Sold articles and rights

[TammiKibler]

I really wish there were better communication around "sold" notifications that get reversed. Why are authors not notified? Why are we not provided any information about the status of the rights of our articles?

I received a full rights sold notification last week for an article, but the money didn't appear on my account. I wrote to find out what was wrong. I was told the client paid with a stolen credit card, but the problem was caught before the client accessed the article. Despite the fact that the "fraudster" did not access the account, the article was only being offered for usage rights. I wrote to support about this twice and still have not received an answer.

Then today, I had an article sell for unique rights. Shame on me, I went and did what the forums tell you to do when you sell for unique or usage rights - I put the article up on a site where I can earn residuals. When I came back here later, I saw the article was once again being offered for full and unique rights. So I guess I lost that sale too, which I get, but I don't understand why no attempt was made to notify me. How would it look if a customer had bought a full rights license between when I posted on Associated Content and when I happened to log in again and see Constant Content's change in my article status? How would we even explain that?

[Celeste Stewart]

Hi,
Sorry to hear about the fraudulent sale.

Off topic, but I noticed this sentence, "I had an article sell for unique rights. Shame on me, I went and did what the forums tell you to do when you sell for unique or usage rights - I put the article up on a site where I can earn residuals." and wanted to clarify something. Unique rights mean that the customer has exclusive rights to the content, but can't change it. If you sell an article here for unique rights, you cannot republish it elsewhere because you do not have the rights to do so. Usage, yes, unique, no.

[TammiKibler]

Hi Celeste,

I definitely had that wrong, thank you for bringing it to my attention. I searched all over the Help category for writers - tutorial, FAQ, etc. - today, and I couldn't find a clear answer as to what a unique license entails, and my imperfect brain remembered incorrectly.

All I could find was this:

http://www.constant-content.com/about/writer-faq.htm

"A usage license is basically the right to reprint the article as it is in the attached document. Purchasing a unique license is similar except that we remove the article from the archives so that no one else can purchase it."

And then I found the chart here:

http://www.constant-content.com/about/c ... torial.htm

Which appears to keep the right to sell to other sites with the author on a unique license. Of course, this section is written to the customer's perspective, but as I said, I couldn't find anything on the Author help pages that state what a unique license entails and what rights (if any) the writer retains.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.