I have written 1.5 articles for Foundations Revealed and one for Your Wardrobe Unlock'd. These two companion sites host a wealth of information on Corset Making and Historic Costume by subscription.
The first article I wrote was for Wardrobe about Making costumes for dolls this was spurred by my entry to the Single Pattern Project of 2009. This article was the only one that was specifically requested by the editors.
The two other articles were projects that I was planing to do anyways. Though admittedly the fact that I would be paid for the Skeleton Corset article did help me convince my husband that purchasing it was a good idea.
Why did I choose to put my work on a by subscription web-page instead of publishing it for free?
1. Payment. Yeah, lets be honest and get this one out of the way. The rate that I got for my articles was $100. Now let's put this in perspective. The price I paid for the Skeleton corset was more than twice that. I also had to purchase a few materials to make a good study of it, and reproduce the busk. I spent more than $100 on materials for the 18th century maternity and nursing stays I made. So you can see I didn't really make any money off those articles.
2. There is something about having your little research projects published (and receiving payment for it) that makes you think that you really are doing something important and thus makes you want to do your best. Or at least I have found that to be the case with me.I probably wouldn't have done as good of a job on those articles if I had intended to post them to my live journal. Also I am one of those who tends to work best towards the end of a deadline.
3. Giving back to the community. By subscribing I financially show my support, but by writing, I show I care about the content. Since I am at a point where I feel I have something that is worth sharing, I should share. A certain paper magazine I subscribe too was having a lot of subscribers write in and say "I want to see an article on X, I don't care for all the Y and Z you have been publishing" they printed these letters and replied with "If you want to see and article on X, why don't you write one? We can only print what we receive and we have been getting a lot of Y and Z submitted to us." So if you want to see it, you just might need to write it!
4. Readership levels on this blog, and my own Live Journal are quite lower than the readership levels of Foundations and Wardrobe. True I could cross-post to all sorts of LJ communities, but honestly I get tired of seeing the same post multiple times on my f-list. Now this might seem boastful that I want a larger number of readers, but honestly I always secretly hope that someone has a piece of information on the topic that I missed, or a correction, so that I can learn more. I want feedback from the community.
Now let me be clear. No one has told me to write this, not even suggested it. I am not writing it because I get "goodies" for doing so, or to raise Google ratings. I just want you to know why I choose to have my articles published where in order to read them you have to subscribe, instead of for free. I enjoyed writing for Wardrobe andFoundations and may do so again in the future.
Now, I do subscribe to both sites, but I was of the same opinione before I could afford to. I think it's wonderful that people like you who has so much knowledge, can get something back! I can't see why one should share ones expertise for free all the time.
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