Dear Editor: Seven Things Freelancers Want to Get Off Their Chests

Sometimes I feel like a three dollar hooker.

By which I mean the lowly freelancer still doesn’t get a whole lotta respect in this mean ol’ world.  And it’s not just a matter of having no dental plan.  (Mercifully, I am Canadian, so at least I have basic health coverage … I really feel for my American counterparts who are forking over 3/4 of their income every month for health insurance!)

There’s this vast, yawning gulf in perspective on the publishing industry, depending on which side of the editor’s desk you’re observing it from.  Funnily enough, most freelancers, including myself, have spent some time as editors, so I like to think we’ve got a fairly balanced viewpoint of the priorities of each job.  The converse, however, is not always true —  not all editors have spent time as freelancers.

Many years ago, I started a little e-mail chatlist for freelance writers and photographers who work in my little niche, the ‘nag mags’.  I was just trying to develop a community of similarly occupied people who could compare notes on the markets for whom they were writing, share story ideas and sources, maybe kvetch a little.  Freelancing of any sort can be a very isolating thing, toiling away in obscurity as all are in our various versions of home office.  The chatlist, as Mesozoic as it was, took off, and it’s still alive and just as Mesozoic (technologically speaking) today.  I like to think it serves a purpose, beyond giving me egoboo as its ‘listgoddess’.

But oh my, you should have seen the knickers twisting and the hands wringing, when some of the horse mag editors got wind of the fact that the freelancers were talking amongst themselves!

The horror.  The horror.

Somehow, I was instantly cast as Norma Rae, rabble-rousing in a factory.  Good lord (thought the terrified editors), if we let them compare notes, we can’t divide and conquer anymore!  It’ll get out when we take months to pay someone.  When we steal a story idea and assign it to someone in-house.  When we forget to assign something and then expect one of our little factory minions to churn out a brilliant 2000 word feature on a 48-hour turnaround with no additional compensation.    When we send out a completely draconian contract that requires writers to sign away rights they hadn’t even conceived of yet.

Well, yes, that was sort of the point.

Needless to say, assignments for me were rather thin there for a while.

But eventually the editors got used to the idea.  And got over themselves.  Everyone had to come to grips with the fact that this whole Interwebz thing was making it much easier for people to converse.  I don’t really get frozen out anymore over it … most of these same editors probably assume the chatlist is long dead by now.  (It isn’t, but it’s invitation only, so if you’re a freelancer who’s genuinely interested, leave me a comment and I’ll e-mail you details.)

Oh, and btw, the idea of freelancers unionizing does come up regularly, and there are organizations out there, but unfortunately none of them really has the clout they would like to have, so they haven’t really made much headway on behalf of the really struggling demographic like myself, which can’t afford the annual dues.

Yup, pay them pathetically enough and you can keep ’em under your boot-heels indefinitely.

Now, to be fair, it’s often not the editors who are really to blame when freelancers get a raw deal.  The edict usually comes from further up the food chain, and the editor just gets to be the bearer of bad tidings.

Still, when it comes to freelancing in the 21st century, there are a bunch of things we freelancers would like editors and/or publishers to know.

(Here comes the crowdsourcing part. I asked for contributions from my fellow freelancers for this, so editors, please don’t take these as personal attacks on my part, but as constructive and deferential commentary from freelancers at large!)

1. If you can’t pay well, then at least pay quickly.  Believe it or not, I’ve got biiiiig vet bills, just like you.  POA, or payment on acceptance — meaning that once the writer submits the article, and a cursory glance has determined that it isn’t irretrievable rubbish and has the potential to be published, the writer is sent a cheque for a previously-agreed-upon amount — used to be the industry norm.  But increasingly — and especially, for some unfathomable reason, within the horse magazine niche — it’s now POP, or payment on publication.  Which can be months and months and bloody months after you’ve done the research, interviewed the sources, transcribed the tapes, written and edited the piece, chopped 650 words off it because it was too long (um, maybe that’s just me), and sent it out.

Which essentially means that the magazine has your work in its hot little hands, interest-free, for yonks.  Which, frankly, Ontario Hydro doesn’t understand, even when I try to explain it to them in words of one syllable or less.

When the pay rates keep plunging, POP is really adding insult to injury, folks.  I understand that budgets get slashed and that sometimes your hands are tied and you’re only hanging onto your own job by the slimmest of threads.  But listen, if you’re only able to offer some paltry amount for my blood, sweat, and tears, you’ll soften the blow considerably if you can hustle that cheque into the mail (or my PayPal account) just as quickly as the accounting department’s little legs can manage it.  My cel phone and internet providers and all my other utilities, thank you.

2. It is not easier to “write short”.  Several times in the past few years, I’ve received breezy e-mails from editors, announcing that their publication is reducing the wordcount for their feature articles to approximately half what it used to be … and yet they’re still willing to pay me 2/3 of what I used to get.  Like this is doing me some big fat favour or something.  Like it’s going to save me so much time and work.

Writing short is not easier, especially when (as is almost invariably the case) my gentle editor still expects me to include just as many quotes from just as many experts, and thoroughly cover just as many thorny aspects of whatever the topic du jour might be.  Writing short just means I have to do that much more machete-ing of copy once I have the framework down.  And when I do that, I risk having to eliminate something that’s crucial to the subject and also really interesting, and then, sometimes, being told to shoehorn it back in there somehow (without increasing the wordcount!).

I once had an editor ask me to cover a week-long international showjumping tournament at Spruce Meadows in 600 words.  Not one class — the entire tournament, which if I recall correctly included at least 14 big-news classes.  And then he complained that my copy didn’t “sing”.  Sing?  With that wordcount I could barely manage to list the names of the winners in point form.

Writing short, writing ‘tight’, is a skill that not all writers have.  It’s something I continuously strive towards, and I’m a lot better at it than I used to be (this blog notwithstanding).  But c’mon, peeps, don’t be trying to spin it like it’s some great big Sisyphean boulder off my back to have less space in which to express myself.

3.  When I bail you out of a tight spot by generating fabulous copy on a ridiculously short deadline, at least have the class to acknowledge that I saved your ass.

Or as one of my compatriots put it, “Your publishing / editorial mismanagement is not my problem!  WHY would you call me on Friday with an offer of a project, only to tell me it’s needed on Monday? Your editorial calendars are set months in advance. What happened? Someone let you down? You know I’m reliable and will get it done so you call me? What’s the incentive?  None.  Your rates are draconian and your attitude simultaneously arrogant and demeaning. I’m doing YOU a favour! At least offer me a slight ’emergency’ bonus.”

4. Hellllooooo?  “Editors who don’t have the decent common courtesy to at least respond to the read request when you send in an article or photo — that’s a pet peeve.  They expect us to have stuff in on or before deadline, then can’t even have the decency to let us know they received it.  I only have two editors who faithfully respond back, and it is so nice not to have to wonder if the thing made it or not.  It’s just bad manners and makes the person sending the article feel unappreciated.  I meet their requirements; can’t they at least have the decency to acknowledge me?  All they have to do is push a button.” — a fellow freelancer (Oh, we are legion, people … and apparently, we’re pissed!)

5. Identity theft is a crime … or at the very least, bad form.   “When you copy-edit my work, I would appreciate it if you would not change my style of writing quite so radically.  You asked me to write it, but now it reads like you were the author.  I also don’t appreciate it when you make changes that make the copy grammatically incorrect.  I’m not complaining about issues that might be right on the line or could be interpreted in different ways … I’m talking about making changes I learned not to do in Journalism 101.”  — a victim of butchered copy (see machete, above).

It’s true that one has to have a thick skin when one is a writer.  Some editing is inevitable, and you can’t be joined at the hip with every precious bon mot you generate in a Word doc.  But there’s editing, and then there’s the Alice’s Restaurant Massacree.  When you don’t recognize a single sentence in the published copy as your own, you know you’re not dealing with an editor, but a control freak.

 6. Please stop trying to rob me blind with rights-grabbing contracts.  I know, I know, these don’t get generated at the editor’s desk.  They’re handed down from some weasely little lawyer at the behest of a bean counter in a corner office.  But it’s the editor who mails it out, accompanied by another breezy message which thanks me (I kid you not, I actually received this) for helping their company to “thrive”.

Funny how I end up feeling like you’re thriving at my expense when you send out a contract which requires me to sign away not only my right to get paid if you decide to use my material in six different magazines instead of the one we discussed, but also my right to make a little extra income from my work in alternate formats existing or not even imagined yet, forever and ever amen.  Oh, and then there’s that liability clause which asks me to assume all responsibility for your edited copy, and the little “moral rights” thing.

From the Writer’s Union of Canada: “Stay away from or amend contracts that ask you to waive (i.e., give up) your moral rights. Waiving moral rights permits a publisher to make substantial changes to your work, even to your viewpoint, or to alter the authorship credit by publishing it anonymously or under someone else’s name.”

“The biggest thing is to stop grabbing rights that a) they’ll never use, and b) prevent us from re-selling or making additional income from our work. It is a total piss off.” — another compatriot of mine.

Gawd, we’re a bunch of ungrateful wretches, aren’t we?

7.  Make up your mind.  “Be clear about what you want when you make the assignment, and ensure that you and the freelancer are on the same page. It is wildly frustrating to have an editor ask for rewrites not because the story is lacking per se, but because his/her vision of the story is “evolving” as you go along.” — yet another comrade, who when acting as an editor, strives for clarity.

Thanks to Simon Chadwick, whose cartoons can be found at http://www.ceratopia.co.uk

And at this point, I’m going to save further constructive criticism for a future post.  I’m sure I’ve already gotten myself blackballed by at least a dozen of my regular markets for this one.  Editors, after all, don’t have the thick skins freelancers do …

I Don’t Work for Free. Please Don’t Ask Me.

I really didn’t want my next entry to be a rant.  I fear I might be coming off as negative.  😉

But this subject just keeps rearing its ugly, venomous little head, and if I don’t do it now, it’s just going to sink its nasty needle-sharp teeth into my cranium and gnaw away until I’m gray-matter hamburger.  So forgive me. 

It’s the whole “we don’t really have a budget for content/photos but we’d like you to donate your work to us anyway” thing.

Drives me fucking nuts.

I’ve never been able to fathom why anyone and everyone thinks they can get into publishing in the first place.  It seems to be one of those things where skills and experience have no bearing on the decision.  I have no background in plumbing, so to date I have never woken up with an uncontrollable impulse to plunge my head under the sink and rip out a few pipes, because really, how hard could it be?

But publishing a magazine or a website?  It’s Mickey Rooney territory.  “Hey, we’re show folks … we can put on a show in the barn!  Sally can dance, and I can tell jokes, and Mom can sew all the costumes.  It’ll be swell!”

And then they proceed to launch a magazine (or website, or whatever) with absolutely no editing skills, only the most rudimentary grasp of the language, and zero emphasis on quality content.  There are three typos on the cover alone?  No matter, it still looks SPIFFY, doesn’t it!  We’re so proud.  Advertise with us.

This total lack of journalistic training results in a complete disregard for people who produce content, and almost invariably, nothing allocated in the budget for said content.

Photographs are free, after all. You can get ’em all over the Interwebz.  The photographers won’t mind, because we’re giving them (wait for it) … Valuable.  Exposure. In Our Fine Publication.

(More on this in a moment.)

And editorial ….?  Well, we’d like you to write for us of course, because you are well-respected and clever and we have read your articles and we looooooove them.  Look how honourable we are being, asking you to write something original instead of stealing your content from said Interwebz and running it sans permission.  (Oh, wait, we did that too.  Oops.)

We would like you to write for us for free because (choose one or more):

a) we’re a struggling little start-up and if you’re nice to us, maybe we’ll be able to pay you something sometime in the dim, dark future if we don’t fold first

b) we’ll give you a byline and what fantastic (wait for it) EXPOSURE it will be for you

c) we’ll barter you some ad space or give you a free subscription or something else equally worthless.

d) we’re a non-profit (but we’re paying our editor, our production team, our printer, our marketing agency, and a host of other people, including the plumber who had to rip out the pipes under the sink in our office because we wouldn’t touch that stuff with a 10-foot pole).

Ohhhh, who hasn’t sung this refrain to me?  Most recently, I was approached by a start-up which is going to cover all the sparkliest and most luxurious elements of the horse industry.  It plans to attract ads from Ferrari and Rolex and cover high-goal polo and multi-million-Euro warmblood auctions and such … and it isn’t paying its writers.

So, um, I’m supposed to somehow sneak into the sponsor’s tent at Aachen in my ripped Walmart jeans and my beaten-up Blunnies with the soles peeling off (only because the Prada is at the cleaner’s, you understand) in order to interview the latest royalty who has purchased six showjumpers for the Beerbaums?

Cuz hey, I was gonna be there anyway …

I’ve had requests that are even more insulting than that, actually.  A few years ago, a local lawyer who was enamoured of Canadiens (the horse breed, not the Habs) decided to launch a slick, glossy magazine celebrating Canadiens at work, at play, and in provocative poses (or something).  I encountered her at a trade show and she was positively ecstatic to meet me, gushing that she had read my books and my articles and how WONDERFUL it would be if I were to write for her fantastic magazine.

I gave her my card.

Two days later, she e-mailed me, gushed a little more, and then offered me what she clearly considered an unparalleled opportunity.  If I would like to sell a few full-page ads for her new effort, then I would be welcome to write about the advertisers.

For free.

Was there some satisfaction in seeing her magazine last two issues, then fold?  You betcha.

Once a writer, now re-classified as a “content provider” (sometimes with gratis ad sales, apparently) with all the appeal and value of an intestinal parasite.

(My friends say I suffer from low self-esteem.  Hmmm.)

This has been the evolution of the publishing business.  I dabble in photography, but I have many, many friends who are Real Photographers, and I know the world of hurt that has resulted from the digital revolution.  Where once, a photographer’s skill was valued, now anyone can plunk down for a professional-quality camera body and some decent glass, and get publishable images — if one isn’t too fussy about composition and such.  Photoshop is your friend …

And likewise, where journalism was once a respected profession, now everyone’s a bloody blogger.  (Gawd, including me.)  “Citizen journalism” is free, and it amazes me how many people apparently have time on their hands and are tickled enough to see their names in print, to contribute it, no matter how inaccurate, badly written, or flogging-an-agenda it might be.  It’s free, so by gum we’re a-gonna run it!

All of which makes we professional content providers, I guess, look rather cheeky to be expecting to get paid for what we do.

On the photography side, here are a couple of blogs which tackle the subject even more frankly than I’m doing right now.  Please have a look — they’re well worth reading.

Tony Wu’s “Reasons Why Professional Photographers Cannot Work for Free”

Tony Sleep’s “We Have No Budget For Photos” 

and Mike Spinak’s “When Publishers Request Freebies”

Though photogs have been particularly outspoken on this issue, you could pretty much insert the word “writer” wherever you see “photographer” in any of these articles.  Or “graphic designer”, “illustrator”, or just about any creative content provider.  The issues are essentially identical.

So please, launch a magazine.  Sew the costumes, hang the curtains, pass out the playbills.  But have the sense to hire a director who knows what he/she is doing, and create a budget which allows you to fairly purchase the content you’re doing to need to earn you that Tony … er, Pulitzer.  Otherwise, don’t bother.

And please, pretty please, don’t plead poverty to me when you come, cap in hand, to my doorstep, all obsequious and ingratiating.  I could teach you a couple things about poverty.  Sheesh.

The Great Canadian Novel … or Not …

People are always much more impressed when you can say you’re an author, rather than just a writer.

Writers (so public perception would have it) are self-deluded basement trolls who scribble incomprehensible stuff about self-actualization through crystals, or talking cats, that never sees the light of day unless it’s self-published and handed out as Festive Season gifts to unsuspecting relatives.

But authors have written books.  Real books with the names of real publishing houses, and ISBN numbers opposite the title pages.

Admittedly, as self-publishing gains legitimacy (in the eyes of the general public if not in bookstores and libraries), this line is blurring.  You can now be the author of a real book with a real ISBN without ever having hired an agent or an editor; all you have to do is hire the printer (and get your friend from high school to do the illustrations in return for promising to never reveal that thing she did back in ’87 …).  Unfortunately, since even Stephen King and Stephen Hawking need good editors, that means there is a lot of unreadable, grammatically excruciating rubbish issuing forth from these self-publishing  companies.  But there are also some exceptionally good self-published books … and if the authors are good at self-promotion, they sometimes even get read by someone other than Great Aunt Bernice.

Still, the perception lingers that having your book published by a real publishing house is superior to getting it self-published — if only because it got read and accepted by someone, after which it was edited and fact-checked, and the company invested some small amount in making that happen.  In essence, they gambled that your content would sell well enough to at least pay them back on their investment.

The day I was first contacted by a book editor with a proposal to write a book, was one of the most thrilling of my career.  It was also one of those ‘little did I know’ moments, of course …. I was sooooo flattered just to be asked to turn my columns on equine nutrition into a real book with a real cover, that I signed my name to a contract that, really, should never have been signed.  It was what you call a ‘work for hire’ contract, and it meant that, after the token royalty payment I received for entering into the agreement, I’d never see another cent from the sales.

Just my luck.  It sold well and went into a second edition.  It’s being used by several Canadian and American colleges as a text for their undergrad equine nutrition courses.  Sigh.  What have we learned, class?

I’m now a veteran of six published non-fiction books, and quite a bit wiser.  I still don’t have an agent, having brokered the deals for all six on my own (a circumstance some of my colleagues have reacted to with palpable disbelief.  ‘Tis true, I swear.)  The second adult book, I made no money whatsoever on, despite having negotiated what, on the surface, looked like a much smarter contract.  (Factoid:  JK Rowling may get book advances of seven or eight figures, but the reality is most authors barely get four-figure offers for putting together 60,000 – 100,000 words.  Publishing ain’t like it’s portrayed in the movies, honey.  Sorry to bubble-burst.)

I can’t complain about my four kid’s books, for Scholastic Canada, though.  I lucked into an offer from a kind Scholastic editor, with whom I had a very tenuous acquaintance, after I had pitched a more complex idea and she turned it down.  Would I be interested instead, she asked, in doing a simple book on breeds of horses for kids?  And did I know any good equine photographers?

I was and I did, and Shawn Hamilton and I ended up doing a series of four of these books before we ran out of breeds we could access to photograph, without using up all of Shawn’s air-miles for the next decade.  The price-point on the little paperbacks was right, the target market was horse-mad little girls (no shortage of those), and Scholastic is one of those rare companies which actually still markets its books like crazy, in multiple countries, instead of expecting the authors to do all the legwork.

Shawn and I made a tidy little sum from those books … and even now, little royalty cheques still arrive a couple of times a year.  They’re usually under $100, by this point,  sales having tapered down to a trickle, but again, I’m not complaining.

Alas, even that log-flume ride had to come to an end.  Last I spoke to my editor at Scholastic, the market for kids’ non-fiction had pretty much dried up.  She tells me kids just go to this Interwebz thing now to look up facts, instead of buying books.

Curse you, Interwebz!  May the fetid breath of a thousand camels fog up your windshield!

So I’m at a bit of a cross-roads.  I would really like to get another book project going.  The whole process of writing something 80 times as long as a magazine article is daunting, yes, but it’s less so once you’ve done it a few times.  And as I’ve pointed out, it adds so much cachet to one’s credibility.  Still, I am not sure in which direction I should go.

I have friends who keep telling me the real money is in fiction.  The afore-mentioned Ms. Rowling would certainly serve as proof and example, though we’ve all heard the stories about Harry Potter having been rejected umpteen million times by supposedly wise publishing houses before it finally saw the light of day and became an unstoppable marketing machine.

My squeeze recommends churning out murder mysteries. Trouble is, it’s really not my genre — I don’t even read them.  And my father (don’t choke) once suggested to me that the real money was in porn …. excuse me, women’s erotica.  (So much more genteel and tasteful.)

It probably is, but I dunno if I could channel my inner vixen to that degree without giving myself a fatal case of the giggles.  And I live in horror of unwittingly winning the “Bad Sex in Fiction” award …

All writers are supposed to have a Great Canadian (or American, or Insert Your Country of Origin Here) Novel lurking somewhere in the deepest recesses of their hippocampus.  I just really have never been able to locate mine.

I’ve churned out some bad short stories, yes, and some even worse (and, ahem, anonymous) fan-fiction (and no, I’m not telling you which fandom(s)!), and a lot of angsty poetry in my lifetime.  Some of the poetry actually bordered on okay, but if you want to pick the one branch of writing that earns you even less than writing for magazines and newspapers … well, three guesses.

If there’s a novel in my sub-psyche, it probably has not yet surfaced because I don’t have an ending for it.  And I can’t imagine all that many things more demoralizing than churning out 300 pages of plot and character and exposition and then not being able, for the life of you, to wrap it up.

(My sympathies to my writer friends who may be wrestling with just this dilemma as they near the end of NaNoWriMo month. You are braver than I, and I salute you.)

Even if you visualize your Great Work of Fiction as a series of seven (or eight, or however many bloody Harry Potter books there are), you’ve still got to sell a publisher on that first one, so it better be firm and tight and bouncy … (Oh, dear, there’s that subliminal porn sneaking in.  Eeekk!)

It’s possible that after almost 30 years of being a journalist, that I’m just hard-wired for the non-fiction angle.  And I do have two sort of half-formed concepts for non-fiction books kicking around my skull.  I think I just need a kick in the tush to flesh them out enough to start peddling them to publishers.

Feel free to deliver same if you’ve read this far and are so inclined.