#badclient — Public Fediverse posts

This year’s one bum client–fortunately, also my only serious bum client in years

Nearing year-end accounting usually reminds me of story ideas that I’d meant to follow up and then never sold to anybody, but this year it also involves some unpaid work that I probably can’t do anything about. Which is unfortunate but also fortunately rare in my experience.

This episode started March 1, when I got an e-mail from an editor at GQ China named Xu Zhu asking if I would like to write a long-form essay about the SXSW experience, the idea being that I would be “inviting the reader to experience SXSW through your eyes.”

Having gone to that conference since 2012, I knew I could write that but not at the rate Zhu had proposed. So I asked for twice as much and got an affirmative answer two days later. Meanwhile, I asked a journalist friend who had written for that publication before about her experience with it; she said they took months to pay (something noted in the draft contract I got) but were otherwise fine to deal with.

I wrote the essay, then stupidly let two months go by before I provided my payment details. My editor replied apologetically that a broken leg from an accident had held up things… and that’s the last I’ve heard from anybody at that organization.

Since then, I’ve e-mailed this editor multiple times as well as GQ China’s PR contact and the publication’s editor in chief as of July, and it’s been radio silence throughout. A friend who writes for a U.S.-based Condé Nast publication couldn’t shed any more light on the situation. The craziest thing is that I don’t even know if this story ever ran, since GQ China’s Google-indexed online presence seems to stop with its Instagram account.

Unless this post somehow scares an answer out of that newsroom, it looks like I got screwed. Which stinks, but which has also somehow not happened until now in almost 14 years of full-time freelancing. More often, by which I mean at least twice, I’ve had clients assign stories and pay for them without ever publishing them.

I can only guess what went wrong in this case–publishing in China under that country’s Communist regime does seem complicated. which in July led to GQ China losing its state-affiliated publishing partner. But whatever the cause, I now consider myself free to sell this unpaid work to a client. That will most likely be the small audience of my Patreon page, but if anybody could use a months-old essay about the SXSW experience and is ready to pay a reasonable rate, please get in touch. And please provide money-transfer details soonest.

#Austin #badClient #bumClient #deadbeat #GQChina #sxsw #XuZhu #ZhizuGQMagazine

This year’s one bum client–fortunately, also my only serious bum client in years

Nearing year-end accounting usually reminds me of story ideas that I’d meant to follow up and then never sold to anybody, but this year it also involves some unpaid work that I probably can’t do anything about. Which is unfortunate but also fortunately rare in my experience.

This episode started March 1, when I got an e-mail from an editor at GQ China named Xu Zhu asking if I would like to write a long-form essay about the SXSW experience, the idea being that I would be “inviting the reader to experience SXSW through your eyes.”

Having gone to that conference since 2012, I knew I could write that but not at the rate Zhu had proposed. So I asked for twice as much and got an affirmative answer two days later. Meanwhile, I asked a journalist friend who had written for that publication before about her experience with it; she said they took months to pay (something noted in the draft contract I got) but were otherwise fine to deal with.

I wrote the essay, then stupidly let two months go by before I provided my payment details. My editor replied apologetically that a broken leg from an accident had held up things… and that’s the last I’ve heard from anybody at that organization.

Since then, I’ve e-mailed this editor multiple times as well as GQ China’s PR contact and the publication’s editor in chief as of July, and it’s been radio silence throughout. A friend who writes for a U.S.-based Condé Nast publication couldn’t shed any more light on the situation. The craziest thing is that I don’t even know if this story ever ran, since GQ China’s Google-indexed online presence seems to stop with its Instagram account.

Unless this post somehow scares an answer out of that newsroom, it looks like I got screwed. Which stinks, but which has also somehow not happened until now in almost 14 years of full-time freelancing. More often, by which I mean at least twice, I’ve had clients assign stories and pay for them without ever publishing them.

I can only guess what went wrong in this case–publishing in China under that country’s Communist regime does seem complicated. which in July led to GQ China losing its state-affiliated publishing partner. But whatever the cause, I now consider myself free to sell this unpaid work to a client. That will most likely be the small audience of my Patreon page, but if anybody could use a months-old essay about the SXSW experience and is ready to pay a reasonable rate, please get in touch. And please provide money-transfer details soonest.

#Austin #badClient #bumClient #deadbeat #GQChina #sxsw #XuZhu #ZhizuGQMagazine

This year’s one bum client–fortunately, also my only serious bum client in years

Nearing year-end accounting usually reminds me of story ideas that I’d meant to follow up and then never sold to anybody, but this year it also involves some unpaid work that I probably can’t do anything about. Which is unfortunate but also fortunately rare in my experience.

This episode started March 1, when I got an e-mail from an editor at GQ China named Xu Zhu asking if I would like to write a long-form essay about the SXSW experience, the idea being that I would be “inviting the reader to experience SXSW through your eyes.”

Having gone to that conference since 2012, I knew I could write that but not at the rate Zhu had proposed. So I asked for twice as much and got an affirmative answer two days later. Meanwhile, I asked a journalist friend who had written for that publication before about her experience with it; she said they took months to pay (something noted in the draft contract I got) but were otherwise fine to deal with.

I wrote the essay, then stupidly let two months go by before I provided my payment details. My editor replied apologetically that a broken leg from an accident had held up things… and that’s the last I’ve heard from anybody at that organization.

Since then, I’ve e-mailed this editor multiple times as well as GQ China’s PR contact and the publication’s editor in chief as of July, and it’s been radio silence throughout. A friend who writes for a U.S.-based Condé Nast publication couldn’t shed any more light on the situation. The craziest thing is that I don’t even know if this story ever ran, since GQ China’s Google-indexed online presence seems to stop with its Instagram account.

Unless this post somehow scares an answer out of that newsroom, it looks like I got screwed. Which stinks, but which has also somehow not happened until now in almost 14 years of full-time freelancing. More often, by which I mean at least twice, I’ve had clients assign stories and pay for them without ever publishing them.

I can only guess what went wrong in this case–publishing in China under that country’s Communist regime does seem complicated. which in July led to GQ China losing its state-affiliated publishing partner. But whatever the cause, I now consider myself free to sell this unpaid work to a client. That will most likely be the small audience of my Patreon page, but if anybody could use a months-old essay about the SXSW experience and is ready to pay a reasonable rate, please get in touch. And please provide money-transfer details soonest.

#Austin #badClient #bumClient #deadbeat #GQChina #sxsw #XuZhu #ZhizuGQMagazine