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Hi, folks.
This article is aimed at the newer writers in the audience. That said, even if you’re a reader or a fan who cares about authors and their place in the publishing world, this may still be useful for you.
“I’M MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE.”
Full disclosure: I’m a horror writer with a few books under my belt, a few accolades, and some great reviews. I’ve been writing professionally for a few years now, and I’ve been in the indie scene long enough to know a good deal from a bad one.
And for fuck’s sake, there are a lot of bad ones out there.
In recent weeks, I’ve had several conversations with fellow authors about various publishers (who will not be named) regarding their methods of compensation. One common thread I’ve noticed is the writer’s inability or refusal to place value on their work. This has led to many publishing agreements that do not favor the author, thereby enabling certain predatory practices.
Allow me to reiterate: Authors should be paid for their work.
Of course we should be paid! And yet we’re all too eager to place our stories with publishers who are only looking out for themselves. I see it all the time and it pisses me off.
So. My goal here is to call out some of the bullshit compensation practices that are rampant in the indie world, explain why they’re bullshit, and why we should expect better.
WHAT’S A CONTRACT, ANYWAY?
Traditionally, an established publisher will offer the author a contract and an advance against royalties, with an agreed-upon royalty rate once the advance earns out for a set term. This is a simplified example, of course, but you get the idea.
In the indie world, publishers aren’t as established and often do not have the means of paying an advance. Instead, indie publishers will usually offer higher royalty rates (e.g. 50% of the net profit from a sale) depending on the sales channel (digital, print, retail, audio, et al.) and the rights they’re purchasing.
That’s essentially what a publishing contract is: An agreement to purchase the rights to publish your work. Which rights (print, digital, etc.) should be spelled out in your contract. They’re paying you for the right to prepare and distribute your work to sell.
Doesn’t matter if it’s Traditional or Indie. A contract is necessary. It outlines what rights you are selling to a publisher, the length of time a publisher will hold those rights, how much they’re paying for said rights, and the method of said payment.
If there is no contract, there should be no sale.
All this is in reference to a single author arrangement. But what about when the publisher wants to release an anthology or magazine? How’s this work in the Short Fiction Market?
THEY’RE COMPENSATING FOR SOMETHING
A publisher will announce an open submission call in which they outline what they’re seeking. Theme, word count, etc. More importantly, they will state the method of compensation, and define what rights they are seeking.
Ideally, a publisher will (and should) offer a professional rate per word as compensation for the right to publish your story.
Let’s look at today’s market. For this, I’m pulling data from two organizations: The Horror Writers Association (HWA) and the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).
As of today, the HWA requires any writer or editor seeking Active membership status to have been paid a rate of 5 cents per word (at minimum). In 2019, the SFWA defined their minimum rate as 8 cents per word.
Let’s go with the HWA minimum as a baseline rate. 5 cents a word. That’s $50 for every thousand words. You would be compensated $250 for a 5000-word story.
There are other methods of compensation, though. Some are neutral to authors. Most are predatory. Let’s take a look at the ones I’ve seen in recent years.
- Payment Cap – Publisher will only pay up to a capped amount based on a set rate.
- Flat Rate – You’ll be paid a set amount regardless of the word count.
- Royalty Share – You will share a percentage of the royalties will the other authors involved in the work.
- Token Payment – Per Merriam-Webster: “A very small payment made upon a debt and intended by the payer merely to acknowledge the existence of the obligation.”
- “For the Love” –The publisher is offering to publish your work for nothing, and you’re giving away your work “for the love” of publishing, writing, poverty, etc.
The Payment Cap and Flat Rate methods aren’t inherently bad. I’ve written for flat rates and payment caps because I deemed the compensation adequate for the amount of work involved, but your mileage may vary. We’ll come back to this in a minute.
THE ROYALTY SHARE
Curating an anthology with good rates (and top talent) is expensive. Which is why a publisher might choose NOT to pay up front for content. This can be advantageous for the author if there’s a more prominent name attached to the work (ex. Stephen King) that will guarantee sales. In most cases (read: all cases), however, Uncle Steve isn’t offering new fiction for a no-name publisher to print, and certainly not for free. This anthology’s success rests entirely on the shoulders of the authors and the publisher, which is why a royalty share rarely earns enough for the individual.
Let’s look at the numbers.
A publisher offers a royalty share for a Kindle collection of five authors. The publisher gets 50% and the rest is split between the contributors. The eBook will sell for $2.99. For that price, Amazon takes 30% of the royalty, and the net profit ends up being approximately $2.00.
The publisher keeps $1.00, leaving $1.00 for the authors, or 20 cents per author.
If you write a 10k word story for a royalty share as outlined above, the book will need to sell 2500 copies for you to be compensated the equivalent of a minimum professional rate sale.
This example doesn’t account for Amazon’s data transmission fee, which is calculated based on the eBook’s file size and deducted from the sale. Realistically, your net profit would be slightly less.
The amount of time to earn out depends on the publisher. If they don’t have the means of purchasing stories outright for an anthology like this, it’s unlikely they have much of a marketing budget.
There lies the issue with royalty shares: They’re entirely dependent on the publisher’s ability to market the title. Without sales, that royalty “share” is useless, and you’ve given your work away for a pittance.
TOKEN PAYMENTS
The insultingly low token payment is like a pat on the head. “Good job, kid. Here’s $20. Go buy yourself a Happy Meal.”
I consider them predatory because the publisher is usually looking for quality work of length that far exceeds the value of the payment.
A publisher wants a story that’s up to 10,000 words long. They’re offering $25 for it. That breaks down to $0.0025 cents per word. I don’t know about you, but a 10k novelette takes me around a month or more to write, edit, revise, and polish. That’s $25 for a month’s work. Meanwhile, the publisher is raking in 100% of the royalties from each sale.
This is why I consider them predatory. They devalue your time and talent.
Speaking of word count and fair pay, we're running out of space here, so tune in next time where we will discuss the dreaded practice of "For the Love" compensation. Read Part II HERE.
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About the author
TODD KEISLING is the Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of Devil’s Creek. His other books include Scanlines, The Final Reconciliation, and The Monochrome Trilogy, among many shorter works. He lives somewhere in the wilds of Pennsylvania with his family where he is at work on his next novel.
