Professional Feature Writing Bruce Garrison(6)

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.Freelancers must be willing to negotiate for their time and creativity.Editors of most publications set fees for a lot of reasons.They have budgets for freelancers and can spend only so much.Or they pay depending on a writer's level of experience.They may have still other reasons.Fox (1993, p.6) said there are several factors to remember when setting freelance fees:Consider these factors: What is the market value of your product or service? What is your cost of doing business? What wouldPage 514constitute a fair profit? How much training do you have? How many years of experience? How much natural ability? Do you have expertise in related fields? Can you help to further your client's business goals, including their goal of increased profits?Tom Yates (1995), a freelance writer with 20 years of experience with daily newspapers and national magazines, offers three rules about fees.First, set the rates in advance.Second, include any income taxes you might expect to pay in the fee.And third, he says set aside the tax portion of the fee and save it for the day you pay your income tax bills.These recommendations are given with the assumption that expenses are not part of the fee.If they are, he says, you must estimate the costs of anything that might be used and money spent in pursuit of the article—business costs such as office space and overhead, telephone and postage, and travel, but also personal expenses such as food and housing.There are four ways of being paid for freelance work.Each one is different and, if you have a choice in the matter, requires that you consider which works best in your own situation.Here are your choices:First, you can agree to a flat fee for completion of a particular writing project.This is perhaps the most common way to handle freelance assignments.For instance, you write an article of certain agreedon specifications and you get paid $75, $150, or whatever amount is established.This does not always take into consideration how much time it takes you to complete the assignment.You are paid the same amount regardless of the amount of time you need to finish the work.You do, however, have the option of renegotiating the fee if you and your editor discover the assignment will take more time and effort than originally anticipated.Second, you can work by the hour on the assignment.This may be the preferred method from the writer's point of view because it may not be certain how much time is needed to finish an assignment.This is the smart strategy for large projects because it is seldom possible to anticipate how much effort is required.This approach also requires you to decide how much your time is worth per hour or per day on the open market.This can range from minimum wage to the hundreds of dollars a day that highpowered consultants command.Typical rates for beginning freelancers are most likely in the $8 per hour to $15 per hour range.Veteran freelancers receive more, in the $25 per hour to $50 per hour range, depending on the cost of living in a particular region of the country, the size of the publication, and the experience of the writer.Some specialists may be paid even more.Freelance techniPage 515cal writers, for instance, earn $30 per hour to $60 per hour, according to some published reports.This rate may be the hardest to determine unless you have been in the market.It may be easier after you have completed a few assignments and understand how much you were paid and how much time you used to finish the assignment.On the first few assignments, an "hours worked" log would be very useful for that purpose.Third, you can be paid by the word or by the column inch.Some publications stick to the oldfashioned newspaper stringer method of paying by the published length of an article.This can run from one cent to $1 or more per word.This does not mean that you are encouraged to write long.Instead, the amount per word is set in negotiation with the editor, and the maximum length of the article is also set by agreement.Fourth, you can be kept on a retainer to write for a publication.This is similar to how some attorneys or consultants work for preferred clients.This involves being paid a set minimal amount per week or per month, regardless of the work assigned and completed.The maximum amount is often be determined by agreement, either by the hour or by the project.This method is not used as often as the others and is used when a writer has become a regular contributor for a publication.You may also want to charge for special conditions of assignments.Dangerous situations, holiday work, overtime hours, rush work, "nocompete" or "exclusivity"clauses that prevent you from writing on the same subject for other publications, and such extraordinary circumstances may call for higher fees or bonuses beyond the going rates.Also keep in mind that, no matter which of the four options are used to pay you for your work, your expenses are a separate issue.However, many editors build in ordinary expenses, such as long distance telephone calls or automobile transportation, into the flat fee paid for the assignment.Additional expenses or extraordinary costs, such as airfare or equipment rentals, must be negotiated to be paid separately.Expenses are discussed in more detail in a later section of this chapter.How long should you wait before Getting Paid?You are entitled to the money you have earned: it is that simple.Payment should occur within a reasonable period of time.Yet, some careless editors and publishers do not quite see it that way.They delay or simply do not pay writers in a professional manner.Thus, a first stepPage 516in establishing a payment arrangement is to determine the normal period for the publication.You can ask about this when an agreement to publish your article has been reached.Then you wait.It is also important to establish a guarantee or a "kill" fee before the work is submitted or even written.If an editor changes his or her mind about your article for whatever reasons, you should be compensated for the work you were assigned to put into it.If a completed assignment is not acceptable due to no fault of yours as the writer, some professional organizations such as the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) feel, you should be paid a guarantee up to the full amount reflecting the effort put into the article before the decision to "kill" it was made (Bloom et al., 1992).Most professionals agree, also, that you should be paid within 1month of delivery.This varies from publication to publication and the cycle within which the publication's accounting department or business office works.Some process checks only on a monthly basis.ASJA also recommends in its code of ethics and fair practices that "no article payment, or portion thereof, should ever be subject to publication" (Bloom et al., 1992, p.51).If a publisher does not pay and you feel you are entitled to your fee, writer Dean R.Lambe (1986) suggested several potential actions to take: Write a politely worded inquiry letter to the editor [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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