WritersCafe.org
reviews and complaints

Hi I have recently checked in on my writers cafe and it appears all of my work has been transformed into HTML text. All my work as been basically left unreadable. I have worked on this material for a long time. The writings mean a great deal to me, and Writers cafe has been a trusted medium of mine to express myself. I would like to get this issue resolved please.

I've never used the website because I disagree with the Terms of Service:

Content Submitted or Made Available For Inclusion on The Service

Aresta Enterprise does not claim ownership of Content you submit or make available for inclusion on the Service. However, with respect to Content you submit or make available for via the Service, you grant Aresta Enterprise a perpetual, irrevocable, world-wide, royalty free and non-exclusive license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify and publicly display such Content on the Service.

You will be responsible for, and indemnify and hold harmless Aresta Enterprise, against any claim arising from any content that you submit or make available for inclusion on the Service.

So, basically, you still technically own the copyright, but you allow them the irrevocable right to use your work forever. It sounds scary to me. Unless someone buys the rights, I'm not giving them the right to use my work forever.

Aside from being a very poorly run site full of flakey webmasters and moderators, this is a bad site to belong to for any aspiring writer. At one time, it may have been trying to be something great for new writers' exposure - like SoundCloud or Bandcamp for musicians. But it is clear now from the abundance of scam literary journal requests that this is nothing more than a slightly more sophisticated version of poetry.com. It's a shame how so many websites aimed to help new writers devolve into this pathetic scam for paid compilations. If you're new to the scam, it goes like this...

I want to publish you in a new, beautifully bound, literary journal. All you have to do is buy the book!

See what I did there? For all new writers looking for resources online, I wish I could be of more help. Writerscafe.org might help you feel better about yourself for a little while, and perhaps you'll make a friend or two, but ultimately if you want to take this seriously, this site will cause more harm to your reputation than good.

I have found writerscafe.org to be a very difficult site to access, because a lot of the time it is offline. Also, there seem to be very few members, and most of the work submitted by writers remains with no reviews or comments, even when they have been published on the site for a number of years. If you are a writer and would like to receive reviews for your work, then this site is not for you.