The Value of Pay vs Non-Paying Markets for Short Stories

On FB, someone asked “Is it worth submitting to non-paying markets, or are we just perpetuating the exploitation of writers?”, and received a good deal of sanctimonious feedback about how real writers always get paid for their work and that non-paying markets (“for exposure”) were completely unacceptable. I beg to differ. Never one to waste a good rant, I repost my arguments here.

Capitalist Ideology

First, although I certainly agree that writing should be valued, the idea that “My work is only worthwhile if paid for it” is capitalist thinking. I reject this hypothesis, as I reject the hypothesis that one is only a "real" author if one is a full time professional, professional defined as writing as their primary source of income. A hearty “Bah humbug!” to that.

I frequently submit to literary magazines, almost none of which pay in coin. Instead, I look for quality work with which I would like to be associated; high production values; and/or a fabulous community which one joins by contributing; and/or an interesting call for submissions. There are themes I wish to explore, so if there is a nonpaying literary market featuring that theme this month, I will go there. I do not mind not getting paid if it is for non-commercial markets (i.e., where all the staff are similarly unpaid volunteers putting their time, energy, and frequently money into producing art).

On the other hand, there are commercial markets that range from decent pay (I'm not Atlantic Monthly market worthy yet, so I won't say 'pay well') to those that pay nothing. I will not submit to a commercial market that makes money and pays authors nothing. I will consider low paying markets if I believe the editors are similarly investing more sweat equity and they are receiving $, and then the same criteria applies as for literary markets.

I have also donated stories to anthologies for good causes, such as a story I donated for an anthology to raise money for a women's shelter, or to support a writing charity, or etc. (I can usually sell those to a reprint or an audio market later, since the charity volumes are usually strictly local.) I donated a story to one anthology because the editor asked and I owed them a favour for a beta read that went miles beyond that definition to a full edit of the first 1/3 of the novel, which provided me the insights to do the next 2/3.

Therefore: there are lots of reasons to submit to literary journals or anthologies besides cash, and no reason to look down upon quality non-paying markets. I only eschew for-profit markets which are clearly rackets, where the editor/publisher is making $$ while the authors do not get an appropriate share. or where people try to con me with "exposure" nonsense.

The Referee Function

I frequently send out stories on simultaneous submission to gauge whether I have accurately assessed the story's quality. I start, of course, at the highest paying market and work my way down and sometimes my trunk stories end up in a non-paying market because that's still better than the trunk. If the other stories in that issue are of sufficient quality that I am happy to join them, then I appreciate the publishing credit.

This is not about ‘exposure’ (because exposure markets don't bring one any credit among people who recognize those are either hopeless or a racket) but because I appreciate the REFEREE FUNCTION. I often love my writing unconditionally (as one should always love one's children) but a bit of a reality check doesn't hurt. Having had at least one editor appreciate and publish a story I was a bit ‘iffy’ about (and throw in a Pushcart nomination while they were at it) gives me the confidence to include that story in my self-published reprint collection. In contrast, that nobody has taken my favorite story--now approaching its 70th rejection--gives me pause to consider that one might not be one to put in my 'best of Robert' collection.

Occasional Feedback

Further, some few (literally, very few) send back rejections with very helpful feedback. I find this especially true of respected non-paying markets, who make up for lack of funding with sweat equity of a couple of sentences of feedback. That feedback is precious--even when it's wrong (e.g., misses the point), it tells me that I am not getting my point across clearly enough. Were I to PAY for that level of advice, it would cost considerably more than even the higher paying markets pay me.

So...I'll take the feedback, the refereeing and the support of (and support for) a community over coin.

Privilege

Of course, I recognize that I am speaking from a place of privilege. The few dollars I could make writing SF&F could never approach what I got paid in my day job, or even what I make in retirement. To make the sort of money I need to maintain the life style to which I have become accustomed, I would have to sell a short story about every six hours. That is just never going to happen. I certainly appreciate the $200 or $300 a short story sometimes brings me, but I only sold 12 stories last year and $3000 is not an acceptable annual income.

It’s different for novels and nonfiction books, of course, though it remains an open question of whether I could position a novel to make significant coin, but at least that’s theoretically possible. But when it comes to short stories, it hasn’t been possible to make a living in that market since before Television. (Professional pay rates have stayed roughly what they were in the 1930s.)

Conclusion

I certainly support anyone who restricts their output to paying markets both as a measure of ‘having made it’ to that level, and as a source of income. I do not accept, however, that that gives them the right to look down upon those who choose to join a community of writers, seek feedback from a respected editor, support a charity, or choose literary prestige over a dubious paying market. (Correspondingly, I don’t let my literary friends get away with sneering at commercial genre markets either.)

Ultimately, the quality of one’s professionalism must be judged by the quality of one’s output. Commercial success/popularity is one reasonable measure of quality, but not the only one and one which is not necessarily reliable, luck and an appearance on Oprah playing as big a role as quality. Believing that coin is the ONLY acceptable measure is to buy into capitalist ideology.

On NOT Writing Every Day

 Guest Post by Barb Geiger:

In 1998, I went to New York to visit my darling Dvorah. I'd just come back from living in Japan for a couple of years, but New York was a world in itself. I remember sitting on a horse in mid-afternoon workday traffic at a light, because the stables were three blocks away from Central Park and riding a horse through the park had been a lifelong, bucket-list goal. Devo took me to a bookstore that was like the used bookstores in the movies, with bookcases up to the ceiling and one of those push ladders that goes around the perimetre and the smell of old books and dust had permeated every soft surface in the building.

I bought Lawrence Block's Telling Lies for Fun and Profit. They say if cookbooks have one go-to recipe, it's a good book (though they said that before the age of the internet). I think with writing books, if it has one nugget of truth in it, it's worth it too. This one had a line about a chapter is the length it takes for one thing to change in the book and the example he gave was Chapter 15: I'm pregnant.

It made me think that not just every chapter, but every scene needs to have something that changes. Which is why "Just Write" in general and having a daily word count quota in particular bothers me so much.

2000 words is a good length for the average scene. Some will be more, some less, but when I was trying to recapture my passion in my writing, I'd ask that every time I sat down, I'd write a scene from start to finish. Getting it all down in a single sitting gave the scene a cohesiveness in flow, but also, it made sure when the one (or more) things changed, that the scene ended without the character wandering off and filling up the page with unnecessary filler.

But I didn't write every day if I didn't have that thing that the next scene needed to do. Sometimes I'd be brushing my teeth and the next scene would pop out of my skull fully formed like Athena, but sometimes even if I knew exactly what I wanted to happen, I still couldn't write it. Rather than fighting that block and just pushing through, I examined the lack of desire under the microscope. I had three questions I asked myself and worked through them until I had a solution.

1. Why don't I want to write this scene? This could be an outside problem -- exhaustion often crept in, but again I have skittering spiders in my skull instead of brain matter. If I was bored, I couldn't yet make myself do anything yet. Like a good horse trainer, I realized early on that if a section of my story bores me, it's been boring my reader for a while. Upping the stakes, the conflict and the action did a lot to make me more engaged with writing.

2. Is something missing? I can't say how many times I just wanted to write a simple scene where X happened, but it blocks me for three days. And when I finally sit down, a whole new scene emerges that changes everything, or becomes the emotional heartbeat. When I've worked through step 1 and I still don't want to write it, the problem needs more thinking about.

3. So if step 1 and 2 don't work, and I've given step 2 enough time to work through the problem, it makes me think of the story as a whole. If I still don't want to write, I look at the whole piece. I haven't had to do this for a while, but I've cut up to 40k of a novel in a single sitting, just because the path those series of decisions the characters made led to a blind canyon and the only way out is back. I've read too many books where the writer just ploughs that initial problem further into the story with sheer will, and that's just not how I write.

If I met a baby writer who asked me for their opinion, I'd tell them my "write three books" theory of starting out. But if the writer has already turned their writing from their hobby to a chore they dislike doing, recapturing the motivation to write is their problem.

Because between being motivated to write and being disciplined to write, motivation wins every time. I do write every day. I want to write every day and I enjoy writing every day. But I got there by not writing for days and weeks and on two separate occasions, for more than a year. Learning how to write every day is far more important than just writing every day, and I don't care what Stephen King says.

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A later post-script:

And I just want to say I don't think Stephen King is wrong. And it's no concession to say that. But seriously, I do think his take home message is incorrect. When he says pros sit down and do the work it takes to produce at a level to be a professional writer, he's not wrong. But the idea that people should not wait around for inspiration is the bit I have a problem with. I dislike the word "wait" because when you hit that inspiration, you're inspired, and nothing inspires inspiration like inspiration. Amateurs become pros because they stop waiting around for inspiration.

Because no one is waiting with bated breath for work the new writer had to force out. Quality over quantity eventually matters, and too many writers quit trying to write before they ever get there.

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Barb Geiger is an author/editor and is currently finishing up an MFA.

Do You Keep Writing? Three Lessons by Lauren B. Davis

Guest Post. Lauren B.Davis is a critically acclaimed Canadian writer. Her latest novel is The Grimoire of Kensington Market from Wolsak and Wynn Publishers Ltd (ISBN13: 978-1928088707)

Every day I hear from writers who tell me how impossible it is to keep going, how they are broken by this ‘business’ and they see no reason to continue. Often this means they see no reason to continue living, since being a writer/creator/artist is so deeply embedded in the soul as the archetype by which we make meaning in our lives. Without it, the world crumbles.

I understand.

I also understand that hearing these words from someone who has had a modest amount of success as a writer might ring hollow. Easy for me to say, right?

No, not easy. Hard won.

I didn’t publish until I was over forty. So there’s that. All the young people who think if they haven’t published yet, let alone won the Booker or the Pulitzer or the Giller indicates they will never have fulfilling lives as writers are just plain wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

How do I break this down?

I dance. The Bear watches. Maybe that’s not the widest audience, by he is the Bear of my Soul.

First, almost no published writer wins prizes. This has nothing to do with the quality of your work. If that’s what you’re hoping for you are setting yourself up for unending disappointment, based on the entirely unpredictable, arbitrary, often political whims of a tiny group of people you might not even like, or respect. I know people who’ve won these prizes. They had some fun for a while and then, well, life went on. I’ve been on prize committees, and trust me, try as we might vote for the BEST BOOK EVER, it generally doesn’t turn out that way.

Lesson 1) …take care of your LIFE first, for it’s all you’ve got, and your life is not about winning prizes. It’s about where your feet are, at this moment. The writing life is a metaphor for being in co-creation with the Source-Of-All, if you know what I mean. So, right now, jot down five things you value about your life that have nothing to do with prizes… lovers, ice cream, dogs who sleep on the bed, growing tomatoes, making snow angels, creme brulee, the smell of roses after a rain… come on, you can do it.

Second, almost no one publishes, and for those who do, it is as much the luck of timing, relevance, and politics, as it is talent. By which I mean, a lot of really great books never see the light of a bookstore window. How many books (both good and bad) come out in any season? It’s insane. Especially with self-publishing (but that’s another blog). Why am I telling you this? Because it’s true, but also because publishing doesn’t necessarily mean success. Sure it’s nice and I’m glad I’m published, but the truth is that even though I have, for a moment or two, poked my head above the turbulent waves, ultimately I sank out of sight again, while Atwood and Winterson and Franzen and a thousand other writers rose to the tip of the swell. Maybe they’re better writers than I. Fair enough. Might be. So what?

Lesson…2) See lesson 1.

Third…maybe you and I will never publish, let alone win prizes. Maybe we’ll never publish again, let alone win prizes. Maybe we’ll be dumped by a publisher we thought had our backs. that happened to me. Should we keep writing? Should we? Maybe. But maybe not. Maybe it doesn’t please us any longer. Maybe it doesn’t bring us sanity or joy or satisfaction. If those things are true then, hell, I’m done. I’ll save feral cats and abused dogs. I’ll garden. I’ll work for environmental protection and for justice…you know, all the thousand things that make the world better. Not that we can’t do these things while writing, we can and many of us do, but if writing isn’t doing it for us, isn’t filling our souls, isn’t inviting us to surrender to the purpose our souls have for us, then for the love of what-ever-we-find-holy, let’s not do it!

However.

If, when we sit down in front of the computer, or the page, we feel our hearts filling, our spirits settling; if we feel the top of our heads opening and something entering us and wanting to be born, without expectation; if we feel ourselves filled with the wonder of this story’s becoming, this image’s becoming, and if after we have written 500 words or 1,000 for the day we feel elated and elevated and full of satisfaction and peace… then come on, let’s DO that.

Lesson 3… see Lesson 1 and 2 above.

What do you think? Shall we keep creating? Keep writing? Or is there another way you’d like to walk through the world? Tell me.

Reprinted from The Lauren B. Davis blog with permission of the author.