Site Meter Reflections on Playboy: $50 for your guest essay

July 14, 2006

$50 for your guest essay

“No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money,” said Samuel Johnson. I’m a blockhead, but you don’t have to be. If I find your emailed essay good enough to publish as a post on this blog, I’ll send you 50 U.S. dollars through PayPal. The following terms and conditions apply:

1.) Submissions must be final, or very nearly final, original (no plagiarism!) drafts sent as emails to the address on my Blogger profile page. (For reasons of privacy, that email address is different from the address of my PayPal account.) Microsoft Word documents will automatically be rejected, as I cannot read them on my Macintosh.* Clear, organized, concise, logical, well-researched, thought-provoking, eloquent, and entertaining submissions stand the best chance of being accepted. I may possibly allow cross-publication, either online or in print, but please ask my permission first. Appropriate subjects include the personal, political, social, ethical, aesthetic, or spiritual dimensions of any aspect of the Playboy phenomenon.

2.) I promise to reply with an email of acceptance or rejection in as timely a manner as possible. However, I reserve the right to reject any essay for any reason, with or without explanation. For legal reasons, I’ll retain a printed copy of every submission.

3.) If I accept your work, I pledge never to use your words in any written form without attributing them to you. If I reject your work, you pledge to regard any similarity between your words and mine at any time as purely coincidental—which, on my honor as a writer, it will be.

4.) I promise to send payment for an accepted essay before its publication. However, unexpected delays between acceptance and publication may arise due to temporary unavailability of funds or the need to pace the publication of new posts.

5.) Every accepted submission will be published as a separate post, with minor editing for grammar, spelling, punctuation, and perhaps clarity and brevity. The post’s title will always be “Guest essay: ” followed by the essay’s title. A brief, italicized about-the-author blurb, with your name in bold, will precede your text. You may write a short paragraph about yourself in the third person, or tell me a little about yourself so I can write it for you. At your option, it can include a hyperlink to your blog or other site.

6.) Please keep profanity to a minimum. I’m not a prude or anything, but BlogExplosion might tag my blog as having “adult content.” This would limit my readership. Besides, dirty words have more power when used sparingly.

7.) I may express polite but open disagreement with any or all of your essay in subsequent posts.

What’s in it for me, you may ask? Why be a double blockhead, not only receiving no money for this blog but paying other people to write some of it for me? I’m so eager to stimulate dialogue on Playboy that I’m willing to spend money to make it happen. My impatience is your opportunity.

*Update, July 24, 2006, 10:06 p.m.: I’ve eliminated the rule against Microsoft Word documents. Gmail can convert them to HTML for me.

The complete list of guest essays:
Admiration and despair, or how I read Playboy by Jennifer
It’s me, Heidi Ellis by Heidi Ellis

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Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 7:46 AM

  • Blogger Leon left this comment at July 14, 2006 8:31 AM  
    Like the new look!

  • Anonymous Anonymous left this comment at July 18, 2006 4:35 PM  
    10.4 reads word doc files in textedit

  • Blogger Scarlett left this comment at July 18, 2006 9:14 PM  
    I wish I had something to submit because I love to write - but am just not that good at it ... yet.

  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at July 22, 2006 6:12 PM  
    Anonymous,
    Interesting theory, but I’ve never succeeded in viewing a Word file in this computer, even though it has all the latest software upgrades from Apple.

  • Blogger Ethan Lee left this comment at August 18, 2007 6:40 PM  
    This post has been removed by a blog administrator.

  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at August 18, 2007 7:13 PM  
    This post has been removed by the author.

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