Pretty poor Effort

[Sihing73]

Hello,

I noticed an article in the May issue of Black Bet Magazine titled Siam Sjourn by Terry L. Wilson. The article looked famliar to me and I seem to have read it before. I checked my back issues of Inside Kung Fu and lo and behold I found and article titled Shanghaied in Thailand also by Terry L. Wilson. Upon comparing the two articles I could see why it seemed familiar, they were almost the exact same article. The first few paragrahps were word for word duplicates. Many of the other paragraphs were esentially the same with slight differences in some of the wordling. If anyone wishes to verify this please refer to the February 2006 Issue of Inside Kung Fu, page 74 and the May issue of Black Belt page 112.

I personally felt this was an unethical move on the part of the author as he sold the same article to two different magazines and did not have the decency to even do a proper re-write.

I would welcome Mr. Wilson to respond and explain his actions, if he is a member of this forum. I also just wanted to make others aware of this in case anyone has had or will have any dealings with him in the future.

[GeneChing]

I'm never sure what's going on inside BB (or inside IKF for that matter) but I've been hearing some rather disparaging reports from some of the freelance writers that I work with about unethical article use. Just last month I had two reports of authors who were not only not paid for their work, they were not even notified of its publication. Perhaps it was a simultaneous submission of Wilson's - we've had redundant articles appear in both our magazine and IKF with simultaneuos submissions. Small changes in the wording might easily be accounted for by editorial changes. Wilson has never submitted to us, at least not during my watch, so I have no comment on him, but I'm quick to defend freelance writers since I was once one of them and know how easy it is to get screwed by unscrupulous editors. I try my best to be scrupulous, but I'm sure I've screwed a few in my day too, at least from their perspective.

Check out this thread (my post #34) for another weird pub in May '06 BB. (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=26966&page=3) That was one messed up issue for them apparently. :o

[Sihing73]

Hi Gene,

I will defer to you as you have far more knowledge than myself. If this is not Mr. Wilsons fault then I think the blame should fall on BB as they ran the article AFTER it was publised in IKF. Of course, I may be mistaken in this as well perhaps it was an honest mistake. Even so it would indicate porr business practices as I am sure that most people check out the competition.

[GeneChing]

Magazines are supposed to contract all freelance submissions, but often overlook this. It's a strange oversight, because it leaves non-contracted articles in a legally-vulnerable state, but no one prosecutes because it would cost more just to consult a lawyer than you'll ever possibly make from a lawsuit. I should mention that this is a problem with all magazine publications. It's not just limited to the martial arts. However, if proper contracting practices had been observed by both BB and IKF, and there's no way for me to tell if they were, the fault would fall to Wilson.

February and May are actually fairly close in terms of production schedule. It is possible that BB's May issue was already at the printers before they saw the IKF article. I'm sure they watch each other - I know we watch the other mags. But in all honesty, we read a lot of articles, so I confess that I only skim most of BB and IKF. Something like this could have gotten by me just as easily.

In any case, Wilson should not have done a simultaneuos submission. We don't accept simultaneuos submissions, but there's actually little control for it from our standpoint. A redundant pub reflects poorly on Wilson and I'm sure all the MA editors will look upon any of his future submissions with suspicion. It also reflects badly on the second publisher, BB. I'm sure they hope that no one notices, no matter whether it was an honest mistake on their part or not. IKF is probably amused.