Remember when you first started freelancing, when 10 cents a word was the first offer of payment, when writing something for the local newspaper meant an extra 20 bucks in your pocket? It’s too bad that here you are, years, decades later, making the exact same amount.
Writer Paula Hendrickson penned an article 11 years ago that still holds true. With her permission, I’ve included it in its entirety here.
Cheap at Twice the Price
by Paula Hendrickson
(Author’s note: Originally published in the January 9, 1998 edition of the newsletter, “Writing for Money.” Amazing how little has changed in more than ten years since this piece was first written.)
“The sentiment comes easy at fifty cents a word,” Waldo Lydecker, the acerbic columnist in the old movie Laura, said from my TV screen a few weeks ago.
My initial response was, “Fifty cents. Not bad.” Then it struck me: this movie was filmed in 1944! Sure, Waldo Lydecker was a fictional character, supposedly at the top of his game when he made this remark. Still, I don’t think screenwriters today would have a character earning $10 a word — unless it was set in the future. Way in the future, given the imperceptibly slow rate at which most magazines increase their price per word.
I had a similar reaction upon reading Eleanor Lanahan’s biography of her mother, Scottie: The Daughter of… (HarperCollins, 1995). Frances Scott Fitzgerald Lanahan Smith, F. Scott and Zelda’s only child, was a writer, too. The account of Scottie’s staff position on a regional newspaper caught my eye: “The staff of the Northern Virginia Sun was young and underpaid, earning about thirty-five cents per word.” That was in 1957, and it was reality. When I first read the book over a year ago, I called a friend who’s also a freelancer and read her the passage. We howled at the idea of 35-cents a word being low pay, even by today’s standards.
Fifty Cents After 50 Years
I understand the Golden Age of Television was a terrible blow to the publishing industry, especially to magazines that suddenly had to compete with both radio and television for advertising dollars. Many titles folded, others began publishing less frequently, yet some managed to survive. Even some that Scottie wrote for, like The New Yorker. But do you see any of these magazines charging their current advertisers the same ad rates they charged 40 or 50 years ago? I don’t think so.
So why do the majority of magazines today get away with paying their writers the same, and in some cases probably even less, than their counterparts did half a century ago? Haven’t publishers heard of a little thing called a cost of living increase? How about inflation? When 50 years can pass with hardly any increase in per word prices, no one can accuse writers of being greedy! Can you name any other industry where people earn the same as their predecessors did five decades earlier? How about one decade earlier?
One magazine I’ve been a regular contributor to for over six years started out paying writers an okay 25-cents per word. Now they assign me 800-1,000 word stories for $200, and they encourage me to “write long.” So six years later, I’m making the same if not LESS that I did in 1991, and that’s only after I berated them to upping my pay from $175 to $200 per article! (And now I’m submitting articles electronically, so they save time not having to key in my work.)
Paying for What You Get
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve written a few 50-cents a word articles, and even one that paid over $1 per word (naturally, it was also the shortest piece I’ve ever had published). A nationally distributed small business magazine paid me $250 for a 200-word profile of a successful small company. The catch was they needed it by the end of the day. I added a couple good quotes to the information in my query and had it faxed in well before the close of business. My point is, these markets are the exception rather than the rule.
During a quick perusal of the 1997 Writer’s Market, I noticed only a handful of consumer or trade magazines that paid 50-cents or more per word. A couple (but not many) paid $1 per word. The same held true when I checked the back issues of Writing for Money. (The editor notes the well-paying markets because she knows how rare they are.)
Another setback to the bank accounts of freelancers today is a lot of markets have gone from monthly to bi-monthly. Sure, I write regularly for three national publications, but two of them are bi-monthly. While I have at least one article per issue, per magazine, I’d be better off if they were monthlies. (Even if it’s bi-monthly, I still appreciate the steady work — in case any of you editors happen to be reading!)
Nickel and diming
It’s true some publishers believe writers are a dime a dozen (and at 10-cents a word, they may be right). One editor even admitted so much to me when I was bold enough to ask why I hadn’t been paid for $1,000 worth of already published articles.
Unfortunately this is perhaps the one industry where “you get what you pay for” doesn’t ring true; even writers with several years’ experience and numerous national clips often get below-poverty-level pay. Since 1991 I’ve sold over 140 articles, most of them to national publications, yet less than two months ago I had an editor tell me she pays 10-15-cents per word, depending on her budget, but it usually comes out to be 13-cents per word. Oh yeah, no by-line either. And they want professionals. I know babysitters to earn more!
Maybe it’s time for there to be a Freelance Writers’ Minimum Wage. Then we’d need rules about pay increases, too. Suggestions, anyone?
Update: Paula has now lost count of how many articles she’s sold, but it’s well over 500. She no longer works for any of the places mentioned above (most have folded), and is happy to be a regular contributor to two publications that pay between 50-cents and $1 per word. Hmm, ten years later, and there’s still no discernable increase in what freelance writers earn – meanwhile SEO and content “publishers” are driving per-word prices down to fractions of a penny; low enough to make that last editor sound generous.
Writing used to be a noble profession….what happened? And how can we reverse the trend?
© Paula Hendrickson, 1997, 2009
So how about it, folks? Any ideas?
Join the various guilds and unions that set livable wages and not work for the cheap sites.
They get what they pay for; they'll keep going out of business, as will the new ones, while we find and keep jobs with legitimate, high-quality companies that value our work.
The nobler the profession, the smaller the pay? (Teachers, clergy, artists, writers…) 🙂
Sad that after so long writers are still being disregarded and disrespected and underpaid. Very sad.
But in a way, doesn't it reflect the declining value that society places on words?? We don't seem to value the importance of a word fitly spoken anymore… and I guess it translates to our treatment of those who have mastered the art of skilfully manipulating words.
Sad.
Ruthibelle, you may be on to something. Perhaps it's not the devaluation of words, but the abundance of them. Twitter, Facebook, blogs, all the social networking sites support the idea that words create impact, yet are these same sites and tools diluting the message and therefore the value?
Devon, could you list some of those you know about here? I'm all for encouraging our ranks to join other like-minded folks.
I know of the Writers Union. Also, I belong to a LinkedIn group called Certified Professional Writers Association and while we've yet to set rates, we have certainly banded together to encourage fair pay for honest work.
This is why freelance writers – and other freelancers for that matter – need to find or carve out a niche for themselves in markets that are willing to pay what we deserve.
It's a matter of finding those markets and upgrading our skills/knowledge so we are marketable.
And let's just stop accepting those low-paying jobs, for heaven's sake!
Having accepted more than my fair share of underpaid assignments early in my career, I long ago came to the conclusion that those offering such low rates never stay in business very long. I don't like how my reputation is affected by being associated with publications that go out of business quickly.
When you think about it, how does any enterprise expect to make a go of it, basing its business plan on the assumption that input costs are free or nearly free? It's like expecting to make a living scrounging for bottles at the side of the road. At what point do you realize that there are only so many bottles to be found, their availability a function of the disregard shown by those who toss them away, and not nearly enough in number to feed a family and pay the rent? Could you imagine getting a bank loan for that business plan? (I suspect that far too many loans are given on the basis of such business plans, obfuscated by marketing bafflegab.) If you expect to build a business recycling bottles, sooner rather than later you'll need to pay people to find your raw materials or, better yet, pay reasonable rates to get reliable suppliers from among businesses that create your raw materials. (Publishers offering absurdly low rates to writers really do remind me of homeless people wandering the ditches to eke out a living.)
On the other hand, there is one publication that I regularly write for that pays $45 for a 300-word article. They understand (even if I occasionally have to remind them) that my aim is to finish each article in 45 minutes, although it often takes me closer to an hour and a half. That works for straight news reporting for a small weekly newspaper. It's kinda fun, and takes me back to my days working in radio. Plus it still pays better than radio.