What does
@wanttaja think of this? Was there a fair payment?
The true measure of a pilot is the peace of mind he feels when he makes the tough call to stay on the ground.
avbrief.com
As Dana said, AvBrief is not a Firecrown publication.
I was asked if I could contribute to AvBrief, and I suggested I had some older articles I'd written for my Fly Baby web page or my EAA Chapter newsletter that might work for them with a bit of reworking. Didn't take much time to modify it for the new media home. The payment I received was appropriate for a second printing. But like most of us writers here, I don't depend on my writing income to hold body and soul together. I try to make enough to cover hangar costs for the Fly Baby; easier to justify it to the wife (who is ALSO a published writer). Between book royalties and article payments, I mostly break even. For most of us, I think it's professional pride: If they PAY you for the article, you're a professional writer. I have written for free for startups led by friends, but that's different.
As Dana also mentioned, much of the former staff of Kitplanes and AvWeb have gravitated to AvBrief. I had a good working relationship with them, and when they asked for some content to help them get started, I was happy to oblige. Two of the former staffers keep their planes in the next hangar row at my new home airport, and we're members of the same EAA Chapter.
Will mention that I haven't severed relationships with the "new" Kitplanes. While I loathe what Firecrown has done to the magazines they now own, I think the editor is fighting a hard battle. Just prior to the blowup, I submitted a Zip file containing several more of my "Yesterday's Homebuilts" shorts. None of them ever appeared. I contacted the new editor, he couldn't find them, and was interested in continuing the series. I sent them to him, and received a payment notice from Firecrown a couple of days ago. My attitude is that the situation is *not* the new editor's fault, and I wasn't going to take things out on him. I'm a freelancer, I don't grudges unless I'm personally affected.
"Why not pick up the series at AvBrief, instead?" Sure, it'd have made sense. But I wasn't sure if I was going to consider the series, and it would have made sense to keep it at its original publication. One item was a bit longer, and I did submit it separately to AvBrief. Hopefully, they'll be running "A Whale of a Tale" in a month or so. But I *did* submit a lot to them, they're probably stretching things out a bit.
There is...ummm....another reason I took this approach. Back when I first started writing, I sent an article in to another publication (Plane and Pilot, in fact, I think). Didn't hear a darn thing about it. Ah, well, the life of a freelancer.
Two years later, a fellow EAA member came back from a trip. "Congratulations!" he told me.
I rose to my usual level of wit. "Huh?"
"Well, being an Associate Editor of a magazine is a pretty big deal, right?"
He handed me a copy of a new regional aviation magazine. There was the article I'd sent to Plane and Pilot, and my name listed in the masthead as one of the staffers. The editor had left Plane and Pilot, and had taken all the submitted articles with him. I'd received no notification, no updates. Took me about ten months, but I finally did get payment for the article. Like I said, a professional writer is one who gets paid.
One guess on who that editor was......
In any case, thinking of switching the "Yesterday's Homebuilts" series to another magazine reminded me too much of my previous experience.
Ron Wanttaja
