Contests with terms like this kind of give me the hives:
“By submitting an entry and entering the contest, you grant Trazzler and Greater Louisville Community Branding Project and its member organizations a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free right to publish and distribute your text and photo entry for their promotional purposes in print and digital materials.”
But maybe you aren’t like me and don’t have any issue with those terms. Maybe the prizes are good enough to make it absolutely worth entering to you. So with that in mind, without passing go, without collecting $200 let me give you the information, straight from the horse’s mouth as they say, on the Trazzler Louisville Writing Contest.
Trazzler.com recently launched the Louisville Writing Contest, a travel writing contest for residents, visitors, and friends of Louisville, Kentucky, to submit short trips (between 65-140 words) about their favorite restaurants, bars, public art, parks, events, festivals, and more in Louisville: http://www.trazzler.com/contests/louisville.
The contest, sponsored by the Louisville Convention and Visitors Bureau, runs until May 15, 2010. The grand prize, decided by popular vote, is a two-night stay at the 21c Museum Hotel, a $200 gift card to any of the 40+ Louisville Originals Restaurants, and 2 tickets to the Actor’s Theatre. Trazzler will also award a freelance writing contract to contest entrants or Louisville local experts.
March 9th, 2010 at 9:22 am
In addition to Michelle’s concerns about the terms, take note of this part:
Mostly this is an opportunity for Trazzler to get writers to beg all their Facebook friends to visit the site. Good luck to the entrants; I’ll pass.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:00 pm
Hmmm…
“a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free right to publish and distribute your text and photo entry ”
Yes, it’s a promo thing, but perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty free rights? And if the photo turns out to be solid gold?
Um. Noooooooo….
March 13th, 2010 at 11:59 am
Hi Michelle and commenters,
Thanks for posting about the writing contest.
There reason the terms are written this way is so that in the future, we can use text in images in ways we may not have anticipated today (on a mobile application, in print outs, etc.). Contact thousands of writers on a one-off basis would be impossible (we have an editorial staff of 2).
On the flip side, the author retains all patent, trademark, and copyright to all content posted.
In an effort to make our terms as favorable as possible for writers, we are very interested to learn about other sites, contests, etc that have terms you think are better. If you have links to specific examples and can post them here or email them to me, that would be great.
Thanks,
Adam
adam at trazzler dot com