Too many writers are working for free, or nearly free.

First, let’s talk about lit journals. My Chapters doesn’t even carry any of them anymore. They have tiny readership. You could dedicate yourself to putting your work up on your own website and you could have more readers in a day than many lit journals have in a year. You could argue that wouldn’t be easy (but anything that’s worth doing isn’t easy.)  In the end, you’d have more exposure through your own site (assuming your work is any good) and your readers would be your readers.

Many lit journals pay in subscription copies AKA bird cage liners. You’re supposed to be so bowled over by the fact that you’re published in a tiny journal that you don’t mind a payment of zero. Prestige is illusory and or fleeting. Publication in a journal that so few people read can make you feel great. It doesn’t make the achievement important to your career. Writing credits are nice, but they aren’t the most important component of a query letter. Like the AMC commercial says, “Story matters here.”)*

Or they’ll say you have to “pay your dues.” No. You don’t. You have to work on your skill, but getting rejected by literary mags doesn’t improve your skill. Writing and editing do that. You learn nothing from rejection letters other than the fact that you’ve been rejected.

Once upon a time, writers could actually make some decent money out of writing for magazines. Kurt Vonnegut did. Stephen King bought beer with his stories in Screw. Back then, writers saw any magazine that would publish (and pay) for fiction as a gateway to the big leagues: writing longer works, like the Great American Novel. Then the world changed and no one was reading Screw for the stories, anymore.

Journals aren’t a gateway to publication in a larger venue anymore. If an agent is trolling the lit journals for talent, you have to wonder why when they should have a stack of queries on their desks to sift through. Agents don’t need lit journals to act as screeners for new talent, so neither do you.

Next target: freelancing does not mean free. When someone asks you to write for free, they’re devaluing your work (and worse, mine!) You can be sure everyone else in the process will be paid. They’ll pay for their computers, the electric company, the printer and everything else. Why not you, who is providing the content? (You know? The reason anyone picks up the publication? You write the stuff in the hole between the ads!)

When you write for someone, it’s a responsibility. Certain requirements must be met. For instance, you can’t libel anyone or plagiarise someone else’s work. You may not be guilty, but that doesn’t necessarily mean no one will complain (or sue.) In other words, writing entails risk, usually just to your ego at the hands of someone writing a letter to the editor to complain about your take on reality. Don’t assume a risk you won’t even be compensated for minimally!

Charging for your work means you value your work and know that others should do so, as well. Failing to charge means they won’t take you seriously. Someone might say they are letting you “try out.” How will that work? You sweat out a piece for them, charge nothing and they’ll maybe pay you next time? How well do you think you’ll be compensated when you’ve already set your base price at zero?

You get the idea. But I hear someone crying out, “What about the exceptions? Am I an exception?” Yes, there are exceptions. If you’ve never written anything and need a clip file, okay. Choose something small and gain some experience. Don’t wallow in that pit too long.

What about gifting? Scott Siglar built his current success on giving away his books on the internet as podcasts. He was smart about it, though. He not only built a fan base, he gave out his fiction a little at a time. A lot of readers became fans of his fiction and proceeded to buy the book because they just couldn’t wait for next week’s installment. (Seth Godin talks a lot about gifting and being smart about it. Read his stuff before you try that path so you can be smart about it, too.)

Insisting on getting paid doesn’t mean you aren’t flexible. Here’s a story from the trenches that happened to me recently. A client wanted me to ghost  an advertorial piece (3,000 words) for a magazine. He hopes to get a lot of people signing up for his courses and the magazine will give him a free full-page advertising page in return for the article. This isn’t an uncommon arrangement. He asked if I would write it for him. I gave him a consult so I knew the parameters of the job. I thought about it and named my price. $850 + HST.

That wasn’t the budget the client had in mind, so he had some sticker shock.

I understand that sometimes a fee can seem like it comes out of the blue, but I gave him my reasons:

1. Ghosting always costs more. His name would be on it. I’d be the invisible guy who did the work. No publication credit bumps up the scale.

2. As with the credit, he’d also retain the rights in perpetuity. He could use my work however he wanted for the rest of his life. (Ad excerpts, emailing, flyers, brochures, web copy etc.,…

3. Part of pricing is to identify what the work is to accomplish. In other words, what’s the client’s ROI (Return on Investment)? I command high fees for a speech for an association because my work will drive up membership numbers for said association. Likewise in this case, it wouldn’t take very many people signing up for the clients’ courses to pay my fee (which is starting to sound paltry, isn’t it?)

4. I checked. The ad page the client is getting in exchange for the 3,000 word story sells for $600. If one page of advertising (where the copy is sparse), shouldn’t my multi-page rate reflect that fact?

So the client balked at the full fee. What to do?

I negotiated. I said, no problem. I’ll cut my fee in half if he writes it and all I have to do is edit it. That will take less of my time, so that’s fair to me and okay with the client.

FUNNY ADDENDUM: The client found that writing the 3,000 word magazine piece is not easy. I talked to him on the phone and sent him a rough outline to structure his thoughts. I’m making sure that the editing job won’t end up taking up too much time that way. This client is a good guy who respects my work. He let me know that he’s going to try to plow ahead, but if I have to take over, he’ll get me my full fee, after all. Either way it shakes out, I will feel good about the project because I gave away a little, but got a lot. And so will the client. 

If you get your cheque and think, “That’s it?!” or you’re grumbling about the time lost while you work, it’s definitely time to take up animal husbandry…or raise your rates. I hope you aren’t raising your rates up from zero!

*BONUS: If they have to pay you in bird cage liners, they are undercapitalized. Most of these journals don’t pay until publication. If they’re that underfunded, there’s an excellent chance they won’t even be around by the time they get to publishing your story. It’s happened before. Lots.

Filed under: agents, publishing, Rant, writing tips, freelancing, getting paid