"I hate making phone calls!"

"Me too!"

"It's not like I've had really bad trauma on the phone, I just don't know what to say, it's always so awkward."

"I find ways to avoid calls. I'll send an e-mail if I can. I hate calling my credit card company."

"I don't like talking to anyone unless I really know them."

• Hearing a string of foreign expletives a mile long (followed by heart-breaking news and a hang up) after finally gathering the courage to make an international call
• Being brazenly belittled, insulted, and ridiculed by agents who don't like the initial offer or contract they've received
• Being asked by an authority figure to lie to someone over the phone, while they watched to ensure I did so
• Hearing writers (whom I don't know) sigh loudly, say something mean, then hang up when I say I'm not interested in their project

• body language
• facial expressions
• that intangible vibe in the room
• eye contact, eye contact, eye contact

Dear Writer, please pay your membership fee in full.
Dear Writer, please pay for your online membership.
Dear Writer, please pay for your print edition of Writers Market.
Dear Writer, please pay for your digital edition of Writers Digest.
Dear Writer, please pay for your webinar.
Dear Writer, please pay for your competition dues.
Dear Writer, please pay for the advice you received on "How to make money as a writer."
 
DEAR WRITER, PLEASE PAY IN FULL!
 
Dear Writers Digest,
 
    I'm a writer, of merit and accomplishment. I read many of the trade journals, and avoid many of them as well - half of the writers magazines are written by people that are still in need of a copy of shrunk & white's. I'm writing you because this is becoming ludicrous.  When it comes down to it the majority of us are trying to do something we love and make money at it. We all strive to break through with every word, sentence, paragraph and page. We gorge ourselves on the advice of others, both by way of trade publication and by our hefty bookstores totals. All of us are looking for a writers haven, where we can glean from our peers, embrace the craft, and better ourselves. Unfortunately, that place no longer appears to be Writers Digest.
    As a business you've forgotten your customer. As writers, you've taken advantage of the craft and the passion with which people execute it. You can't possibly think that you can charge readers for every word. Even Barnes & Noble let's people read books in the store without throwing a surcharge on them, or even attend Book Groups without making them put down a deposit.
    I follow many of your writers, not just here, but all across the internet. I respect them tremendously, even when their writing isn't useful it's still uplifting. I was recently disappointed when I read an article, written by one of your writers, that said you were proud to announce your new webinars. I was excited, thrilled even, to think that I might get some tangible advice for the subscription I pay for, I read on eagerly so I could set the date for the next session. Then I followed a Link that showed me a price list for your short webinars.
    The small instruction explains that while originally you wanted to charge $199 dollars you decided that was too much and instead only charge $99 dollars. A $1.50 a minute...TO WRITERS...WHO ALREADY PAY FOR YOUR SERVICES. How does that equate? Let's see, a normal person, working forty hours a week, at $1.50 a minute would make over $14,000.00 dollars a month. Are you taking advice from investment bankers now, or simply trying to capitalize on the voice you've gained because of us writers who already spend countless dollars of our hard earned money on market and trade materials.
    It's really rather simple, charge, certainly, for some things. First, live up to your end of the contract, people are already paying, so start providing something to them without an additional fee. Second, be realistic, don't be so pretentious, you're time isn't worth $14,000.00 a month, not unless your running a pyramid scheme or a brothel.

1. We're not doing a very good job letting people know what content we offer for free.
2. We're not doing a good job communicating the value of what we offer or the diversity of what we offer (whether in terms of media, price point, or delivery channel).
3. Our marketing messages may be too numerous. (I can confirm that the frequency of these messages has increased dramatically in 2009.)
4. Whatever it is that we provide writers (for free or not), we're failing if writers feel that we're heartlessly capitalizing on their dreams, and merely exist to find more ways to take their money.

Our blogs. We have blogs focusing on agents, poetry, children's/YA, scriptwriting, plus general Q&A. The blogs focus on prescriptive/how-to information, current events, interviews with people in the industry, and inspiration (like Robert's Poem-a-Day challenge). We also frequently link to other (free/paid) resources that compete against us, in the name of serving the community. Best Tweets for Writers and 101 Best Websites (2009 list coming soon!) are good examples of this.

WD.com. All content here is free, and there is a ton of it (although admittedly it can sometimes be hard to find). You can find most of of the magazine's content here 1-2 months after the issue has released, as well as book excerpts (click here for a starter list). There is also an active forum where we regularly bring in guests to answer questions.

Your Story. This is a free contest we run every issue of the magazine that offers an opportunity to get published with us.

Newsletters. You can sign-up for our weekly newsletter with tips/prompts at our homepage, and get a free e-book (on common writing mistakes) while you're at it. There's also a free newsletter associated with WritersMarket.com.

Twitter/Facebook. There are unique opportunities to interact with Writer's Digest editors through Twitter and Facebook. I've managed to answer some questions in 140 characters or less, and also learned a lot from the community in the process. It's a two-way street.

It will do us little good to wire the world if we short-circuit our souls. … This transformational new technology must be an extension of our hearts as well as of our minds.

I used to think (and the general public thinks) that editors read (or edit). People who meet me for the first time, upon learning I work as an editor say, "Wow, it must be great to read all day."

Instead of thinking of editors as people who read your work (and insert commas), think of them as the people who champion an author's work throughout the weeks and months leading to publication, throughout countless meetings and interactions with internal staff, and continue to champion that author when sales have flagged or the book has become a backlist title.

Displayed between two sheets of Plexiglas in an ultramodern Tokyo penthouse apartment is one of the world’s rarest pairs of blue jeans, preserved with the care usually reserved for an antique kimono. Like many late-1990s indigos, the pair is artificially distressed: faded, torn, and whiskered. Yet it was not created by a high-end denim designer, but a depressed, freshman girl at an American university. It was a product of the Emotionally Distressed Jeans project, an exclusive line available only on the black market to an elite group of extremely wealthy consumers.

The jeans were the brainchild of a secret partnership between two groups of graduate students—psychology and business—at the University of Pennsylvania. They believed that negative emotions, instead of being quashed with the decade’s drug of choice, Prozac, should be expressed and channeled into lucrative endeavors. Unbeknownst to UPenn administrators, they tested this out by giving a fresh pair of stiff indigo jeans to every student who visited the school’s mental health counseling center. The recipients were instructed to take out all their frustration and anxiety on the denim—rather than themselves or their friends—for a week. Seven days later, the “emotionally distressed” jeans were returned to the center, along with a logbook listing the methods used to create the damages.