Reprinting Policy

This is one of those pages that’s going to seem wall-to-wall petty if you don’t know the context, but for a couple years there there were a couple “progressive” for-profit news sites who repeatedly reprinted my work without permission or attribution. One of those sites–Crooks & Liars–ignored my takedown requests and acted like complete jerks when I called them out publicly. I guess their “progressive values” don’t extend to thinking the Equal Protection clause applies to copyright.

So I beg the forbearance of decent people who don’t plagiarize women and those perceived to be women; the snark and contempt on this page isn’t directed your way.

In any case:

You need my permission to reprint my work. You are not “promoting me” or “doing me a favor” by copying and pasting my work. I’m a working professional writer. I get plenty of ‘exposure’ from people who ask for permission and pay me.

If you’d like my permission to reprint my work, you can contact me via the form on my consulting page. If you’re planning to monetize my work–including by running ads next to it–please include the payment you’re offering in your request. I accept payment in US dollars and anything else paypal can handle. I cannot accept payments in cryptocurrency or ‘exposure.’

Notes:

  • Fair use? Fine by me! I support fair use and transformative works. I’m just tired of for-profit blogs ripping off my work and dumping a bunch of misogyny my way when I ask them to stop.
  • Fisking is not fair use. I too once thought that copying other people’s work in its entirety and interspersing snarky comments was the pinnacle of wit, but then I grew up and learned to write. I cannot force anyone to respect themselves or their audience enough to learn to construct a coherent argument, but I can assure you that copying an entire post doesn’t suddenly become fair use if you add your own comments.
  • I’m happy to consider unpaid reprint requests for non-commercial use. I put work up for free because I want it to be useful to people. I’m happy to work with students, educators, nonprofits and clubs that don’t have the budget to pay for this type of content.
  • Edits to my work require explicit permission. If the post requires edits before its suitable for your use, please let me know what those edits are when you ask for permission to reprint (you don’t need to include a line-edit at this stage; just “we have an international audience so we’ll need to clarify that you’re talking about US law,” or “we’ll need to edit out the cuss words.” We can work out precise wording changes after I’ve given you the green light).