$310 and a Dream
By Jenna Glatzer  

In the olden days, when writers talked about "paying our dues," we meant working our way up by writing for low-paying, low-prestige publications.  But now, there's another way to pay your dues if you want to be a writer: Just charge $310 to your credit card and you, too, can write for FOXSports.com.

FOXSports has recently taken a new tack for finding writers: They're hiring the highest bidder.  That's right; no resume and no writing samples needed.  Flunked fifth grade English?  No worries.  If you want to be a sports columnist, all you have to do is hop on eBay and outspend the competition. 

In the month of July, FOXSports auctioned off seven columnist positions. Winning bidders got to "cover" NASCAR, major league baseball, and the British Open.  Oh, they didn't get press passes, mind you.  No, they didn't get to actually go to these events like real sports writers.  They got the wonderful opportunity to watch these events on television and then write their opinions about what they saw.  And, hey, FOX even offered to post their photos at no extra charge!

Imagine the implications if other publishers pick up on this great way to make some extra cash and get some free writing while they're at it.  Why would anyone bother to take writing courses or work on their craft if all they had to do was pay for their byline?  Capitalism is alive and well, but our dedication to the arts continues to flounder.

FOX isn’t an anomaly; other publications have decided it’s a good idea to charge writers for the “opportunity” of getting published, too.  Moxie magazine, an e-zine for women, charges a $10 reading fee if you want them to consider your work.  $25 if you want feedback.  Don’t have the money?  For only $1, you can submit your poems to The Café Review.  (It’s much easier for editors to make sound decisions when they’re holding your $1 check, apparently.)  Anyone can get a poem published in an anthology released by the International Library of Poetry (also known as Poetry.com) by shelling out $49.95 to buy the book.

And what if other professions decided this was a good idea?  What if theatres started auctioning off the right to star in their latest musical?  What if everyone who applied for a job in a fast food restaurant had to pay a $10 “application fee?”  Keep in mind that if they got the job, they wouldn’t get paid for it anyway.  They’d be expected to do it for the love of their art.

But, alas, the world is under the mistaken notion that anyone can write.  We don't need any special degrees, after all, and no one will die if we don't do our jobs well.  But as we complain about today’s youth’s declining interest in reading, how can we stand behind our commitment to literacy if we throw away our standards on good writing?

J. K. Rowling was a broke single mother when she wrote Harry Potter.  If publishers had charged reading fees, she likely wouldn’t have been able to afford to submit her manuscript, and it might never have been published.  Crime novelist John Creasey is said to have accumulated 774 rejections before selling his first story.  At $10 a pop, he would have spent $7,740 in reading fees (plus postage) before seeing his work in print.  Alex Haley, author of Roots, would have spent $2,000.  Would these authors have kept going?  Or would they have taken up a different profession to stay out of debt?

Imagine the world without Dr. Seuss, whose work was rejected dozens of times before a friend offered to publish it.  Imagine all of the Maya Angelous and the Stephen Kings of tomorrow being shoved aside for those who could afford to pay to get published.  Only those with great trust funds could afford to keep writing, so forget about diversity in literature.

You’d never be able to trust a newspaper again if its “reporters” had paid their way in rather than taking the time to learn their profession.  The medical experts who write for health magazines would be replaced by pharmaceutical companies who decide it’s cheaper to pay to write an “article” about their fabulous new medicine than it would be to place advertising. 

Editors are in place to weed out agendas, present excellent writing, and make sure the words printed in their books, magazines, and newspapers are reliable and worth readers’ attention.  By guaranteeing publication to anyone who pays enough, an editor’s hands are tied.  Those new FOXSports columnists may be buying their way in to a (formerly) reputable publication so they can spew messages of hatred, racism, political bias... and the editors can’t say a word about it, because their publisher entered into a legally binding contract with the highest bidder.

Maybe FOXSports sees no harm in charging wannabe writers who are desperate to get published.  I see a great harm.  If we want to encourage literacy in this country, we have to give people something worth reading.  If we want to be paragons of literature, we must publish high quality work—and that means giving real writers an incentive to carry on without competing against those whose only “talent” is having the deepest pockets.

Jenna Glatzer is the editor-in-chief of www.AbsoluteWrite.com and the author of several books.  Her latest, OUTWITTING WRITER'S BLOCK, has just been released by the Lyons Press to much critical acclaim.  Read all about it here: http://www.absolutewrite.com/jenna/books.htm.

This article may be freely reprinted as long as the bio remains intact!

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