Freelance Writing For A Living: Part 11
April 23, 2008
I'm not sure this qualifies as a full entry in this series, but I was responding to a post on the BookEnds Literary Agency blog about book packaging and work-for-hire and I thought I made a point or two that would be of interest to freelance writers. I wrote:
As a freelance writer, work-for-hire is pretty much what I do for a living, and it's a pretty good living at that. That said, not all magazine writing is work-for-hire and there are contractual negotiations that can be made consider reprints and rights, at least at the higher end of the market.
It's not an unreasonable question either. I wrote a book-length business report and was paid $20,000. The publisher sells that report for something like $1200 (yes, apiece, welcome to the world of business) and as it turned out, this report is their best seller. In those terms, that's something like 100 or 150 copies, but do the math, it's clear the publisher is making significantly more money off this than I am. Should I get royalties?
Maybe. Do I? No. But it does give me some negotiating leverage for future reports and perhaps more importantly to my career, I can go to other publishers and say, "Hey, I wrote this, it made the publisher X number of dollars and sold this many copies, want to hire me?"
What certain work does for your reputation and how it helps deliver future work is a significant consideration if you're self-employed, as a writer or anything else.
Doing a book package deal for fiction may or may not have similar results. Would I be willing to write something like that for a relatively small amount of money and little or no royalties? It depends, but probably, yes. For a couple reasons.
1. Money. I have a mortgage, etc.
2. Wider readership. My own readership is fairly modest. If I were, say, given a chance to write a pre-sold concept (Star Wars, Star Trek, Murder She Wrote, CSI, et al) and still have my name on the cover, those books sell significantly more numbers than my own do. It's a great marketing bonus. It's also possible it will open other doors, bring you to the attention of editors and publishers at big houses, or even to producers and writers and execs in the TV and film industry. (Or video gaming industry, which is worth taking into consideration).
3. For the right book, I am SO there. My agent commented to me once that one of her clients was writing a Nancy Drew novel. She said there wasn't much money in it, but her client was thrilled to have the opportunity to do it. I can understand. I would absolutely love to write a Star Wars novel, among a few other franchises. There are some I wouldn't be interested in and so as a result, the money would have to make it worthwhile. But hey, if I had the opportunity to write about Obi Wan...
It's not an unreasonable question either. I wrote a book-length business report and was paid $20,000. The publisher sells that report for something like $1200 (yes, apiece, welcome to the world of business) and as it turned out, this report is their best seller. In those terms, that's something like 100 or 150 copies, but do the math, it's clear the publisher is making significantly more money off this than I am. Should I get royalties?
Maybe. Do I? No. But it does give me some negotiating leverage for future reports and perhaps more importantly to my career, I can go to other publishers and say, "Hey, I wrote this, it made the publisher X number of dollars and sold this many copies, want to hire me?"
What certain work does for your reputation and how it helps deliver future work is a significant consideration if you're self-employed, as a writer or anything else.
Doing a book package deal for fiction may or may not have similar results. Would I be willing to write something like that for a relatively small amount of money and little or no royalties? It depends, but probably, yes. For a couple reasons.
1. Money. I have a mortgage, etc.
2. Wider readership. My own readership is fairly modest. If I were, say, given a chance to write a pre-sold concept (Star Wars, Star Trek, Murder She Wrote, CSI, et al) and still have my name on the cover, those books sell significantly more numbers than my own do. It's a great marketing bonus. It's also possible it will open other doors, bring you to the attention of editors and publishers at big houses, or even to producers and writers and execs in the TV and film industry. (Or video gaming industry, which is worth taking into consideration).
3. For the right book, I am SO there. My agent commented to me once that one of her clients was writing a Nancy Drew novel. She said there wasn't much money in it, but her client was thrilled to have the opportunity to do it. I can understand. I would absolutely love to write a Star Wars novel, among a few other franchises. There are some I wouldn't be interested in and so as a result, the money would have to make it worthwhile. But hey, if I had the opportunity to write about Obi Wan...
* * *
What struck me as worthwhile was this statement:
What certain work does for your reputation and how it helps deliver future work is a significant consideration if you're self-employed, as a writer or anything else.
A freelancer's life and work has no guarantees. In fact, I would argue that the total lack of predictability is one of the few guarantees. Things change. You start out working in one area and end up working in another. Publications and publishers change directions, go broke, stop hiring freelancers, your editor quits or gets promoted or decides they don't like you any more (or vice versa).
But when I do a certain type of job, particularly if it's something I'm not necessarily excited about, one of the questions I ask myself is: what will this do for me in the long run?
Example: A little over a week ago, someone I work with at one of my clients' places contacted me to say she had been approached by a company that wanted her to write website content. She felt there was a conflict of interest (or possibly she just wasn't interested) because she was a staffer, whereas I was a freelancer. I told her to go ahead and refer me. Now, except for my own website, I've never written any website content. I am, however, something of an expert on the industry the client is in. The client called me, told me what she wanted. I was clear that although I had no direct experience doing this work, I was sure I could do it and I sent her a copy of my resume and told her how much I would charge.
I got the job. It's not probably going to add up to that much money and it's unlikely to turn into regular work (which can be a significant consideration when taking a job where maybe the money isn't all that great: will it nonetheless give you regular work every week or month?), but it puts a type of writing onto my resume and in my portfolio that will allow me--if I want to--to pursue some medical copywriting and website content work.
So that's something to keep in mind as a freelancer. Not just, do I want to do it, what's it pay, but: what might come of it?
Cheers,
Mark Terry
posted by Mark Terry at 6:36 AM
7 Comments:
For me, the only times it has come up when it's been LESS money than I could make at my current sites, and with no royalties on top of it. (I sorta get paid a flat fee and then royalties.)
Once, some of my friends were trying to get me to submit to PPA, and they pay a flat fee of $2,000 for a whole novel. I was like, NO WAY! That's insane, imho. They couldn't understand why I wouldn't try, because then I'd be "recognized" by RWA and I'd be published for "real."
You know, you're right. The fiction industry is sort of bizarre. Or, I don't know. Sometimes it feels like people think we shouldn't treat fiction-writing as a business, and shouldn't look at the financial picture.
Hi Mark:
I've ghosted. And I've done some a "with Erica Orloff" bylines. I was paid very well--in two or three cases, more than my own novel advances. And my resume is the better for it, on top of that. I have some big names I've worked with (in the nonfiction field, especially).
E
SS
--actually, my advance for Dirty Deeds was $0 and my advances for both Pitchfork and Serpent were $1,500 each. The subsequent contracts were a little higher, but since MI won't be publishing them, it's hard to get too enthused about it, although I did cash the checks.
That's depressing, but I've heard a lot of figures like that. Still, it's super depressing when I hear of it of novels I aspire to be when I grow up. Cripes.
You know, something is really wrong with the publishing model. Those kind of facts make me think e-publishing is the only way to save writers, along with such things as that instant print-on-demand machine they put in the World Bank and ... the NYC library? I forget.
Crap. Well, what can you do? I keep telling myself, "must be better than the obstacle," but geeze. Okay, off to flog myself.
Spy,
I don't know if I'm typical. Certainly the $0 advance was typical of a small press.
As for the Midnight Ink advances, yes, that's typical, as far as I've been able to tell from discussing it with other writers published by them. I have no hard data to back this up, but I believe they're are below the "norm" or "average" in terms of advances.
I'm not sure there is an "average" in that it would require definitions of publishers to actually be made in terms of size. The big 6 (and I'm hard-pressed to come up with who they are off the top of my head--Random, HarperCollins, Tor/Forge/St.Martins, Kensington... who else? Warner?, Hyperion, which is run by Disney...--probably don't poll numbers together. But... although I have heard St. Martins gives out a lot of advances in the $5000 or less range, I don't imagine that the others do, although who knows?
Anybody out there have data on this that's actually usable?
Mark:
My advances have ranged from $7500 for my very first, up in the 10K range for category, and then beyond, usually bundled with two or three at a time so that I can usually live on it. My highest advance was one book in the 30K range I think. I'd have to go look at my contracts. St. Martin's is considered the "low-ball" house, as far as I "hear."
I don't know what the "answer" is. I couldn't, I don't think, write a whole book on spec and hope for the best, which is why I try to nail my proposals. But I've ghosted for a minimum (MINIMUM!) of $100 a manuscript page. THAT is worth my time. And I'm a damn good ghost. I just ghosted for a guy, who had been trying to get a contract for 8 years on his own, with editing and editing and so on and resubmitting. I ghosted his book. He had a contract in eight weeks (nonfiction).
E
Very candid, Erica. Thanks.
I know my agent's not a fan of St. Martin's or Tor/Forge, commenting that she thinks they're "cheap" and slow.
I can attest to the slow, since an editor there held my manuscript for over a year before turning it down and my agent had been "nagging" pretty regularly since about month #1. I gave up on him long before he passed.
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