Redbook Makes It Right

This is the e-mail I woke up to this morning:

Dear Jen:

I was distressed to learn this morning that we ran your shoe-hanger idea in our January issue without crediting you. When the idea was pitched to us, we were unaware that it had been taken from your site, and certainly never dreamed that we were running it without attribution. It was an inadvertent error, and one that we obviously should have caught. You have every reason to be upset-- I'm upset, too.

We work hard to make sure this type of thing doesn't happen. Creative women like you are key contributors to our magazine, and our policy is to ALWAYS give credit. And I want to assure you that the choice to illustrate the story was purely aesthetic, to unify the ideas on the page.

We will fix this online, with a link to your site, and run a correction with the appropriate credit in our March issue (our next issue to go to press). We'd also like to compensate you, as we do all our contributors. Will you tell me the best number to reach you on, so I can call you directly?

Please accept my heartfelt apologies, on behalf of the entire Redbook staff. Your ideas are wonderful, our readers love them, and we look forward to working together in the future.

Sincerely,
Meredith Rollins
Executive Editor, Redbook Magazine

Needless to say, I'm utterly relieved to see such a speedy and gracious response from Redbook - if for no other reason than because you Epbot readers are just a little bit terrifying when mobilized. Heart-warming, supportive, and terrifying. These past 15 hours or so have been simply overwhelming for me, and I could never thank you all enough.

For the record, the only thing I ever wanted from Redbook was recognition for my work and images, so I'll be asking Ms. Rollins to donate any compensation they wish to offer to my Give Kids The World campaign. I will also ask her to re-examine the rest of the article in question with thoughts toward crediting other bloggers whose ideas and/or illustrations they may have used. And if they want to get really serious, an article on Pinterest and how it drives traffic to smaller blogs and helps spread ideas would be extra awesome.
 
It's my hope that this situation will pave the way for *all* print sources to be more quick to credit online sources, so that no one else has to go through the heartache of seeing their work appropriated. Most bloggers out there don't have you guys, or a second blog that happens to be popular enough to garner lots of online attention. Most bloggers might get lost in the shuffle when they've been wronged. I'm hoping that, after today, those bloggers' odds just got a bit better.

Thank you to Ms. Rollins and to Redbook Magazine, and thank you again to everyone who read, commented, e-mailed, tweeted. There are no words, so here are a bunch of acronyms: LL&P, MTFBWY, & TTFN.

Now, let's get back to playing with our Dremels and video games and Portal crafts, shall we?

 ************

PS - I just realized that I accidentally & incorrectly called Good Housekeeping "Better Homes & Gardens" in my original post. I...am an idiot. Please feel free to spread a little love to Good Housekeeping for being the original good guys, and my apologies to BH&G for inspiring a barrage of very nice - but no doubt very confusing - messages of support on my behalf.


REDBOOK UPDATE, 1/5/13: Redbook amended their online article today to include credit and source links to several of their printed project ideas, including, of course, Epbot. They also issued an official apology on their Facebook page, and have assured me there will be a correction in the next print issue and that my payment of $500 is being donated to Give Kids the World, as I requested.

What started as a crappy week last Sunday is wrapping up to be a pretty darn good one, and it's all thanks to you guys. THANK YOU.