Always a shame when you start needing to pay for something you previously had for free.

https://duotrope.com/notes_current.aspx

Still, they're a good crowd and I hope they get their subs.
G

I don't blame them either, it's a great facility.

But $50 per year?! I can't see many paying that. The Writer's and Artists Yearbook doesn't cost that! I also think many of the lesser known sites will suffer as how else do we become aware of them?

Are there places similar to Duotrope?

Perhaps we should do more to make each other aware of what is out there - perhaps a dedicated facility on WW could be created just for this in the new 'shake up' that's proposed. That would make out yearly subs look more of a bargin then

Nick

I probably donate about 50 dollars a year to Duotrope anyway. Publishers' Marketplace is 240 dollars a year and while it provides information that Duotrope doesn't (like editors' email addresses), Duotrope is similarly specialist in what it does.

And yes, the WW sub is about the same, which you can have your own thoughts about!

I don't think you can compare Duotrope with the Writers' & Artists' Yearbook. Duotrope's short fiction market information is far superior for a start.

There isn't really any other one place you can get all that information. Ralan is as comprehensive as Duotrope on Speculative Fiction (and sometimes a little ahead of it), and it's free (for now!). But in effect, if you want to get all the information Duotrope supplies, you'll have to collect from a number of sources, and in my experience some/many of them aren't nearly so current or accurate.

It could be a good thing, actually.

A lot of listings are free markets and although I've donated occasionally, actually _paying_ to find free markets is intellectually difficult. So, maybe, I'd have to start upping my game to justify having access to the database.

Anyway, as a self-employed chap, I have to be in favour of people making money out of providing a quality service!

You could lobby your local library to subscribe and make it available to members, as they do with things like OED.

Or you could regard it as a necessary expense for any writer who's trying to be business-like, along with the paper, the ink and so on.

It'll be interesting to see how the economics pan out - the loss of traffic vs the revenue...

Or you could regard it as a necessary expense for any writer who's trying to be business-like, along with the paper, the ink and so on.

I think this is key. Duotrope say somewhere that only one in ten of people who use the site have ever contributed to it financially. Which could be interpreted as only 10% of its users have a professional attitude to writing. So, if that 10% pay 50 dollars and if that's enough to keep the site going, so be it: it will be a professional site for professionals.

As Gaius says:

Anyway, as a self-employed chap, I have to be in favour of people making money out of providing a quality service!

Another quality of Dutotrope is its currency. With other, less up to date, sites, you can waste an awful lot of time exploring markets that no longer exist or have since turned dodgy.

necessary expense for any writer who's trying to be business-like,

Fair point, but I expect that most folk who use it are hobby writers who do not reguard it as a business. I think I look at Duotrope about 4 times a year so it woulod not be value for money for me and peole like me.

The comparison I made with The Writers Handbook was purely to compare costs, not what market they serve. What I meant was, the research costs might be similar, but a book has print cost, distribution cost, retail costs etc which probably account for a huge part of the cover price. These are costs a website won't have. Thats why it seems expensive to me.

Nick

but a book has print cost, distribution cost, retail costs etc which probably account for a huge part of the cover price.

Although handling, checking, collating and updating information on the scale of a website like that is enormously expensive in labour - which means overhead too - and data costs are not insignificant either. And that's before you've built in promoting it and keeping it up-to-the-minute compared with its would-be competitors.

I think the thing is that both work and hobbies cost money - nothing's for free unless it's plastered with advertising, because someone's got to earn a living by making the thing that both workers and hobbyists want. It's always frustrating when the thing you need only a little bit sometimes is more expensive than you can justify. But that's true of everything from DVDs to cars.

I think the thing is that both work and hobbies cost money - nothing's for free unless it's plastered with advertising, because someone's got to earn a living by making the thing that both workers and hobbyists want.

I agree. Services for writers tend to be pretty cheap compared with other areas of business. What a good business coach will charge, or a training company for a course, would make most writers' eyes water. I may have mentioned this before but when I did some editing work recently for a business client, he thought my hourly rate was ridiculously cheap and insisted on paying me more!

I may have mentioned this before but when I did some editing work recently for a business client, he thought my hourly rate was ridiculously cheap and insisted on paying me more!

Yes - a psychotherapist friend was astonished at what I reckoned to be a pretty tasty fee for running a one-day workshop, compared to what she would charge for something pretty comparable in terms of prep and effort and professional skills.

I think one of the issues I have is I reguard Duotrope as a directory of publishers and I always imagine directories are free to the end user (Like the Yellow Pages or Thompson local). In that Business model the people who advertise their product pay for the right to be in the directory.

nothing's for free unless it's plastered with advertising

I would argue that it is already plastered with advertising!

That said, they have obviously spent time working out what is best for them so I wish them well as they provide a good service.

Nick