Writing for free

A comment on  The Joys of Teaching Literature—on Ruiz Garzon quitting cultural reviewing because he won't get more than 100 euros for a review.

I see your point, as well as Ruiz Garzón's. Note, however, that reviewing will still go on, if only because, apart from people writing in big media, some people (apparently not including Ruiz Garzón) feel an urge to criticize and review and speak out their mind on books, in well-written or badly-written reviews (that's immaterial to my point now) whether they get paid or not. As you well know, academics are rarely if ever paid for their books or articles, not to mention reviews; if anything, they will themselves pay in order to get published. And in the case of reviews, you don't even get the credit of adding them to your CV, which you may well do if you feel like it, but they're small fry and positively ignored by research quality assessments. Well, you may get paid in the form of other reviews by friendly or back-scratching colleagues, there's a lively market there! Anyway, I wish I had been given 100 euros for every review I've written and posted for free on my blog. There's an indignity and perhaps unfair compeition, if you write for free.

Escritura compulsiva