Do You Know Who I Am?

Or: In which a prestigious publisher makes me feel like a jerk, I am mad about it, and as a result, I set a bridge on fire.

Heads up: Inside baseball. Want out? I really liked this piece about reclaiming summer on Miss Expatria.

I recently received an offer to contribute on a regular basis to a site I rather like. I could potentially earn money through ads placed on my site, I would gain access to the publisher’s editorial staff, and I could compete for fabulous prizes. The exact format of all these things was a little unclear. The program is a pilot program with a trial period, phased, at one month I’d get exposure level one, at three months, I’d get exposure level two. There was no mention of pay.

I started to feel like a jerk right away. Anyone who’s read my site knows where I come down on payment in exposure. I’ve tried telling my dentist that I’ll link to him from my website, but the bill comes anyways. In short: Only on very rare occasions will I write for free.

I carefully crafted a response. Is participation in the ad network dependent on contributing to the site, or could I choose only to be in the ad network? How is the ad program structured? How are the competitions structured; are they driven by social media? That’s not an incentive as I hate it when people spam me for social media attention, so I’m not going to do it back to them. And the clincher: Is there compensation?

I emailed a colleague who’s got some ties to the publication to see if said colleague had any knowledge of the program. “Nope, never heard of it.” Then I started to feel even more of a jerk. “They don’t know who I am,” I thought.

I did not think this in some kind of “I’m a big freaking deal,” sort of way. Lots of people have no idea who I am and 99.9 percent of the time, that is completely appropriate. I did not think, “They should know I’m some kind of star.” Not at all. In this funny little world where I write, I’m an insignificant blogger and mostly, I’m okay with that.

But they forgot about their own world. What I thought was this: “They should know that they’ve already paid me good money to be in their publication. I don’t need a byline in their magazine, I HAVE one. I don’t need access to their editors, I can just, you know, email them. I don’t need to compete for prizes, I already won when I cashed that big check with their name on it.”  Then I felt awful. Just awful. Because I’d become that person who says, “Do you know who I am?”

And then, in spite of feeling like a jerk for it, I told them who I am.

I told the program recruiter who I write for now, and about the piece I’d done for their publication. And how given that I have regular paid contributor gigs, I would have a very hard time making their gig a priority. I told the program recruiter that I would love to be in the magazine again and that hey, since they’re recruiting for web projects, here’s an idea I have that needs a home, maybe we could talk about that.

Still feeling like a jerk, I began to get really bummed out — I am still.

I believe this offer came to me by mistake. That’s partly why I checked with that other writer I know. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the magazine is not intentionally recruiting former well paid contributors to work in exchange for exposure, access, prizes, potential ad revenue, anything but cold, hard, cash. I believe that had the recruiter done a little bit more homework, I’d have never seen this offer.

The thing is, where I’m known in travel and on the web I’m known for this blog and less so for the work I’ve done elsewhere. I think that all of the freelance travel writing work I’ve found can be traced directly to my blog. My goal is to write well and be paid for it, not to be famous.I’m good with that, really good with it.

But I’m unhappy to be faced, yet again, with what appears to be a perception by more traditional publications, that as a blogger, I’m just not worth much. The publication paid me over a dollar a word to be included in their print pages and for the pleasure of working to occupy their virtual pages and putting their ads on my site I was offered… Potential. Access. Competition.

For a week, a little more, I’ve been sitting at my keyboard thinking, “God damn you. You’ve turned me into the kind of person who says ‘DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?'” That is NOT okay. It’s probably good for me to face this rude truth that in the publishing industry, an amateur blogger is a self promoter willing to give it away to associate with a fancy brand. That I’m in it for the exposure or the glory, that potential rewards are good enough because who am I to think that as a regular contributor, I deserve to be paid? I’m just a blogger, after all.

My reaction is probably way out of proportion to the proposal at hand which, by the way,  is just not that unusual. These types of offers clearly continue to work, people are out there saying yes, sure, I’ll meet your requirements and editorial guidelines and work through your trial period in exchange for your offerings. There’s always an aspiring travel writer out there who’s willing to take the risk and join a program for what it might turn into. Maybe I’m making a big mistake by flipping such attitude about this; maybe I’m missing my opportunity to Go Big.

But maybe not, The more I think about this, the angrier I become. I’m mad at this prestigious publication for sponsoring an initiative that I believe plays to vanity. I’m mad at myself for the way I reacted to it. And if you’re saying yes to this kind of thing, I’m probably mad at you, too. Oh, I get it, I do, I get why people say yes. But maybe the prevalence of this utter devaluation of our work is our own damn fault.

I used to be a lot more circumspect about novices doing it for free. But I don’t feel that way anymore. It feels increasingly like exploitation by organizations who don’t seem to think very much of “those bloggers.”

This offer reminded me of my status in the world in which I aspire to be a part. I’m quite sure it wasn’t meant to be taken as an insult but it dragged me down, hard. It’s unlikely the publication cares what I think, I’m no butterfly in China. I’m just an independent blogger with some opinions and a passing facility with words.

The response to my questions took a few days but was short and to the point. I was grateful to them for not trying to sell it to me. “You’re probably not going to get what you’re looking for from this program.”

I’ll say.

Photo: Butterfly by mk* via Flickr (Creative Commons).