “I”), I was a beginning freelancer and was interested in helping a beginning magazine. My workload has increased to the point that I would now no longer be able to accept work at those prices. So, besides your statement that my work was good, I have had plenty of confirmation from other sources that I am a good writer and am now in demand as such. If you are so serious about defending yourself, as you stated on AbsoluteWrite, you should simply pay your bills…all of them. I don’t understand why you would not pay a bill for $225 to a writer who did work for you, but you would jump quickly to pay a lawyer to harass a bunch of people who obviously have a provable case against you. I also should state that I will not accept any phone calls from you, nor will I call you. I prefer to communicate only in a way which can be documented. Obviously, if we are both being professional and above-board, this is in both of our best interests.
Jennifer Della’Zanna