Writing for free – who’s to blame?
Paying for services – an old idea
In just about every service-related job, no one thinks twice about paying for services rendered. The price paid can vary, and depends heavily on market forces and what consumers are willing to pay.
What does this have to do with writing and literature?
Even well-published authors suffer
Yesterday a fresh copy of Poets & Writer’s (aff link) magazine arrived at my house. As usual, I spent a good amount of time browsing through it and reading the articles. But one article I came across really caught my eye. The article was written by an author who discussed how hard it is for him to get paid for his various "services" he provides (book readings, contributing to various publications, etc).
This author isn’t some unpublished hack who is whining about being a starving artist. No, he has a few published books to his name (by traditional publishers), numerous short stories and articles. In other words, he is a fairly seasoned writer.
The main narrative of the article he wrote for this literary magazine was a literary agent who contacted him to contribute to an anthology. Knowing he had a family to support and bills to pay, he pressed the agent for payment for his work. The agent gave him round-about reasons for not being able to pay and then finally resorted to guilt. He told this writer that he was the only one to ask about being paid out of a hundred or so writers.
In the literary world, writing for free is not only the norm, but it’s also expected! A pithy statement from the article says it best:
The basic rules for writers when it comes to payment run something like this: (1) Take what you can get; and (2) keep your mouth shut if you don’t get anything.
Why is it so hard, and such a taboo, for writers to expect to be paid for their work?
Are writers the problem?
I think a big part of the problem is there is just so damn many of us. Everyone and their brother wants to be a writer. The result is a buyers market for publishers. They know that for every writer who demands payment, there will be a thousand lined up behind him/her who will gladly write for free to get that publishing credit and get their name out there.
Thus, publishers have little desire to offer any sort of payment to writers beyond maybe a few contributor copies. Why pay for a product when you know you can get it for free?
Publishers still partly to blame
Another big part of the problem, especially in the literary world, is that many publications and publishers are simply not financially stable enough to pay their writers. The business model for literary publications is very poor, and usually lose money – turning into a "labor of love" for the editors who compile such publications. Besides, isn’t literature supposed to be above all the commercialism usually associated with just about every other business?
What’s the answer?
Frankly, I don’t have a solution to this problem. The solution that makes the most sense, is also the most improbable: every writer should demand to be paid fairly for their work. That’s unlikely to happen given the huge flood of writers fighting to get their work published. Like I said earlier, for every writer who demands payment, there is a virtual of ocean of word-smiths who will gladly write for free.
It seems for those of us who write fiction, we are destined to be starving artists, at least until more writers wise up and start demanding compensation for their efforts. And we’ll also probably have to wait until a new publishing model emerges that allows literary magazines and independent publishers to make a good amount of money for their publications. As long as they don’t get greedy, then most should have no problem spreading the wealth to those who make their publications what they are – the writers.
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