Bruised ego

Every now and then my ego takes over and I like to search for myself online. Don't ask me why - I'm sitting in the same room, so why I need to find myself on the Internet is anyone's guess.

Anyway, a couple of interesting things came up from this latest search: one, it appears Future is licensing content to NTL from PCA - at least one of my articles is now up on that site. I have no objections to this - I signed the contract after all that means they pay me once and once only for this work - but it does make me wonder just how much money Future makes from my writing before it sells a single magazine.

The second thing was related to the first - apparently PC Format is licensed in South Africa, so the articles I wrote for it a few years ago have appeared in the local mag down there. I came across a forum entry from 2004 where a group of South African PC enthusiasts were bemoaning the amount of imported content in the magazine. One was even suggesting he set up his own magazine. More power to their elbow I say, so long as they understand that writing articles isn't just about showing off what you know - it's also presenting your work in coherent English. I've subbed enough articles from technical experts to know their strength isn't in presenting their work to an audience. I'm not complaining - my own current technical level comes from having read, subbed and digested their work eight years ago as Prod Ed on PC Answers.

Perhaps that's why I was miffed when I read this comment: "YOu are very right Silverwing. It is a full time job and most of us dont have that full time. But maybe we should submit articles to PCF and maybe they will use them instead of just using UK guy's(Nick Peers) articles... REally I think that's what we should be aiming at. Obviously PCF will verify the articles for credibility etc... I mean its their choice to use them and if the article better than the Uk ones I'll bet they will use them. I would love to write a modding section."

As I said, good luck to you. But when a company can pay a fixed fee for a whole body of content that's far cheaper than sourcing all that material fresh, you're on to a loser from the word go. And unless PCF was a four-page magazine back in 2004, I still can't quite work out why the poster targeted me specifically - there were writers who contributed far more content to PCF than I did. I mean, until now I wasn't even aware my work had been republished in a South African magazine!