New and slightly confused

[isande]

Hi folks,

I've been lurking on this site for some ridiculous length of time... Okay, that's not quite accurate. Let's try again.

I've been registered at CC for a ridiculous length of time, considering that I just submitted my first article here on Thursday or Friday. When I first registered, I read the forums a bit, encountered a few people complaining about the three strikes rule, and promptly ran away for close to two years. At that time, I wasn't ready to risk a suspension because I was new to professional writing and not especially confident of my ability to write to CC's standards.

I came back about a week ago and spent an outrageous amount of time reading the guidelines, the blog, content others had had accepted, and nearly every post on the forums. I decided to start off by revising and expanding a couple of previously published articles that I still own the rights for and submitting them for usage only. Both of these articles were published under my real name -- the same byline I'll be using here. As a further CYA, I thought it would be best to include a note to Ed in the short summary of each, mentioning where they were published once previously and that my byline was on the earlier versions. I'm sure this wasn't necessary, but I did it anyway... just in case.

At the top of both short summaries, I put in a single sentence that read something like this: "Note to Ed: This is a revised and expanded version of an article I published previously at Suite101.com, under the same byline."

Today I received a rejection notice for the first of the two articles, which read: "Please do not include information about previously published content on your submission form. Thanks."

LOL! Apparently my attempt to be extra-cautious landed me my first rejection. Woops!

So I stripped that line from the other (still under review) article's short summary and resubmitted the rejected one without a note to Ed on it.

I'm a little confused though, because I did put "Note to Ed" at the beginning. I was under the impression that we're supposed to put notes at the top of the short summary, and that Ed would remove them before posting the article to the site if it was accepted.

My guess is that Ed either didn't see the "Note to Ed" part, or I inadvertently omitted it (but I'm 99% certain I didn't), or maybe it was because this particular note wasn't necessary. The last possibility seems most likely; I do have a habit of send notes to editors with submissions. Other editors I've worked with like that I do this, but Ed's volume is so high that I suspect unnecessary notes attached to articles are probably annoying.

Now I'll sit back and wait for the next rejection note to arrive, which will probably be a result of either something I missed while proofreading or a result of second-guessing myself too much when I repeatedly revised the two articles before submitting.

Peggy D. (I think there's another Peggy here?)

[Ed]

No, I saw it. Thanks for removing it. Information about location of and byline that appears on previously published content is irrelevant. Our checks determine if we can accept content based upon if the author has heeded the rules of our licensing structure and how the article appears elsewhere. As long as your name appears on the content that is previously published in an easily identifiable location and you are asking usage rights only for the article, that is all you need to do.

Thanks Peggy.

Ed

[isande]

Thank you Ed! That makes perfect sense.

Peggy

[Antonia]

Hi Peggy and welcome to CC!

I just wanted to say that I love that you spent a couple years honing your skills elsewhere before coming back to CC. Talk about a long-term success strategy

Good luck with your first submissions. Here's hoping for an acceptance!

[Lysis]

lol Peggy, I did that too. I thought I was being helpful. xD Whooops!

[isande]

lol Peggy, I did that too. I thought I was being helpful. xD Whooops!

At least I'm not the only one

I could grumble (like some have on these forums) about this being my first rejection, ever -- and out of the roughly 700 articles I've submitted to various markets, it is -- but I have a hard time really seeing the majority of CC "rejections" as actual rejections. From what I've gathered, almost all are requests for revision and articles only *really* get rejected if there's plagiarism involved or if the writer fails to revise thoroughly.

I do realize that repeated requests from Ed to revise articles are a problem and can lead to account suspension, but I'm not *too* worried (yet). Although I've been asked to revise articles for other markets, it's never been because of problems with the writing or grammar, and I've never had an article sent back a second time. Usually it's either because the editor wanted additional information (e.g., on an article about popular refrigerator models, info on warranty coverage) or because the editor had trouble fact-checking something and needed the specific page in a publication where the information appeared.

Then again, Ed reviews articles but doesn't correct typos and grammatical mistakes, so I'm prepared to find out that I'm not proofreading and self-editing as well as I think I am. Or maybe I am. I'm actually fretting more about conclusions and titles. (Which is kind of funny when it comes to titles, since I actually have one ongoing contract that consists of editing several thousand titles each month!)

OK, enough rambling -- it's time to go back to biting my nails. Thank you, Antonia, for your warm welcome, and Lysis, for pointing out that I'm not the only one to go overboard trying to be helpful

Peggy

[jadedragon]

The nice thing is you'll never get an article kicked back for content - just bad writing. How is being a title editor for DS? Are all those crazy titles human made or just computer generated?

[Debbi]

DS titles are ridiculous. I had one recently that was "Dog Injury to the Spine". I took it to mean the injury was to the dog's spine but who knows, maybe it was an spinal injury caused by a dog? Hah! Guess I'll find out if I get a rewrite. I believe people actually create those title out of huge lists of keywords.

CC is so freeing that way. Everything is your decision

[isande]

The nice thing is you'll never get an article kicked back for content - just bad writing. How is being a title editor for DS? Are all those crazy titles human made or just computer generated?

They're human generated, sort of. The "raw" titles are actually search terms, which are filtered through a program that removes any with too few words and any that an algorithm determines are unlikely to make much money. Then they go to the titling team... I think the first pass is title QA, where titles can be accepted as is, discarded, or sent to the title editors. After acceptance or editing, the titles go to another group that put them in categories, determine what site they go to, etc. I *think* there's another pass through the program at this point, where the value of the title is calculated, and those that probably won't make much money are discarded.

If you see bad titles in the writing interface -- as I certainly do, and often -- it's usually because a title was accepted as-is or sent to editing when it shouldn't have been. Title editors can't reject titles, unfortunately. If I get a bad one, all I can do is clean up any grammar issues and make other minor edits that don't change the meaning of the title. Most of the titles that pass through editing are pretty good, but I've also seen some very bad ones.

As for title editing itself, well...

I preferred the older title proofing and title reviewing system. I was a title reviewer until they changed the titling system; it was both enjoyable and paid well. I like title editing but the pay is pretty weak (roughly $10-15/hour) so I don't do a tremendous amount of it. Really, the best part is that I can spend a few minutes here and there, when I wouldn't have the time to work on another project... or if I'm hitting a brick wall with writing and don't have any current editing assignments, I'll do some title editing just because it's easy and pretty mindless.

But yeah, those awful titles you guys run into... most of the time that would be a mistake of the person who hits the "keep, toss or edit" button before they get to me and the other title editors. If I had "Dog Injury to the Spine" show up in my editing queue, I'd make a judgment call and change it to "Spinal Injuries in Dogs" or something along those lines.

I feel your pain, though. I have around 500 published articles through DS, but haven't written for them in quite some time. I may be taking it up again soon, though, as I was invited to write for Livestrong.com today and the pay is considerably higher (plus fewer citations). Still, I don't think I'll ever use DS as the bulk of my income... writing to specific titles and formats is pretty unpleasant.

Peggy

P.S. Excuse the cruddy grammar and ridiculously-long sentences above... it's late and I'm tiiiiiired.

[isande]

*happy dance*

Both articles were just accepted! Yay!

Thank you Ed!!

Peggy

[Antonia]

congrats!

[PeggyTee]

Hi Peggy!

Welcome to CC and congratulations on your first acceptances! It's always a great feeling to have those articles accepted. No more lurking, more writing please

Now you just have to wait (hopefully not long) for that little email which starts "Constant Content Article Sold!"

Cheers,
Peggy T.