Atheist e-zine looking for submissions

[Mike Renzulli]

I received an email about this a little while ago and thought you might want to check it out. As it turns out, American Humanist Association Board member, Marilyn Westfall has started an ezine for creative atheistic writers. If you are so inclined, please check out her site at:

http://www.eloquentatheist.com/?page_id=4

If you like to write essays or poetry, this might be the place for you! All humanistic, freethought and atheistic writings are being considered. There is no pay, but if your work is selected, it will be seen by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people!

[syrakusos]

There is no pay, but ...

I first published when I was 12 and I sold my first piece about 12 years later. About six years after that, I decided to write as a profession and the first decision I made was to always get paid. There ae exceptions. I am not being paid for this. I don't get paid for RoR, either, of course. However, I see this and that as exercises, etudes, things I do in preparation for paid work. I put ideas together and more importantly, perphaps, I warm up my fingers and the keyboard. There are times when the masthead of a publication will be "payment" enough, just being published in some magazine or other venue will carry weight. For about a year, I had a monthly column about flight training for Plane & Pilot News. That gave me visibility and prestige among my peers. Today, those columns are in my stringbook because the next editor to whom I am selling needs not know what I got paid for the previous work.

I also write for free on a noblesse oblige theory. Perhaps that is an intellectual error. However, having been an editor at Coin World, speaking at ANA conventions, writing a monthly column now for Numismatist magazine (paid), clubs and others ask me for content for their websites and newsletters and I grant just about all of those requests. Still, I try to work out some kind of deal, at least a membership in the club in return for the articles for their newsletter. They usually oblige.

Plagiarism is a problem. Once online, content has a life of its own. In 2005, one of my numismatic articles on the origins of coinage was actually plagiarized by the website of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center of Vassar University, but we cleared that up. I still get a lot of mileage out of that, though, as I just did here.

Bottom line:

Watch your bottom line.