I spent about an hour on Sunday morning trying to calculate what kind of travel experience I could have for ten dollars. I figured I could take the bus downtown, get a drip coffee and maybe a cookie, and then, take the bus back again. I could drive to Tacoma and back in my car on about ten bucks worth of gas, I might also be able to get a soda or a candy bar, but not both, from a 7-11. There’s some stuff I could do locally for free — walk over to the park or ride my bike down to the beach or hey, there’s the library, it’s a godsend, right? But travel, on ten dollars? What could I finance?
Van Gogh was poor all of his life, if I’m remembering my art history correctly. Crazy and poor. Gauguin, there’s a guy who had the sense to bug out to the tropics, but I read his letters home while I was hanging out at friend’s place in Italy and he was always hitting up someone, I think it was his brother, to send him money and materials. Vermeer used to cozy up to his mother in law for loans. Sure, all that work became valuable later, but while those artists were alive, they suffered unintentional vows of poverty. [We’re told that] Mozart died poor too, tossed into an anonymous grave while now his likeness graces countless money making souvenirs and schemes. Who can name all the artists — be they writers or musicians or painters — who left their lives poor because art, like crime, does not pay.
On Sunday morning, I slouched on the sofa for an hour, maybe it was longer, thinking about these underpaid artists. I thought about how, when I used to paint, (I did not suck as a painter) I paid for materials and a place to work and when I’d ask for 300 dollars for a painting, potential buyers would walk away — perhaps 50 was more a fair price? That price would leave me with not enough money to pay my rent, not enough money to cover the time I’d taken to make a painting, or the weird immeasurable part of thinking things up and finding that a drawing of a bird on a scrap of paper stuck into a notebook two years ago was exactly the right thing to use as a stencil for the upper right corner. Then there was all that education, learning how to mix color and how to see and stitching together the back story for a painting out of the wallpaper in my grandmother’s apartment and failed gardening attempts and waking up in the middle of the night knowing you are in the wrong life.
I don’t waste a lot of time feeling outraged about writer’s wages. It’s not a good use of my time — of anyone’s time. Plus, it turns out that in spite of all the outrage, someone, perhaps you reading this right now, will write for less than I do and do so joyfully. Perhaps you are keen to have a soapbox on which to stand and that is more important than cash in your pocket. Perhaps you are new to the written word and figure writing for small change is a temporary step in your path to the big bucks, it’s the publishing equivalent of doing your time. I also know that as a “real” writer, I’m supposed to devote a certain amount of time to pursuing publication opportunities — the artists equivalent of sending out your portfolio and hoping for a gallery to charge you an arm and a leg for framing while keeping 50% of your sales as commission — “Oh, but we bring in the buyers, you know!” I’m no good at marketing, I’m a writer, not a salesman, and I’m aware that being a salesman is a critical part of being a successful writer.
I have a sophisticated enough understanding of the game to understand why there’s no money in writing, especially now, as publishing collapses. Hand set type was eclipsed by digital publishing and paper is losing to online writing and now, anyone who hits publish can call themselves a writer. Words are a commodity and so cheap, too — your six or seven figure Internet start up guy knows that Google likes words, it eats them as a snack from Costco sized packages and writers are everywhere, eager to have our writer’s vanities catered to by the thrill of seeing our luscious words under the weighty shadow of a digital masthead not our own. We feed the machine now, cranking out endless boxes of lunch sized essays but we can not feed ourselves on the resulting income.
Sunday morning found me feeling bleak and sorry for myself and truth be told, a little bit angry. The source of this gray black mood was an ad seeking travel stories from “real” writers; the pay for said stories was ten dollars a piece. Ten dollars. What kind of travel experience could I have for ten dollars? (I should be clear — it was not so much this particular ad that pushed me down the well, it was the realization that what the publisher was offering was quite common.) Surely there are places in India or Tanzania or Guatemala where ten dollars could get me an amazing experience, be it a taxi ride across town or entry to a local theater. It’s three dollars, I think, to attend the Honolulu Poetry Slam and that could potentially make for a great story, but even in low season, and from the West coast, a plane ticket is about 300/USD round trip. This potential ten dollar story would put me 290 dollars in the hole and I have not had a meal, taken public transit from the airport, paid for a bed, given myself one thin dime for my writing time, or paid the three dollars to see the poetry slam.
Once, a long time ago, I was paid a dollar a word to write a 750 word piece about a very fancy hotel in Vienna. My hotel stay was comped but my travel was not — a plane ticket from Seattle to Vienna was about 900/USD at the time. And then, there were tips and the subway and coffee and so many other incidentals, my profit on that piece ended up negative. The guidebook I wrote to Hawaii netted me 400 dollars after expenses and I spent about two months working on it — that’s right, that’s 200 dollars a month. Sometimes I feel that perfectly understandable craving to get my work off of this little blog into places that will wrap it in a veneer of credibility. When that hits, I call on the painfully logical part of my brain to explain to my writer’s fragile ego that it makes no economic sense at all to pursue travel writing gigs elsewhere. The internal writer pleads with the internal accountant — “But we have to do more than just BLOG!” — as though blogging were a dirty word — and the writer always loses. The accountant, she writes the checks and both sides of me like a warm, dry, place to sleep and regular meals and the fictional comfort of a very crappy health insurance plan.
It was not raining on Sunday morning, but it might as well have been. I felt so saddened by the idea that the kind of writing I like to do has been utterly devalued. It’s a good living for a select few and for the rest, perhaps they’ve taken that unintentional vow of poverty. Or they have patrons or a modern kind, wives or husbands or magical income from some unknown other source, an inheritance, perhaps, combined with a modesty of lifestyle. Maybe they’ve made a deal with the devil — the devil isn’t a great business partner, but man, can he sell the idea — and that’s how they manage groceries while writing stories about travel. I sent the devil packing, lowered my expectations for what my writing could bring me, and got some skills that let me earn an okay living while not eating all my time. It’s not a bad compromise, most days, but on Sunday, I sulked on the couch thinking about how ten dollars could not begin to compensate me for everything that comes with me when I sit down at the keyboard. Ten dollars felt like an insult, the compromise felt like a sell out, and writing… writing… Van Gogh was crazy. He loved to paint, you can see it when you look at his work. I love to write. I really love to write and sometimes, sometimes, it makes me more than a little bit crazy.
Van Gogh’s Starry Starry Night poached from Flickr via Creative Commons. Vincent, wherever you are, I’m sorry.
Know that you have a kindred spirit in me. I struggle with the very same issues — thus the day job. Chin up! You have loving fans who value every word, even if we can’t pay you $1 per. 🙂
Oh, Pam, I had your Sunday on Friday when an in-flight I write for cut the monthly word count 40%-and the pay by 60%. I pouted through the weekend and am here today (Monday morning, my time) looking for inspiration from you guys! 🙂 Actually, it *does* help to know other writers feel the same. Thank you for sharing.
I hear ya sistah!
You need a rich and indulgent patron. Which ultimately is what Michaelangelo had. He didn’t sell frescos hanging off the railing of the park for 300 bucks. He took money off rich politician’s who poisoned their rivals for business and fun.
‘The internal writer pleads with the internal accountant — “But we have to do more than just BLOG!†— as though blogging were a dirty word — and the writer always loses.”
EXACTLY how I feel!
Just one small correction. There’s a myth about Mozart dying penniless. Actually he left his widow pretty well fixed. But, yes, like Michaelangelo, he did it with patrons. And he groveled to employers (the church) and other potential purchasers of his music.
Oh Pam, you’re not alone. I don’t even take the time to absorb all the pitifully low, insulting rates that I’ve seen out there for fear that they will somehow invade my subconscious and begin to seem fair. And lets not even start on the pubs that think its clever to ask for articles for free..
The one thing I have on you is that I have poorer math skills or less of a willingness to plot it all out. For $10 I think I’d rather do it for free. Then I get to say I did it for free and feel all superior. And there’s nothing I love more than feeling superior.
We can get you some good experiences for $10 in Chile, but you can’t eat, because that will put you in the hole as well. Unless you just want empanadas. Lots of empanadas. Best calorie to cent ratio I’ve ever seen in a food. Unless you like straight butter.
Thanks for writing this. Will shout it from the rooftops!
Well said! It’s particularly disappointing to see people who are not writers calling themselves same and publishing “non-stories” online. I read these fast-food-like paragraphs and learn nothing whatsoever.
It’s insulting for anyone to offer a writer ten dollars to tell a story. More and more I find myself being asked to write things in exchange for something. In the past I have written pieces in airline travel mags in exchange for free plane tickets, but not anymore. People have to pay for quality, education, experience, as you’ve said so succintly.
When I was 20, the whole starving artist thing seemed wonderful and romantic. Now I’m 51 and it seems like a crock.
a beautifully stated, eloquent post…all the more heartbreaking because…how do we fix this? the democratization inherent in social media has empowered so many…while sabotaging the market for those who have real talent that’s being under-valued.
Hear hear! I wish I could pay you $1/word for your thoughtful prose, but then I’d have to ask you to keep your posts about 10 words long…
I can see that you love to write, and I could feel your misery oozing from this post. I think this is one of those gnarly barriers that has more than enough strength to shut down an army of fledgling and journeyman writers.
I am planning to leave my job to travel and write while my wife continues to work and pay the bills. A saint? Yes. But my time in this endeavor will be limited to two years. If I’m not making money at that point then plans will change. It’s scary, but it’s also the kind of change that must be undertaken to prevent crippling regret later in life.
Hang in there, keep grinding. It only takes one break.
Don’t forget all those offers that come in offering to let you write free for a LINK
It amazes me how many talented writers, like yourself, write for free. It’s easy to fix. Quit doing it. You are a great writer. Don’t give your content and intellectual property away for free. Keep writing and painting and don’t give it away for free or too cheap. There are all sorts of new opportunities. For instance, Amazon has started a new program called Encore where overlooked, but well-received writing can get a second look. I review books there, often for self-published authors. I’ve also heard they (Amazon) are starting self-publishing to digital media, which is a lot more affordable for everyone involved. For goodness sake, keep trying. You are incredibly talented.
@Mel: I RARELY write for free. Once, maybe twice a year I’ll do a guest post for a friend who asks very, very nicely, but it’s very much the exception. I don’t write travel essays for ten dollars, either. But it’s not enough for ME to not write for free. Everyone has to do it. And that’s not going to happen. Someone will take that tenner and rates will stay low.
Low per piece rates are insulting. I agree. As we all know, you get what you pay for – and $10 won’t buy you a quality, thoughtful piece.
Makes me wonder what the business model is behind that rate though. Does the publishing site make off like bandits or squeak by? Is this article generation just a step up from keyword ads – designed to drive traffic bit certainly not inform or delight? Anyone have insight on what the other side looks like?
@katrina: I think that in some cases, 10 dollars WILL buy you a decent piece. It’s possible someone will take that gig because they don’t need the money, they’re drawn in my the fake promise of “exposure”, or any number of reasons. It makes me crazy, but it’s true.
As to the business model, it depends. In some cases — I can think of specific ones — the publishers would truly LIKE to pay more, but they absolutely can’t. They don’t have the budget. In other cases, see above under feeding the machine. That model doesn’t value storytelling, it values traffic.
I’d wager that nearly all travel writers share your frustration (but I wouldn’t wager very much, because, hey, I’m a travel writer). What with owners of hotels/restaurants salting reviews on yelp, tripadvisor and such, it’ll be interesting to see what the future holds for us.
Pam,
So true, so true. We have to put so much energy into “reinventing” ourselves and how we are compensated that we are left with little time and energy to do what we love. This is true for writers and artists of all kinds.
I just chanced losing a writing assignment, because I asked for more money. I was told, sorry, budgets were tight. I responded that I do not accept anything less than “x” and her offer didn’t even reach the basement level of that rate. After two week’s worth of emailing, I got the assignment…for 50% more than the first offer. Of course, this doesn’t always work.
Hang in there. Go get a strong cup of coffee. Play your uke. Then, start over again. That’s all we can do.
Mahalo,
Kim
It sounds like you were having a bad day Pam. Hang in there; if someone will only pay $10 for a quality blog post then its probably not a site that you want to write for anyway! Aloha~Natalie
And I play if you have the money
or if you’re a friend to me
But the one man band
by the quick lunch stand
He was playing real good, for free.
– Joni Mitchell
I’ve taken a vow of poverty to be a writer, yet the credit card companies continue to call me for payment. They just don’t get it.
We should band together and take a writing/reader’s show on the road.
blogwriterpalooza
Pam, you hit on so many of the central dilemmas I think about every single freaking day. I started this freelance writing thing a year ago and my goal was “to make a living from writing.” I didn’t realize until about six months into it that my goal was to make a living from the type of writing I like to do – a nearly impossible venture and one that’s totally incompatible with actually making a living. Since then it’s been all adjusting and readjusting. I have that debate with my husband almost every day – do I try and work my way up getting published in places I don’t really believe in, writing commercial stuff that doesn’t interest me, or do I stick it out writing what I want to write on my website? I’ve managed to cobble together a living out of the type of writing I care about…but I live in Oaxaca, Mexico, and sometimes the shower doesn’t work and we survive off of gigantic tortillas. It’s a good thing I love my life here, because I could never survive on writing wages in the U.S.
Recently a major media outlet contacted me and asked me to develop content for them. 20 bucks an article. 20 bucks! Even if I were willing to suck up what I care about for cash, why in the hell would I do it for twenty bucks? Now, you could probably churn out some crappy cliche-ridden internet-researched overview of Mexican beach resorts or something for that, but the thought of doing so is just so deeply depressing it hurts. So I turned it down. And it just brought up all the same old issues again – how can you make it work if you’re not hooked up to some fat grant or you don’t have an old-school patron telling you to just take your time and work on that essay about the relationship of dog training to cultural relativism? Sigh.
Enormous rant, sorry. Really glad you wrote this, thank you.
@natalie: I don’t think i can write it off as a bad day. it was a bad year last year, all around, but it’s more complicated than that. on top of that, the sad truth is that the 10$ rate was offered by a site I rather like, that publishes some first rate writing. I really do trust that the publisher would LIKE to offer more, but can’t. And that’s depressing. bad day, yeah, maybe, worse than most, but the issue, it’s not confined to last Sunday.
Pam — Like the many readers above, I feel you on this. Before I even graduated from journalism school I had people telling me the walls were falling in…and they were right. Out here on the other side of the world, even if folks respond to your pitch, they aren’t willing to support you or pay you something you can live off of (though luckily it’s more than $10). And we’re supposed to just deal because, well, the biz is tough, and there’s hundreds of other writers banging on the door.
I remember a while back reading about an LP writer who later admitted he had never even gone to some of the places he wrote about, and argued that the pithy wages proved to him the content wasn’t valuable — and so he treated it as such. Obviously he breached an ethical line, but he wasn’t without a point.
Totally feel you on every level.
The painting part and trying to get someone to pay $300 for your painting (I’m a fellow painter whose favorite artist happens to be Van Gogh. Love him!)
And the writing part (A fellow writer who has written a lot more evergreen pieces for $1 per word instead of the raw narrative writing style I like).
That’s also one of the reasons I haven’t sought out many online blogging gigs that pay $10-$15 per post. Writing a single 500-word glossy mag article for $500 equates to 50 posts at $10 a pop. Craziness.
But I understand… The well is drying up quickly. Trying to make it as a writer is tough business, and that’s also one of the reasons we all need to diversify.
Recently quit a pretty comfortable, high-paying job not out of insanity but because my authentic self IS my creative side, not my technical side, and it needed to breathe.
Long story short, you’re most certainly not alone, Pam!
We’re all navigating this together.
I think it’s a pretty crummy thing that our society no longer values real experience-based writing. I have friends who write novels, friends who write hiking guidebooks, write for magazines, laid-off friends who used to write for newspapers…. and not a one of them is financially secure from their writing.
My friends who write hiking guidebooks can not possibly break even. And hiking is even considered to be “free”. But the gas money they spend to and from hundreds of trailheads across Washington surely eats up their book earnings.
And, as you mention, writers have to spend a good part of their time finding a publisher, but for book authors the real fun begins once the book comes out, because publishers don’t market books anymore. YOYO – You’re on Your Own. Here’s a list of bookstores – call them to see if they’ll order your book. Then, see if they’ll host a reading. And you can pay for your gas money and hotel to drive from Seattle to Eugene for the book reading, too, because promotion expense accounts are SO last-century!
Writing – meh. There’s no money in it. That’s why I work for a non-profit 😉
I can’t pay you what you’re worth, but I can tell you that your blog posts often touch me (the very definition of art) and I love reading your words.
It won’t make you feel any better, but the last 4 hours I’ve performed at the Market netted me a total of about $35. And that represents two entire days there, mostly waiting around for my 2 hours/day of actual performing time.
Good thing I have a truly lovely ex. She’s fed me dinner the last two nights.
Don’t give up! I’m not going to.
Marry a lawyer!
No, I’m just kidding. But I remember when I realized that almost all of the greatest thinkers, writers, poets and painters of the past had patrons paying for their lives.
People are simply very rarely willing to pay for something like this, unless you have something very unique to offer. And you need to find your patron. It doesn’t have to be a rich fat uncle, it can be a traveling company or a traveling website. And as a start – where are the booking engines?
People may not be willing to pay for your writings, they are willing to pay to experience what you are describing. So start selling that.
Add a section to the side of your blog called something like “travel for less” where you offer people to book hotels, flights and cars for rent – and you get commission for it. You can sign up at cj.com.
Good luck.
Your post is spot on and comes at a time where I’ve been deciding if I should continue to write for an outlet that still pays me the same rate today as it did when I first started with them 3-4 years ago. Back then I had a profitable day job to pay the bills. Today, I’m having to live off my writing and this rate isn’t cutting it anymore.
I have become very good at those $10 travel experiences, though. LOL If we lived closer, I’d say we could pool our $10 and share a $20 experience. 😉
Such a well-written piece and I totally know where you’re coming from. I think the part about writing for free on your own blog is misunderstood, in that at least one is his/her own editor and not writing some boring piece pumped up with SEO terms and no personality for $10. This is also why I got so annoyed about the #twethics debate because, like you said, we travel writers are getting negative returns on our work.
I’ve been grappling with the inconsistent pay of freelance travel writing for years now and I’m very very close to having to give it all up and get a “real” job. I feel like I’m so close to being rewarded for my hard work. But I need to look at reality and consider how I either ramp it up or fold.
*sigh* the weather is pretty grey over here, too. 🙁
It takes guts, courage (and sometimes stupidity) to be a professional artist of any kind. But what would our world look like without them? Thank God for painters, writers, musicians and all those who put their soul out their on paper and melody.
I’m late to the party here, and everyone has pretty much hit the points I’d make anyway.
Not only are the rates lower than low, everyone seems to want the moon even beyond the writing for that pittance (all rights, great photos, SEO, promotion, etc., etc).
And on the “exposure” question, I’m starting to be convinced I get more eyeballs to my work at my own blog than some of these sites promising great exposure after comparing things like my own PR, Alexa numbers, and other indicators with these other sites.
Anyway, just signing on in solidarity with you. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
I’ve heard that Mashable, with it’s 2,000,000 plus visitors per month in a highly profitable niche pays correspondents $50 per article.
Marry a lawyer – sounds wise, but no. Is that true? $50USD per article? Generous and hard to believe. Thanks for the post. I’m glad there are others who are experiencing the same struggles as I do.
I really wish someone from the publishing industry would respond to this. Mr. Demand Studios, Ms. Livestrong, Mmme. Associated Content. But they have tons of people willing to write for them, particularly desperate writers.
A beautiful article. For what it’s worth, your words are held in high esteem. You set the bar very high for those of us new to the field, but your prose and polish give me something to aspire toward.
Also, please compile your posts in an eBook, which I would gladly and gleefully purchase.