PASTE MAGAZINE PARTNERS WITH FEATUREWELL.COM Media Bistro
January 12, 2010
While giant publishers with seemingly limitless budgets were forced to reassess their finances and even shutter publications over the last two years, a small, 8-year-old music magazine has been quietly expanding through innovative solutions to its cost problem.

KEYS TO THE SURVIVAL CODE
By Erika Prafder
January 18, 2006, New York Post

WITH nearly 7,000 new online sellers each day, the time is ripe to get your slice of e-commerce action. But considering the fact that 95 percent of all businesses fail within the first five years, there are several keys to being an Internet business survivor.

Consider journalist David Wallis’ move. It was with a leap of faith that he launched his own electronic brainchild back in 2000. Though the Internet bubble was beginning to burst, smack in the midst of a wave of “dot-com bombs,” Wallis was so convinced that the new medium was ideal for marketing articles to publishers, that he used credit his cards and personal savings to fund a Web-based syndication service called Featurewell.com. His Web site gives writers a system to share in the profits of republication.

“You can do all the research you want and be passionate about your business, but on some level you have to be blind and stupid,” admits Wallis. And his take-the-plunge approach has paid off.

Since its inception, Featurewell now boasts 1,500 clients in 40 countries and its annual sales have quintupled. Here’s what Wallis has learned about e-business in order to stay alive and thrive in cyberspace:

1. Practice a “just say no” philosophy. While starting out, other business entities may try to partner up or affiliate with yours. Don’t get distracted. Although you don’t want to turn down a profitable opportunity, you shouldn’t waste time on propositions that steer you away from your core business mission. Concentrate on building your brand well.

2. Remember the human touch. Each week, Wallis personally calls all of the twenty (or so) new registrants to his Web site. “I use it as a sales call, but also want them to know that there’s someone behind the Web site,” he says.

3. Spruce up your e-space. Just as we keep our home fronts tidy and appealing, let visitors know you take pride in your firm. Redesign the Web site or at least its homepage bi-annually. No need to add flash animation in order to be on the cutting edge. Such bells-and-whistle effects can be annoying. Keep the site clear and easy to navigate. A refurbished domain is more likely to ward off hackers who will sense that your site is well guarded.

4. Be careful what you wish for. Patience and venture capital is an oxymoron. Financial backers usually want to see fast growth, but you may not be able to deliver to the degree it’s demanded. Create a solid company using your own money if you have reasonable goals and expectations, and if you concentrate on quality.

5. Network offline. Remember, personal relationships drive business. Shut off that monitor and go out to meet clients and prospects at professional gatherings and industry conferences.

Also, customer service can make or break your e-business. Patrons must be able to find the products and information they are looking for quickly and with a minimal effort and clicks.

THE GENUINE ARTICLE
Small, focused dot-com syndicate outlasts the big guys.
September 24, 2002
By Ken Layne, Tech Central Station

When journalist David Wallis launched his Web-based syndication service two years ago, it seemed a pretty humble enterprise compared to the online syndicates of the day.

His Featurewell.com wasn't a slick multi-million-dollar content marketplace portal like iSyndicate or ScreamingMedia. Instead, Featurewell would be about quality journalism and fair treatment of writers - not exactly the buzzwords of the dot-com era.

Those other Web syndicates have mostly vanished or were consolidated into enterprise streaming solutions or whatever (every "404 Not Found" tells a story), but Featurewell celebrates its second anniversary this week with a party at Manhattan's Roger Smith Hotel. Featurewell writers Andy Borowitz, Justin Kaplan and Anne Bernays are among those scheduled to give readings. Power Point presentations are unlikely.

There are some 800 writers - Jimmy Breslin . . . Christopher Hitchens and Andrei Codrescu, to name a few - who use Featurewell to sell their work again and again to the 900 editors signed up with the service. Wallis has a reputation as a fierce defender of free-lancers' rights, and this combined with his record of actually getting the money from publishers to journalists makes Featurewell a friendly place for an impressive roster of writers.

"Writers appreciate the fact that we give them as much as possible, a very fair cut," Wallis said. Featurewell pays 60 percent of sales to writers, a generous share in the syndication business. Newspapers benefit too, because they get to run quality stuff at a good price.

By hand-picking his writers and the pieces he sells, Wallis has created what those Internet-bubble moneyholes never could with all their fancy content management systems: a solid relationship with newspaper editors based on personal service. Wallis started Featurewell with just $30,000 and a Web site built by his business partner Marc Deveaux. This year, the small company is expected to sell $200,000 worth of articles.

"We're still around," Wallis said. "Proudly defying expectations, proud to be a dot-com. I never thought it was going to be the next Yahoo. That was a problem with a lot of the companies out there - they all expected to be huge enterprises." Wallis says he "kept expenses really low" and doesn't even have a marketing budget. "I see all these sites that got $20 million, $50 million for Web sites. For a million or two, I could have done wonders."

Maybe. But his easy-to-use site seems to do the job just fine. Every registered buyer already has the technology to get a Featurewell story. It's called "cut and paste," and even newspaper editors can do it without difficulty. Wallis prices the articles based on length, newsworthiness, the size of the paper and the rights being purchased - generally print rights in the paper's circulation area.

While the Internet makes it simple to receive and deliver copy, Wallis says it's human attention that makes the business function.

"It's somewhat counterintuitive to the Web, because people say the Web is all about automation… But the human touch of a phone call lets the client know two things: I let them know there are people, real people, behind the Web. And if they were thinking about filching the material, there are real people to track them down like bloodhounds."

Collecting payment sometimes demands creativity, as was the case when an editor in Mexico repeatedly failed to pay a bill. Wallis decided to play on the editor's machismo. "I now question your honor as a gentleman," Wallis wrote. The editor was furious, but quickly paid up.

Annual sales of $200,000 won't put Featurewell on the cover of Forbes, but the syndicate is already profitable. Try to come up with the name of another journalism dot-com with actual profits. Wallis expects annual sales to reach $1 million by the company's fifth year.

The survival and success of Featurewell has a lot to do with the fact that Wallis is himself a prominent journalist. He writes regularly for the New York Times Magazine and the Washington Post and contributes to the New Yorker and Wired. (When an article about Featurewell referred to him as a "former" reporter, Wallis says he took the first plane to Guantanamo to file a story. "I write to keep myself in the game," he says. "It also lets writers know that I have toiled as they have.")

My free-lance pals in Los Angeles had good things to say about Wallis and Featurewell, so I got an introduction from syndicated columnist Amy Alkon and media critic Catherine Seipp a few months ago. (Wallis doesn't take unsolicited submissions.) I turned in a humor piece originally written for FoxNews.com, and a few days later Featurewell sold it to a North Carolina weekly I didn't even know existed. There are tens of thousands of daily and weekly newspapers in the world, and it's very unlikely any single writer will know editors at more than a handful of those publications.

Encouraged by the first experiment, I put a Sept. 11 feature up for sale. In two weeks, Wallis sold it to five papers - including the San Francisco Chronicle and Toronto Sun. For a free-lancer, that's just astonishing. And for writers accustomed to working in a single market, it's a terrific lesson on the handling of secondary rights.

With thousands of publications recently planning big Sept. 11 anniversary packages, Wallis was very busy helping editors fill space. "I'm a war profiteer," he said earlier this month, surprised by the huge jump in sales. "I'm a merchant of death."

He's actually a merchant of information, using disruptive technologies to remove some of the most annoying, labor-intensive parts of the free-lance writer's existence.

"I thought the Internet could take a lot of hassle away from that," he says. "Featurewell simplifies the processes of the free-lance lifestyle. I've written a lot of checks to a lot of writers. Not necessarily big checks, but sometimes they are. I also want to make money on it."

An "unabashed fan of the newspaper," Wallis knows all those thousands of papers aren't going anywhere soon. And each of those papers has a news hole that must be filled again and again. Might as well make it easy for them… and for the writers.

GIVING STORIES NEW LIFE
By Ilene Roizman
East Hampton Star
July 18, 2002

[Featurewell's] focus is on high-quality journalism. It is, [CEO David Wallis] admits, totally subjective, but he is, he said, very confident in his own judgment - and the list of writers backs this up. Among them are Jimmy Breslin, Andrei Codrescu, Alan Dershowitz, Claudia Dreifus, Christopher Hitchens, Molly Ivins, Ed Koch, Peter D. Kramer, David Margolick, Malachy McCourt, and Peter Vescey. Publishers from around the world buy articles from Featurewell. While he has strong political beliefs, Mr. Wallis said he focuses on quality journalism regardless of where it falls on the political spectrum. He takes stories that he doesn't necessarily agree with but are "cogent and well-written," and finds it amusing that, because of the range of opinions in the writers whose work he offers, he's been "vilified as an extremist on either side. . . "

FEATUREWELL'S DAVID WALLIS TALKS ABOUT THE BATTLE FOR FREELANCE RIGHTS
By Jim Benning
June 25, 2001

Online Journalism Review

David Wallis founded the online syndicate Featurewell last year to create a go-to site for editors seeking to buy well-written articles. A freelance journalist himself, Wallis vowed to showcase high-quality writing, and he promised contributors 60 percent of the proceeds from sales. Many writers, including Pulitzer Prize winners, jumped at the chance, contributing profiles and news features, health columns, sports stories and travel narratives.

Wallis, 34, has since become an outspoken advocate for writers. Now he's planning a series of quarterly readings in Manhattan. The first, scheduled for Tuesday, June 26, will feature contributors Jimmy Breslin, Daniel Asa Rose and Gayle Forman. We asked Wallis, who lives in Manhattan, about online syndication, writers' rights and the new reading series.

Has Featurewell developed as you'd envisioned it would?

Yes -- with reservations. We have attracted over 600 clients, including editors at Web sites, magazines and newspapers throughout the world. I thought it would be fairly easy to get writers interested in the concept of Featurewell, and that has turned out to be true. Now we have over four hundred writers. Could we make more sales? Sure, but we've sold over $60,000 in stories in eight months, with hardly a marketing budget. Every time I write a check to a writer I'm thrilled. I really believe we are on course for rational growth.

Who's buying?

Print publications purchase most of the articles we sell, but we do have a few Web providers out there who buy. I don't release client information as a courtesy to clients, and because I don't want to give away competitive information. But major publications in the following countries have bought from me: Australia, New Zealand, England, Ireland, Hong Kong, Austria, Canada, Mexico, Malaysia and Singapore. And of course, alternative papers in this country purchase articles. We want more.

Why aren't more online publications buying?

First off, the marketing effort I've made has been mainly directed at print publications. I think they're more lucrative, and they'll be around next year. Web sites have been going under. I think we will market more to the Web in the future. I believe there will be a second wave of Internet companies that require content. I think this second wave will have more of a likelihood to succeed and prosper because they'll follow standard business procedures, including the need for profit. You know, the "P" word.

When do you think that will happen?

I think we're seeing it already. I see investors starting to think about the Web in more nuanced ways, starting to sniff around. Those who have been scared away are done and gone. It makes sense that there will be others who will learn from the mistakes of the first wave. Do I expect companies to give away products in the future in order to lure advertisers? No. I think Steve Brill may be onto something with the purchase of Inside. I think the idea of publications charging a modest fee -- I think he's talking about $3.95 a month -- could work. Look at the Wall Street Journal's success. That's one content provider that has done well with the subscription model. By charging a modest fee, Brill will attract readers. He also wants to charge about 40 cents an article. I'm not so sure the public is ready yet for micropayments. In five years, I believe micropayments will be more common. Micropayments will be easier when you don't think twice about a 10-cent click. Right now, you do.

Are you optimistic about the future of advertising online?

I believe that advertisers are going to come back. I don't know that they'll pay the rates they once did, but the fact of the matter is that the Web is a tool to extend the brand, and marketers will always pay for the ability to extend the brand.

What about the future of syndication online?

The big Web-based syndicators are teetering. I don't think they'll survive. You can't sell articles for $3.Screaming Media and iSyndicate are willing to practically give away an article, and that's all about quantity, not quality. I think as the Web develops, there will be a desire from publishers for quality, not just quantity. The second thing I see happening is the death of companies like APB.com, which did wonderful journalism but had bloated staffs. That's a thing of the past. There will be publications that are lean and mean but need quality, and I emphasize quality in italics. I think that's what we are.

How many articles are you turning away these days in the interest of quality?

I turn down 75 percent of the articles that are submitted, and I put up about 40 stories a week. I'm being very picky. I want the style to be strong, the reporting to be great. I really don't care all that much about the topic or the point of view. We're nonpartisan. I try to focus on great writing, which is one of the reasons I launched the reading series. An arcane story that's well written but won't interest an international audience will be less likely to find its way onto my site than a story that interests the Czechs and Chinese.

What percentage of your buyers are foreign?

Sixty.

That's a lot.

That's the business of syndication. The same story that will earn you $50 in America will earn you $500 in Europe. I'm always surprised at how cheap American newspapers are, so I'm focusing on the international publications.

You've become an outspoken advocate for writers. How did that come about?

I got pissed off. Any independent journalist who reads the contracts has seen writers increasingly lose rights as publishers increasingly grab as much as they can and refuse to share a piece of the pie. I think the worst case I've seen has been a magazine called Savoy. Savoy has a contract that is not only an all-rights contract, but they penalize the writer 25 percent if he or she is a day late on an assignment, and for every five days that a piece is late, they deduct another 25 percent. So theoretically after 15 days, if let's say a source has gone away and you can't complete the article, they have a right to run the piece without paying you. Independent professional writers with a sense of dignity should not write for a magazine like that. I think writers increasingly have to take stock of why they're in the business. It's usually not to be taken advantage of. As a collective, we need to have some cajones and start being able to walk away. (Officials at Savoy declined to comment on these statements.

Do you find online publications any friendlier?

Both print and online are increasingly pushing onerous contracts on writers.

What online publications do you suggest writers watch out for?

Salon, of course. Salon has a contract that is not beneficial to writers. Salon will negotiate, by the way. Just say no. That's my advice to writers. If a publication wants the piece and is the first to run it -- and I'm not just talking about Salon here but any publication -- assume it will negotiate with you. Now you may not want to fight the New Yorker. You have to pick your battles. There are plenty of accomplished writers out there who can say no and negotiate better terms. It feels so personal to writers. Writers need to distance themselves a touch.

How about the question of copyrights online?

First of all, most writers don't realize that when you don't sign a contract with a publication you own the copyright. You need a written contract in order to cede your rights. You can't go to war every time. Just try to sell first North American serial rights with an exclusionary period of between one and 90 days that allows you to resell the work at some point. Be very careful of agreements that ask for non-exclusive electronic rights, because what a magazine can then do is turn around, make a deal with Screaming Media or iSyndicate, sell your work to a hundred Web sites and not pay you a dime. Give publishers a certain period of time to put a piece on the Web. And don't be ridiculous about it. If you're getting big money and being sent to Rio, think twice about raising a stink. However, if you're being paid a buck a word by a magazine that is not the market leader, you need to fight a bit. Often, editors will say okay. They want to be first. One of the reasons I started Featurewell was that I'd heard writers being asked by editors, "What are you going to do with these rights, anyway?" With Featurewell, we've edited that excuse from the lexicon of independent journalism.

Do you think today's Supreme Court ruling will change any of this?

I was thrilled to hear of the Supreme Court's decision. Who would have thought that I would see eye-to-eye with Justice Scalia? However, I warn freelancers not to divvy up their winnings just yet. The question of damages now must be decided by Lower Court. And that court may not be as generous as the National Writer's Union might hope for. It's an enormous emotional victory. And having the pat-on-the-back telling us that we weren't crazy helps us negotiate. Rather than just practical, it reinforces the spines of freelancers.

Do you think controversy over Napster and artists' rights has affected attitudes about printed material online?

Napster galvanized a lot of creators: musicians sued Napster; photographers walked out of SYGMA when the agency tried to grab their rights during the digitization process; actors went on strike when advertising agencies didn't want to share proceeds from cable revenues; video game designers started to band together to fight unfair practices by their clients; and these days writers join Featurewell or cross out a clause on a contract they don't like. The Napster debate brought much needed attention to issues that affect every creator. The dissemination of our work is a freedom of expression issue. We're not being censored while reporting in Zimbabwe, but I think it's very important that writers decide what's ultimately going to happen to their work.

Any other big issues you see facing writers?

The pay rates have been frozen. Unless you're Dominick Dunne you're going to get between a buck and $2 a word, and those rates have been frozen for quite a while. There has been no cost of living increase for the lowly writer. Also, publications take far longer to pay their bills on average than many other businesses. You should not have to effectively loan money to a publication and boost its cash position in order to write for it. Too often, publications take advantage of writers, not only by not paying them enough for their work, but inexcusably and outrageously, by delaying payment for the reimbursement of expenses. I question whether their own expense reports are taking as long to be paid. The third area that independent journalists face is the arbitrary and wacky use of the kill fee. I think that if there's got to be a kill fee, and there are good reasons for it, that it should be raised to 50 percent for professional writers. Rarely is a story killed because of bad faith or poor work by the writer. Often, a story is killed because of a change in editorial direction, petty office politics, being scooped, or photos that weren't up to snuff.

On a lighter note, you have a Featurewell reading coming up. How did that come about?

The Internet is a wonderful tool, but it's rather impersonal. I thought it would be great for my writers to get to meet each other and hoist a glass of free wine and nibble on some cheese. I thought of a quarterly writing series. Usually "quarterly" is associated with a boring academicjournals or taxes. We've decided to change the image of the quarterly. So I've launched this reading series on June 26 at The Roger Smith Hotel. There's limited space. ... Writers should ... arrive early because their notorious reputation as schnorrers is true, and the wine will go fast.

Schnorrers?

(Laughs.) Yes, Schnorrers. Just a minute. Let me get the Dictionary of American Slang. (Pause.) Okay, as the dictionary says, a schnorrer is a person who sponges off of friends and relatives. There are two usages: "Here comes that schnorrer from down the street. Look poor." And then, "Buy your own ciggies if you don't like mine. Schnorrers can't be choosers."

Got it. Any events planned for West Coast schnorrers?

Not yet, but I know there are a lot of schnorrers on the West Coast. (Laughs.)

Are you still writing much?

On occasion. I just did a piece for Travel and Lesiure. I'm a contributing editor at MBA Jungle, a business magazine run by friends of mine. I also keep my Washington Post column in the travel section. And I'm working on a forthcoming book I can't talk about it. It's the quiet life for me.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE (WHO WRITE THIS STUFF)

Copyright 2000 by Julia Lipman
Dec. 15, 2000 PST

This article first appeared on Boston.com

As a publishing medium, the Web was supposed to make independent authors of us all. It hasn't always worked out that way.

***

The writers at Ironminds know something about the sordid side of the industry. Bought by now-defunct new-media firm Novix Media, the magazine was cut loose by the company a few months ago, leaving its freelancers unpaid and most of its editors, some of whom had left jobs at places like The New York Times to work for Novix, unemployed. So it makes sense that they'd want to join forces with someone like David Wallis.

Wallis, who's written for The Boston Globe, the Times, and The New Yorker, among others, has been an outspoken advocate of writer's rights. He's spoken out on Steven Brill's Contentville and its initial controversial practice of selling works without writers' knowledge, even being quoted as saying that "as a media watchdog, Steve Brill has rabies." His new project, Featurewell, is a site for syndicating content that he says will put power back into the hands of writers.

Starting with getting rid of that pesky word "content." "I disdain the word content," Wallis says. "I think that they might as well call it filler." Wallis prefers to call the work on Featurewell "quality journalism" and to carefully select the writers who can sell articles there, describing the site as "more Bergdorf Goodman than JC Penney's." He lists Cintra Wilson, The Nation's Eric Alterman, and the Chicago Sun-Times' Jim DeRogatis among the 200 or so writers selling their work via Featurewell. And he's about to announce a deal to syndicate content with Ironminds, along with ForeWord and Reason.

"[He's a] good guy. Really cares about writers," says Ironminds managing editor Will Leitch in an e-mail.

Wallis says he's not trying to attract a mass market for buyers either. "I don't want the general public on my site...I'm more of a resource for editors," he says. He says he carefully screens the editors who get access to his site, talking to each one on the phone. But they don't have to pay any fees to join; instead, they pay for individual pieces "a la carte." Since Featurewell started two and a half months ago, he says, 250 editors have signed up.

Most of these pieces -- 80 percent, Wallis estimates -- have been printed before, with most of the remaining ones having been killed by editors. So who's interested in running previously published work? Overseas editors, for one, Wallis says; about half of the editors currently signed up are from outside the U.S. He sees a Featurewell article as somewhere between content from a traditional syndicate and an exclusively commissioned piece. "We only sell to one client per market," he says, which gives the editors some degree of exclusivity.

That bring us to the main obstacle -- writers' contracts that give exclusive rights to the place where the piece was published, not allowing writers to control reprinting. Wallis, as you might guess, is a critic of such agreements. "[We're] trying to foster a backlash against contracts that prevent writers from reselling their work," he says. "I'm sure there are people who don't like what I'm doing," Wallis adds, but he points to the number of users who have signed up for his service as evidence of support among editors.

One of the recent controversies in the writing world centered around Salon, which tried to get writers to sign contracts giving the magazine exclusive reprint rights and letting writers keep 25 percent of the net profits. (Featurewell, in contrast, pays writers 60 percent of the gross.) But not every content (there's that word again) provider guards rights so jealously. Boston editor Wen Stephenson, the editorial director of The Atlantic Monthly's Atlantic Unbound, says that the magazine's writers are usually asked to give the Atlantic non-exclusive online reprint rights, but "the author retains the copyright on the piece."

Stephenson adds, "The Atlantic has exclusive rights for a certain period of time," usually two or three months. Even the Globe's recent dispute with freelancers hinged on contracts giving the Globe non-exclusive reprint rights. In agreements like the Globe's or the Atlantic's, the writer is free to sell the piece or syndicate it somewhere like Featurewell.

But wait. Wallis has found a way to make money? On writing? After what's happening to Salon and other Web publications? Wallis says that Featurewell is "a real business with real revenue," in a not-so-subtle reference to dot-coms with wispy business plans. "I believe that there's certainly a market for quality journalism on the Web," he says. And Leitch, who's certainly got reason to be skeptical of any business model involving Web content, concurs. "It... appears to have a solid business plan, which is rare these days," he says. "Someone has to figure out to make money with content. Might as well be him."