Writers Have No Chance at Success Until They Realize They Should Be Paid
By: Walter Rhein
Tags: The Reckless Writer, Work, Writing, Creative, Self

Writers Have No Chance at Success Until They Realize They Should Be Paid

Photo by Stephen Leonardi on Unsplash

I was talking with a writer friend when she mentioned that she was done submitting poems to journals that didn’t offer compensation.

“Darn it, I put so much time and energy into these poems that I deserve to get something for them. I don’t care if it’s $20, $10, or even $5. There just has to be some kind of payment.”

Her words resonated with me because I had come to the same conclusion years ago. All writers pass through many stages. At first, there’s an excitement just seeing your name in print. Getting your work accepted in a journal is cause for celebration.

But little by little, merely seeing your work published stops being enough. The next step is insisting that you are payed something. When you start getting paid something, you move on to insisting you are payed a little more.

This isn’t selfishness, it’s a sign that you are developing as a writer. As hard as it is to believe, demanding fair compensation will actually open more doors for you.

You must be aware of your own worth

When I was working as an English teacher in Peru, I grew to hate the job. You can only go through the basics of grammar so many times before it starts to become like pulling teeth.

It got so that I despised teaching English, and my reluctance to perform that form of labor led to one of my greatest personal discoveries about the philosophy of work.

One of the things school fails to teach us is how to leverage your negotiating power. Sadly, there’s a reason for this. Our schools are designed to create factory workers, they aren’t designed to churn out the people who own the factories.

You’re conditioned that you should feel grateful whenever anyone offers you a job. You aren’t supposed to be financially able to wrinkle your nose at the prospect of hard work and demand a better salary. The people who run factories don’t like that.

Fortunately, I’ve always been obstinate. Maybe it was part of the conditioning I received from school. Maybe it’s just that I’m willing to experiment, but by pure chance I adopted a strategy that has been a great benefit to me in every aspect of my life.

Even though I hated teaching English, I never flatly turned down a job. Instead, I realized that there did exist a theoretical amount of money for which I’d be willing to do the work.

In the past, I’d been reluctant to set my fees at a high level out of fear of missing out on the opportunity. But when I finally got fed up and started demanding compensation, a surprising thing happened.

More work than I could handle

When you start charging more, you begin to develop a strong reputation.

People think, “Wow, if this guy is so expensive, then he must be really, really good.”

All of a sudden, they start referring you to your friends. Having classes with you becomes a status symbol. Honestly, except for the money, it’s the exact opposite of what you want.

My objective was to stop teaching, not get more work. So, I raised my rates again, and again, and again. I raised them to a level that seemed almost obscene.

The customers kept coming. All of a sudden, they were pounding at my door.

I came to realize that you don’t always drive people away by asking for a ridiculous amount of money. In fact, the exact opposite can happen. People decide they’re even more inclined to contract your services.

How it applies to writing

I’ve found that writing is unlike any other occupation on the planet. I know this because in order to support my writing habit, I’ve taken every other kind of job imaginable.

The way you apply the lesson of compensation to writing isn’t to demand compensation from the “for the love” publications where you commonly submit. If you do that, you’ll be laughed out of the building.

Instead, you have to break the cycle of submitting to places that don’t pay. That’s easier said than done.

Maybe it’s a lack of self-confidence, maybe it’s intimidation, maybe it’s getting caught in a comfort zone, but it’s hard for writers to move away from places that accept their work. As a writer, you have to understand that creative people are prone to getting into abusive relationships.

If you aren’t getting paid, the publication is taking advantage of you.

Maybe you’re hoping that the editor at the publication will decide to launch a small publishing house. Yeah, and maybe that person you’re dating will finally divorce his/her spouse and marry you.

It’s up to you to demand more for yourself, the people who are used to taking advantage of you aren’t going to suddenly see the light.

Goodbye “for the love” press

There’s no law against taking baby steps, just don’t stop taking them. The first time you sell a short story for $5 is an enormous thrill. When that wears off, you’ll get a thrill out of selling something for $10 and so on.

Keep chasing that thrill!

Remember that you shouldn’t submit to places that charge a reading fee no matter how much they claim to pay their writers. In all probability, those places keep track of how often you’ve submitted, and they might accept something just to retain a good “paying customer.” That’s not the kind of acceptance you want.

I don’t understand how journals that charge a reading fee can even exist, but judging by the number of them out there, something must be working.

Don’t be afraid to ask for an honorarium

I give a lot of talks at libraries. In the early days, it could be a struggle to book those opportunities. I found it got a lot easier when I began to request an honorarium.

Keep in mind that you have to use the phrase “honorarium.” If you say “my speaking fee,” it seems cheap and distasteful. You’re still asking for money when you say “honorarium,” but the regal phrasing makes it seem like you’re a member of a higher class that doesn’t really need the money.

Somehow, that makes it easier to get paid.

I’m not here to explain the reasoning of human nature, I’m just telling you what works.

If you’re trying to get booked as a speaker, you’ll be taken a lot more seriously if you tell them you won’t come unless you are paid. Once they’ve got some skin in the game, they make a greater effort to promote you. It works out well for everyone, and it all starts by knowing your value.

Stop feeding the void and get paid

All writers are constantly on the lookout for recognition but nothing ever seems to be enough. If their book does well financially, they want to be a hit with the critics. If they are a hit with the critics, they want more readers. It always seems like there’s a void that can never be filled by the various available measures of success.

If you get caught in that cycle, you’ll never get out of it. You’re chasing your own tail.

The thing you have to recognize is that there is no external entity that can provide you with a sense of satisfaction regarding the quality of your work. That has to come from within.

You’ll never fill the void no matter how many of your poems are published in a “for the love” journal. In fact, if you don’t come to a personal realization over the value of your work, even a contract from a big five publisher won’t satisfy you.

The first step is wresting control away from all the harsh and cruel entities in the world, and empowering yourself to believe that your words and your voice has value. When you sell an article, short story, poem, or novel, you aren’t doing it for validation, you’re doing it for the money.

When your only compensation is validation, you’re selling yourself too cheap. The reason is that nobody can provide that to you. You’re getting nothing.

Recognize your worth and then demand the compensation you deserve. It’s counter-intuitive, but it’s the only thing that works.