Why can't I delete an article with a sale?

[contentwriter]

I would like to delete old articles from my library. I noticed that there's no delete option for articles that have at least one sale. Now, I know that articles with a unique or full rights license disappear from the catalog, anyway. But what about those that sold under the use license? Can't I have those deleted if I wished? Or could I ask? I honestly don't recall anything in the license system page that said we wouldn't be able to delete an article once it has sold for use license.

[Lysis]

It's always been like that, and my guess is that it's kept as a record and possibly made available for the customer if he wants to return and download the document again.

[Gail Kavanagh]

That makes sense, Lysis, and so does leaving up usage sales, as they might sell again. But articles sold for full rights still have an 'edit' function. Does this mean we can rewrite them and put them up for sale again? Some of them are quite request-specific, though - if the requestor wants to download again, the article should be just available to to the requestor. Why are full rights articles still available to 'edit'? It make no sense at all. I would like to see a delete option for writers to clear full rights articles from the personal content list. I have asked about this before and got a lot of irrelevant replies but nothing from CC.

[Lysis]

I don't think you can edit much after it's accepted. I haven't tried to edit anything since I don't pay much attention other than sales, but I don't think you can edit anything. Maybe price before it sells but that's it.

As for deleting the article, I think they don't want you to for reasons such as allowing the customer to return and download again, tracking purposes, keeping record of the article, etc.

[Pellucidean]

You can edit the price and the keywords after the article is accepted, and you can also change the category the article is posted in, but I'm pretty sure that's it.

[Lysis]

I think I tried to change keyword once to add to other old articles and it wouldn't let me. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

The OP mentions after a sale though, so I don't know why it even matters after a sale.

[contentwriter]

Yeah, I do want to delete a bunch of articles. Some have sold, some have not. And I tried "editing" articles too but I recall I couldn't really do anything with it other than keywords, I think.

Those articles that sold for use license were a year or so ago. I still want to get rid of them.

[Word Gypsy]

You can't edit articles once they've sold for usage, unique, or full rights. If the article hasn't sold, you can edit the price and keywords. If the article is really old, hasn't sold, and the option exists, you can change the category. For newer articles, you don't seem to be able to change the category.

Before the current owners of the site had control of it, I was able to delete and edit my articles that hadn't sold for full or unique rights. It's a deliberate change to the system. I've asked multiple times to have prices changed or the articles deleted to no avail. I was told about a year ago that this option would be restored to us, but I think it is still in the planning stages, particularly because of the potential problems it might create. Since the content does still belong to the authors, I think we really should have this option. (Yes, I've used the dreaded "really" that is so not allowed in "good" content.) Feeling rather frustrated with this at the moment as I have hundreds of articles that could use freshening up with their keywords and prices.

Happy writing!~ WG

[Lysis]

I use unsold articles as my portfolio samples. Might as well make the most of them.

[Pellucidean]

What's weird about the price change thing is that you can't even change the price even if the first sale was for lower than is listed. I.e., I had one article listed for $50 for usage, but I accepted less when someone offered it. Nonetheless the price is still stuck at $50 for anyone else who comes along, despite the only sale being less.

Also I just checked and I could still change the categories for my unsold articles that were uploaded very recently.

Using unsold stuff for my portfolio sounds like a good idea. Up until now I've only been able to use the few articles I've sold for non-full rights, which doesn't give me much selection.

[Lysis]

Yeah, I think we should be able to lower price after an initial use sale, especially when you sell it for $50 or something like that.

I'm still messing with unsold portfolio samples. I don't want to direct them to CC (can't with certain platforms) but using Google Docs I think doesn't have that nice look like a website. I can't put them on a blog because that makes them useless for full rights, so I put them in a google doc with permissions only if the person has the link. The only thing that worries me is if people steal the samples, but I can't do business constantly paranoid about that stuff. It's no different than the crappy iWriter writers or Digital Pointless people stealing articles. I figure if people are posting gigs and have a history of being a good customer, then I'm good.

[contentwriter]

Thanks for all your replies. I was away for a long time taking care of other stuff.

Do we not have the right to delete articles that did not sell for full rights? If we retain rights, what use is that if we can't remove articles from our library? I don't want to edit those articles; I just want to delete them. If they do want to keep sold articles so the buyer can re download them, why not let the buyer SAVE a copy of what they bought to THEIR account? I want certain articles to disappear from my library, plain and simple.