Writers Across Country Oppose Abusive New Contract: Many Major Magazines Affected

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They’re calling it — long, loud, bitter laugh — the Master Author Agreement. That’s the latest creative writing from Transcontinental Media, one of Canada’s largest glossy magazine publishers.

Make that the Slave Agreement.

If you’re thinking of writing for any one of the many magazines they publish, across Canada in English and French — from Hockey News to More [for whom I've written] to Vancouver -- you’ll be asked to sign a new writer’s agreement so breathakingly seigneurial it makes the standard rights-grab/crappy pay/25 % kill fees we get in the States look…generous. Hey, that’s a recession for you. Screw writers worse!

Canadian writers protest huge publisher’s abusive new contract. I admire the hell out of Derek Finkle and his fellow writers for taking a stand. Will anyone honor it and refuse to sell copy to these jerks? I hope so. It’s very tough in Canada to make a living as a freelance writer — rates are even lower than in the U.S. and there are many fewer markets to sell to. Publishers have always known that and taken advantage of their writers, whom they see as a desperate and captive audience.(When I planned an event on “writing for American publications” in October 2008 in Toronto, we got 94 people, an SRO crowd.)

I’ve never seen an action like this in my decades of working in this industry. It’s long overdue.