That is the land of women's magazines, esp fiction. Authors who write fiction for womags, esp Woman's Weekly, are up in arms at the moment because of recent changes that have been found out. They weren't happy before because their payment date was changed to when their story was published and not on acceptance like it used to be. Now they are even more unhappy as there are two more changes now that the company who owns the magazine has been taken over. The following changes are:
1. Stories accepted, whether by new or established authors, will have acceptances on an 'all rights' basis. This is not good at all. All rights means that they take all your rights away from you so you are no longer the copyright holder of the story, and you can't do anything else with that story yourself, inc submitting it to the ALCS. It also means the magazine can do what they like with it and maybe not pay you for it. Wrong on all accounts.
2. New authors who get their story accepted also have a pay cut. It used to be £150 but it's now £100, and possibly no chance to have a raise with more stories published.
So, if you do want to have a story accepted by Woman's Weekly, please think again. If you're not sure about the contract that comes with it, you could try to get it changed but it might not work. The only option is to refuse to sign and find another market for that story. or self-publish it.
The best blog to read about all this and more on writing for womags is https://womagwriter.blogspot.com/. Even the author who runs this blog says she would refuse to sign the contract on the all rights basis now.
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