My two cents being thrown in the pot. I recently joined the Partners Program with hopes of making enough to go part-time with the bookkeeping work I’ve done for 44 years. I’m so ready for retirement but can’t afford it for several years. However, I have the possibility of making enough through the Partners Program to at least allow me to transition from 50+ hours a week to 30, hopefully less. It’s certainly worth the attempt since I am writing on this platform anyway.

I didn’t pay attention to publications choosing to exclude locked pieces because none of mine were. Now, I must be aware and make decisions accordingly. As Tracy Aston mentioned, we don’t labor for hours over most haiku nor does poetry, in general, generate large audiences, so the issue of locking or not might not be an issue of great consideration. Longer pieces are a different matter.

Those of us who are in the program now have the added task of keeping track of which publications don’t allow locked submissions and deciding what to do with our pieces — submit to a pub that excludes locked pieces and lose possible income or submit to a different publication.

If I am working 50 hours a week and squeezing in time to write while hoping to build some income here, I am less willing to spend one or two hours on a piece that will generate nothing and will probably attract a smaller audience. But, that doesn’t mean I’d never do it.

I totally understand that editors have the right to determine the path of their publications and that they feel locked pieces are excluding readers. But, at the same time, refusing locked work may be excluding writers.

This or that. No right or wrong choices, but choices on both sides that affect the writers and readers here.