Constant Content

I recently sold 12 articles for usage rights. All were written for a public request on stationery items. I checked on the web to see where the articles ended up, and I was saddened to see that the only two that have my byline are the ones I requested to not have my byline! All articles have been posted on sites where they are “free for republishing” and some even have links for free republishing in ezines or on websites. The customer usually lists himself as the author and puts his name in the byline. Sometimes there is a mention of my name at the bottom as part of an advertisement for the company.

I'd suggest anyone else who sold articles for usage rights to this customer would Google your articles and see where they ended up. Also, in the future I'd suggest listing only a fullrights price for this customer if he plans to use articles in this capacity.

I have contacted Support, but I wanted to let the rest of you know in case you had also sold articles to the same customer or planned to answer the recent public request for articles of the same nature.

I can't say what happened in your case but I do have to admit that I was curious after clicking your name and checking out the various offerings in the stationary genre. It looks like you had several private requests in this topic that sold as usage and then a few more public ones where you specified "no byline please" or something of that nature. It's late where I am right now but I was quite confused as to what rights were actually offered - and I am fairly well educated in the CC system. Imagine if I was a first time buyer...

Not that that is an excuse but I do believe we as writers can take charge of the rights we are offering to avoid this. Actually, if you do NOT want a byline, then don't include it and don't offer usage or unique rights. If you only want full rights, then don't offer usage or unique rights.

Specifically with private requests, don't offer usage rights as that is rarely what the customer really wants, even if he can't articulate what it is that he wants. Private request customers almost always want original articles that they can use as they will. Unfortunately, they aren't always aware of the CC license offerings. If they see Use for $x, Unique for $xx, and Full Rights for $xxx, then they may be tempted to pick the lowest price in their ignorance. Therefore, price all three licenses the same. For example:
Usage - $ 50
Unique - $50
Full Rights - $50

Part 2
That way, no matter what license they pick, you get your money. Plus, customers inadvertently screw themselves by picking usage when they really need full rights or unique rights because technically the article can be resold to other customers. Personally, when a private requester accidentally orders a usage license when I believe he really want full rights, I ask CC support to remove the article from the listing and grant full rights. Not a big deal as I have my money, right? Plus, it happens even with long time customers that know better. In your case, the private requests can technically be sold again and again. Is that really what you think the customer intended? Probably not. I suspect he simply doesn't understand the various licensings options.
Again, none of this is an excuse for buyer ignorance. If the article was offered for use at $x and full rights as $xx, the customer is obligated to abide by the license that he chose to purchase. Customers have terms and conditions of using this site that they agree to as well (I think). If he chose usage, then he cannot alter the article nor can he drop your byline. However, if buried within the summary you have asked that the byline be included or excluded despite the license type, I really don't know. I suppose it depends on if the customer bothered to read the summary. The most appropriate spot for licensing issues is within the license offered.

At first glance, this looks like a case of misunderstanding rather than abuse to me. My opinion. Your idea to offer only full rights pricing is sound advice regardless of the customer -- offer the licensing and pricing that you can live with. If you can live with usage prices, fine. If you hate the thought of usage, then don't go there and don't offer it as an option or price it as high as you would for the other licenses.

Hope this helps and doesn't sound like Lecture 20045.

Also, I now see that you were quite clear in your summaries that many of the articles were for usage rights only. This should have been enough to flag the customer of their licensing options. It's frustrating when you have to specify "this is what you are buying" and then to see that this didn't actually happen. I'm sure CC support will help you. Did you and the customer have a dialog about rights offered as part of the deal? Just curious based on some of the summaries.

This seems to be a problem internet-wide with non-English speaking customers. They do not understand sometimes, but in many cases I've heard of, they simply do not care. They have the article, and who is going to fight them, because you would have to go to China or India to do it. They figure that they are safe from getting in trouble, and if they get banned from the site, there are a dozen more to buy from. I read about someone on Digital Point Forums who lost $1700 on a deal he made for web design with someone in another country. It would cost him 10 times that much to pursue it legally. This is one unfortunate side effects of global commerce.

Bad people are going to be bad people, and that's all there is to it. Just like people will steal our articles if we post the whole thing, they will pay you for usage and use it for full rights.

Heather,

I had a similar case with a unique rights licence. I started another post thread before I saw yours. There are definitely some unscrupulous customers out there who are cheating authors, and CC from buying the licences. Mine were not private request articles though, since I haven't been lucky enough to get that yet!

Hope support can help you out too.

Kind regards,

Hayley

Thanks so much for the helpful replies.

What happened with this particular customer was something like this:
1) I wrote a few articles to answer the public request and posted them on the Q & A
2) The customer replied that he did not want to pay more than X amount per article
3) I adjusted the usage rights to meet his price and let him know via Q & A that the usage price had been adjusted
4) He said he would purchase the articles and added them to his cart for "use". I had also seen that other articles about stationery in "recently sold content" had gone for use.
5) I wrote a few more articles for the public request and posted them on the Q & A.
6) The customer asked if I sell him 10-15 articles for a discounted rate and how much I would charge.
7) I then quoted him prices. I specifically mentioned usage rights in price quotes. I asked him to put in a private request if he wanted to buy several articles all at once.
8) Since I already had some of the articles available on CC, I changed their rights to usage only so that other customers would know unique and fullrights was not available.

Part 2 (power went out for an hour, we're on an hour off an hour in Lahore, Pakistan right now!)

9) I then collected the articles already approved, plus several more, and submitted them in 3 files under the private request. Since in my dialogues with the customer we'd always discussed usage rights, and he had originally added my other articles to his cart as use licenses, I made the price for usage and specified this in the short summary.
10) The customer removed the individual articles from his cart and purchased the 3 files containing 12 articles total.

Phew! So although I was clear about the price being for usage, I think the customer was not clear about the differences between the different types of licenses. Also, he now has a purchase rating of 17, and only three of those purchases were from me. I'm wondering if the other 14 pieces he bought were used in the same way. I check the recently sold content section quite often and saw that stationery articles were usually going for "use."

I think my lessons learned are:
1) Make sure newer customers know what kind of license they want
2) Sell all articles individually unless they are for fullrights so as to avoid this kind of confusion!
3)Don't write any articles I don't want to have my byline on

I always write my byline in italics on the first line. I include it in long summaries as I read in the forum about some others having their bylines left off since it wasn't in the long summary. I thought that if I didn't want the byline, I could write (no byline please) in the space where I usually write the byline. I find it very strange that the only articles showing up with my byline, bought by this particular customer, are the ones where I specified no byline.

Oh well! I'm new on CC and still learning the ropes. The forum has been a big help, even though I don't post often.