Duotrope used to be the place to go when I wanted to find a new magazine to submit to. I don't go there every day or week or month, just when I need to. I have a few magazines that I always submit to first, so I only go to duotrope when I want to find new ones, or sometimes to check on stats for the response times.
Well, I was very surprised today to find that duotrope is now charging a fee for their service - and there's a free trial. Yeah, thanks, duotrope I've been trying your service for years now, and I know how it works, but there is no way that I'm going to pay $50 a year for a search engine, which is essentially what it was for me. Right now I make $0 off my writing. I keep doing it because it's part of who I am and I love it, but there is no way in which I will spend that much money on it, no matter how good their service is.
It strikes me that they are going about this in a very stupid/backward way. All they had to do was put up some ads, or, as many have suggested before me, to charge the magazines (who get free promotion) instead of the authors. I mean, let's be honest here, authors who are established and who make a lot of money have probably already found their niche and don't need to search for magazines. Even if they do need to do some digging to find new places, they are already in the right circles and will probably hear about the new magazine elsewhere. It's only poor writers who are starting out that need this service, and they can't afford this.
And when you lose these many, many aspiring authors who used to contribute to the database what you have left is less accurate information that you're making people pay more for. Sounds like a failure to me. It will be sad and unfortunate, but I believe that they've just signed their own death warrant.
Unfortunately the only alternative that I know of right now is Ralan's which I find completely unintelligible. So, it's back to the google search for me.
What are your thoughts?
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