There was a big kerfuffle in the Internet yesterday about a writer who was asked to repurpose an article for the Atlantic for free.
I've been writing freelance articles for the Atlantic for the past year and would like to continue to do so. Therefore, I have to be very measured in this post. Actually, I probably shouldn't say anything and just link to others.
Check out New York Magazine, Felix Salmon, Timothy Burke, Matt Yglesias, …
Freelance writing does not lead to great riches. Freelance anything doesn't lead to great riches right now. My best friend is a freelance book editor, and she's had to scramble quite a bit in the past couple of years.
My advice? It's worth writing for little money, if you get something else out of the deal. For me, I've learned a ton about writing for a mainstream audience and gotten some street cred, so it's been worthwhile. If you already have street cred and really need cash, then you have to get a staff position at one of the many online news sources. They are hiring and expanding.
Apt. 11d 
All I can say, is that ten years ago I wrote 250 word articles for free, regional parenting magazines and made more than what the Atlantic pays now for freelance.
I guess there is really no place to go than down.
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Yes. It sucks. I’m actually going back to adjunct teaching, in order to subsidize my freelance writing career. Or else, I’m just going to say the hell with it all and get a job at a retail shop, which actually pays you for work. I honestly haven’t decided what to do.
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This is a huge topic in the design/creative/photography/maker blogging realm. A big groundswell against providing original content in exchange for some vague promise of exposure.
Unless, as you note, you are obtaining specific benefits. Just for “exposure”, forget it. The grocery store doesn’t give me my groceries in exchange for “exposure”.
I was at a small conference last August at MSLO and Martha advised to not give away your work for free.
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There are two kinds of writers: Writers who write in order to make money, and writers who write to get their ideas across (a person can, of course, be both kinds at once).
If someone is writing on their blog for free, and the Atlantic will give them a bigger audience for their ideas, it seems like a great idea. If the goal is to make a career of writing, it seems like a horrible idea.
In reality, the main issue is probably not even being discussed. The anger isn’t that Atlantic is or isn’t paying, its the idea that the Atlantic would not pay, and then may be profiting on the article itself. (See, e.g., the Huffington Post not sharing a windfall with writers).
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Ragtime’s distinction reminds me of the distinction you could also make about adjuncts–there are adjuncts who really see it as a hobby, sharing their knowledge about a subject they love, and then there are adjuncts hoping to make a career out of it. One of the best science teachers I ever had was an adjunct, a scientist with decades of practical experience at NASA who taught one class per semester and was much beloved. I know he didn’t plan to be a full-time prof, but his passion and knowledge and humor were evident and engaging.
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Martha is right. Women bloggers, in particular, have been incredibly exploited. #sandberg I sort of hinted at that in an Atlantic piece wrote about the BlogHer conference. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/mommyblogging-inc-why-women-rule-the-social-web/260566/
Look, as bloggers, we are already working for free. (Though I am buying a nice pair of boots with the revenue from the holiday/amazon lists. Thanks all.) Should we not do it? I don’t mind working for free, as long as nobody else is making money from my free work. There is a difference between a hobby and exploitation.
I just sent the Atlantic a 2,000 word essay on YA books. The most money that I’ll get for the article, if they publish it, is $150. (The business pieces pay a little better, than the women/parenting articles. #sandberg.) Should I let it sit on my computer, because I can’t figure out how to make real money from writing? Nah. I wrote it, so I might as well get it out there.
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Felix’s post is really good. (No surprise, of course.)
“The fact is that freelancing only really works in a medium where there’s a lot of clear distribution of labor: where writers write, and editors edit, and art directors art direct, and so on. Most websites don’t work like that, and are therefore difficult places to incorporate freelance content.”
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“Should we not do it? I don’t mind working for free, as long as nobody else is making money from my free work. ”
The stories I’m hearing from the bloggers (and Louisa & Jenny, talking about talking more responsibilities for the same pay, and having no power to say no) seems like a worrying long term trend. The choices all make individual sense, but in the end, they’re changing the marketplace completely, and, I think, in the direction of allowing only a few to reap all the rewards.
Take the blogging — what is the difference between a hobby and exploitation? Google is making money off of Laura, because their business model depends on people wanting to find things on the net, some fairly important part of which is provided for free. By having found ways to make money, little tiny bits of it, and aggregating the value, they’ve found a way to take most of the profit (because, the blog has no value if people can’t find it).
The trend isn’t reversible, but how is the shift going to be navigated? Someone in another comment on another blog said there’s a huge cultural shift in the “knowledge industry” (science, writing, journalism, . . . .) and it’s tough to see where it will end up.
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Yes, yes, yes. What Louisa et al are saying about taking on more responsibilities for the same pay and what I’m doing (working for free) is very worrisome and very important.
I think it’s time to open up Steve’s Awesome Sandwich truck.
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Think about YouTube as a point of comparison. If I make a video, put it up, and it gets a moderate amount of viewership, the revenue share I get from the advertising, however small, isn’t a flat one-time fee. If I really connect and get enough viewership, I might be able to get some subsidiary revenue a la Grumpy Cat–T-shirts, mugs, whatever, though there’s also going to be a lot of meme-circulating that I don’t directly profit from. (But in this case, it’s all good, because if a bunch of sites embed my video, I’m still getting something from that).
If I make an article and sell it to the Atlantic for $50, and they get a lot of traffic from it for some reason, all I have is the fifty bucks. Now if all I wanted was reputation or influence, hey, $50, I can take my wife out to lunch. But even then, I might actually appreciate a platform that let me get a cut of the traffic if I happen to generate it.
On the other other other hand, we all know what writing that’s done for traffic’s sake looks like, and it’s nowhere near as amusing as Grumpy Cat, for the most part. Particularly when it’s something like the Atlantic. So when the publication itself is essentially an aggregator that says, “Come here and you’ll see some quality writing”, maybe a traffic-based revenue share works against what they’re offering to readers. But then they have to pay the content what the content is worth, and it’s worth more than a couple of dollar bills you found in your back pocket.
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The worry, for a knowledge worker, is that knowledge is really becoming “free” as it became unlinked from a physical product (newspaper, book, journal, magazine). Then, what money can be made off knowledge comes out of the finding of that knowledge (Google), the marketing of that knowledge (?), or selling the production of the knowledge (i.e., agreeing to create it only if paid, and to a user who is willing to pay for custom creation, i.e. law firms & clients, or maybe scientists & granting agencies).
That’s the benefit of the sandwich truck — you go back to selling a physical product.
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The particular job of nonfiction writer or journalist will likely disappear. The traditional function of someone like Anthony Lewis was that he could talk to lawyers, understand their language (because he had gone to one year of law school), and mediate the transmission of this information to the broader public. Nowadays, there are plenty of people with actual J.D.’s and full-time law jobs (mostly as law profs, but some practicing lawyers) who are willing and able to transmit directly to readers, without the need for professional intermediators.
In the same way (mutatis mutandis), various technological and cultural changes moved weaving, for a time, from professional weavers (think of all the people you know with surnames like Weaver and Webster) into the home. Later, another set of changes (industrialization) moved it back out of the home and into the mills. (You will recall that Ma in Little House sews, but she does not spin or weave, as her grandmother would have.) I think it’s kind of irrelevant to analyze or worry about who was exploited in these changes.
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Nowadays, there are plenty of people with actual J.D.’s and full-time law jobs (mostly as law profs, but some practicing lawyers) who are willing and able to transmit directly to readers, without the need for professional intermediators.
I wouldn’t say plenty. Most lawyers are horrible at explaining legal points to anybody who isn’t legally trained.
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I can second Sandra’s point. I’m a photographer, amd had three potential customers ask me to shoot their child’s 1st communion — for 10 Euros including a disk with all the images. Because that’s what some other idiot photog is asking. Gah! That makes no sense to me. That photog doesn’t value her work, that’s not business. It’s self-exploitation. Very frustrating.
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I’d go with the sandwich truck and do the writing on the side.
Advertising and sponsorships are changing too. The days of banner ads and huge numbers of readers being required are disappearing. People don’t click on ads as much as you’d think. What’s just as important is an engaged and loyal readership. As the content creator, what influence you have over your tribe of readers/followers rather than just sheer numbers.
So banner ads are on the way out and sponsored posts are coming in more and more. Not just the crass advertorial – either a small mention at the bottom of a post like “sponsored by X, opinions are my own” or woven into the story of the post in an authentic way that makes sense.
I keep thinking that your engaged readership is a HUGE plus that you have.
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shoot their child’s 1st communion — for 10 Euros including a disk with all the images
Girls dress mostly in nearly identical clothes for it. If you took one shot and switched heads (the parents would have to send you a .jpg of the kid), you’d not have to travel and could probably do O.K. out of it.
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http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/13/03/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-digital-editor-2013/273763/
Honestly, I am so depressed that I’m just sitting here playing video games until the kids come home.
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I also take photographs, but for me that means not accepting any payment, rather than being underpaid. That gives me the flexibility to be completely in control of what I’m willing to do. I’d rather not be paid and than give someone the impression that the work I’m doing actually has a miniscule value (i.e. my photography is really “priceless”). But, I’m in the fortunate position that $10 euros makes no difference to me. I can see why someone who, for example, thinks they’ll buy a book, or save up for a piece of equipment might think they’re doing the right thing by charging.
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I disagree that discussing who was “exploited” is irrelevant. It’s irrelevant in the sense that we can’t stop technology and the changes in labor and economics that result from the changes in technology. But, it’s relevant in the sense that we can think about where the value in the work is and where the compensation for it is going. That gives people an opportunity to try to recapture more of the value they are adding.
Take photography — in photography, in the non-digital days, photographers brought the value of what a good photo is and how to produce it (and the skills associated with it), the skills of manipulating the equipment (measuring exposure, setting lighting, . . .), the film & prints. In the early days, all of those pieces were very important. Now, the photographer only brings their the knowledge (and, is subverted by the fact that taking lots of pictures, which is now easy, can result in a few good ones, even without special skill — that still doesn’t work with writing).
So, the monetary value of photography *is* less than it used to be — you can’t recapture the value of all the skills into the one of knowing how to take good photographs. In addition, the picture itself might have more (or less) value as a digital piece than it did as a print. Armed with that idea, we can continue to talk about
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Tutoring? Coaching? Advising? I think those might be some knowledge jobs that are still viable, because they are individually paid for. The disruption of the other knowledge jobs has occurred because the ease of entry has has diverted the profit to those who provide the infrastructure that provides the ease of entry (i.e. the internet giants). So one needs to find jobs that people are willing to pay for individually.
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I’ve been interested in this coaching thing too–I don’t remember anyone paying for that back in the day but my mother in law pays for someone to help her exercise at home(great idea for older people if they can afford it–and if I had a bit more money I might pay for it too) and a have friends that pay for career coaching.
I think that some of education is the provision of information, like journalists do, and that will be affected to some extent by coursework online (though rich people will continue to prefer to purchase the college experience, just as they do thousand/wk summer camps). But much teaching is not. It’s a lot more like coaching; it’s motivational and evaluative as well as informational. I don’t think that kind of teaching is going to become less necessary, or that it can be replicated online, though society may choose not to pay for it anyway. In any case, that’s why I don’t see education declining in quite the way journalism has.
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Let them use the other photographer – they’ll get what they paid for. Just because technology has created a low barrier to entry for photography doesn’t mean it’s an easy thing to do.
Photography is still part ability/talent/hard work AND getting your work in front of the right people. People pay for your shooting AND for the experience of working with you.
Check out Jasmine Star for someone who has the skills AND the business savvy to create a hugely successful wedding photography business in an age where so many are crying the blues…
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“I think it’s kind of irrelevant to analyze or worry about who was exploited in these changes.”
As long as it’s not you, yeah?
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Here’s a good comment from that piece (which was in dire need of editing, assuming that the author didn’t intend to illustrate what he’s arguing against):
I did a bunch of different stuff to make ends meet as a freelancer, but writing for free for a for-profit entity wasn’t one of them. (Non-profits sometimes got reduced rates if I liked them.) It might be worth writing for peanuts once, depending on how much I value the bio line “has written for X, Y and Z.” Otherwise, no.
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Yeah, I’m done. But, on the plus side, it’s after 5, so I can start drinking without feeling guilty.
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Random House is trying it too:
“Because they can” covers a lot of this type of behavior from corporations, and the people acting on their behalf.
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Drinking earlier without the guilt is one of the privileges of freelancing. Or of being MH.
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I wrote a lengthy paragraph and deleted it…
Steve thinks that the future is the New Republic model. A super rich dude comes into to rescue intellectual magazines as a vanity project. Maybe.
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Steve may be right. A politics dominated by the quarrels of plutocrats is very unappealing to me, but we may be headed in that direction. Some will not object, as long as the plutocrats are pro-choice, but my vision is more one of honest toilers ordering their own affairs. I feel that not too many people share that vision these days.
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If I didn’t know you better, I’d assume that was a call for higher capital gains taxes.
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Tutoring? Coaching? Advising?
The problem there is you have SO MANY bad/unqualified (unemployed) people thinking they can be a life coach, or an organizer, or a job coach. And the client eventually discovers that they bring NO skills to the table except a boundless ego and, generally, extroversion. These are not the kind of people I need to take advice from. Tutoring has more possibility, because you can actually measure some of the outcomes: did my child pass algebra, for example, when previously she/he had not understood anything in class.
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What you should do is figure out a way to sell me a cup of coffee while I read 11D. It’s like a coffeeshop I visit every day, only I don’t have to buy coffee.
Tutoring is going to be important for all of those kids who sign up for MOOCs or other online courses in place of regular college; maybe you could work up a consulting job around navigating the new college-ish experience.
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But we’re talking about Laura — I don’t know if it pays well enough, but she’s in the neck of the woods where people pay insanely for that stuff. Would it be financially lucrative enough to be worthwhile? Or would the people be insufferable? I vote for some kind of tutoring empire followed bya run for public office.
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Laura, have you thought about editting dissertations and MA theses for foreign students? My understanding is that this pays pretty well, and your writing for public venues is thus a draw that you can use as a credential in explaining why they should hire you rather than someone else.
I’m a tenure-track (hopefully soon to be TENURED) professor and we’re encouraged to write op-eds, longer opinion pieces (whih usually amounts to writing for free, though the money is OK with Chronicle of Higher Ed, Christian Science Monitor and the big outlets). If I publish an op-ed, I don’t get that much money, but I get to list it on my CV which increases my cred around the department and the school. (I write for IR blogs for free, as well as so other more applied technical stuff like medical humanities) but it’s actually all career enhancing, a way to network with other academics who have subsequently invited me to conferences, to write chapters, etc. Also, most of my poli sci friends write this stuff for free because it is helpful if you seek a political appointment in DC down the road to have a folder of this stuff. It shows your poli sci stuff translates into public policy, etc.
So the idea is there should be some intangibles you’re getting from the exposure with the Atlantic: i.e when you run for school board, it would help you win; if could help you with your work as a free-lance academic writing coach; it could help you get a job as a copywriter or technical writer or something like that? It will put you at the top of the pile should you apply for adjunct jobs. (There’s also the possibility of teaching a weekend course like ‘how to write for magazines’ and charging others to learn this valuable but low-paid skill.)
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The low pay at the Atlantic is no surprise to me. Clearly. I also know that they ran out of money to pay freelancers entirely in February. The low pay for articles was cool with me, not just because of the exposure, but because it was a career switch for me. I used them to learn how to pitch articles and other j-school basics that I never learned. I also got a better understanding of what topics gather attention and which ones don’t. I honestly did learn a lot, so I never felt used. However, there was a lot of heated discussion yesterday at various venues on the Internet that was… well… not so nice. I need to take a step back from all that.
I don’t need more credentials to apply for adjunct jobs. My CV is very hefty. Actually, I’m over qualified.
I’m a little burned out at the moment with knowledge industry work. I wish I knew how to do something practical, like fixing motorcycles or patching up sick people.
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Does smuggling cigarettes count as practical?
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Anyway, my F-i-L was one of the last let go when the mill he worked at closed. Looking around, he saw everybody else making far less than half the old wages and he wanted a switch. He started a restaurant that was a success eventually, but it involved a great deal of working 80 hours a week at an age when he could have retired if the mill stayed open and it wasn’t a business that was totally new to him.
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“A Note to You, Should You Be Thinking of Asking Me to Write For You For Free
“December 9, 2012 By John Scalzi
“Because apparently it’s that time again.
“1. No.
“2. Seriously, are you fucking kidding me? …
“10. But now that you mention it, saying ‘fuck you, pay me,’ to you does not make me (or anyone else from whom you are hoping to extract actual work from without pay) the asshole in this scenario. It makes me the guy responding to the asshole, in a manner befitting the moment.”
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“The low pay for articles was cool with me, not just because of the exposure, but because it was a career switch for me. I used them to learn how to pitch articles and other j-school basics that I never learned. I also got a better understanding of what topics gather attention and which ones don’t. I honestly did learn a lot, so I never felt used.”
This is exactly how I feel about my current, regular freelancing gig. What’s difficult for me to accept, though, is that while I’d love to get bigger bylines, there’s not going to be a pay bump to come with them.
When I graduate from my MFA program, I’d kill for an adjunct job at a bottom-of-the-barrel program. Or even a part-time job at bookstore. My standards are impossibly low.
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“My standards are impossibly low.”
Raise them. If you don’t value your time and your work, nobody else will.
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“Raise them. If you don’t value your time and your work, nobody else will.”
But see, the problem is that one can really be in a position where working for free or even paying to work (think, eco-tourism) makes sense for a particular individual. It’s an absolute killer for people trying to get paid for doing the same work (and this applies to writers and photographers, but also to the eco-tourists, who might take jobs from workers in those eco-areas).
Remember the lines from robert frost poem —
“As that I had no right to play
With what was another man’s work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right–agreed. ”
(and mind you, you have to read the whole poem — he’s a poet, and does not come to the simple conclusion one might draw from this stanza in the poem).
My solution to Frost’s quandary is to do my “work” for free, rather than for low pay. In return for that I only do the parts I like to do (i.e. I don’t do marketing; I won’t edit the smiling child from one photo to another, . . . . But it would be wrong to assume that the work I do isn’t as good, when the right match has been found.
The same is true for Louisa’s free labor — there’s no reason whatsoever to assume that her clip will be worse than the person who doesn’t have another day job (and, I’ll note, her labor isn’t really “free” — someone else is kind of paying for it, but the value is being leveraged).
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