I traded some email recently with a magazine editor. I was pitching stories that I’d posted here. The editor wasn’t having any. “You bloggers. You devalue your best work by publishing it for free.”
I had to think about that for a while.
It’s extremely rare that I publish work for free. I’ve said yes to the odd guest post, scribbled short answers to those compiled “panel of experts” kinds of roundups, and on three or four occasions have given work to National Geographic’s Intelligent Traveler blog — I probably don’t need to explain my reasoning there, nor do I need to explain why, even though I gave them work, I think they should pay for it.
I don’t even try to place work for the obscenely low rates that a lot of places pay. Those 10-20 dollars a post networks? You go right ahead, have fun. How many of those do you have to write to make a living? I did the math once; unless you’re hammering out the posts, you’re barely pulling in minimum wage. Traffic bonuses, you say? Don’t get me started on the popularity argument.
When I shifted from being a hobby blogger who just wanted to share my travel stories to wanting to make some money for my work as a writer, I didn’t know where to go, what to do, not at all. Traditional publishing models were laying down to die, their shrinking page count meant that there was little opportunity for new writers.
“We’d love to have the room for new work,” a different editor told me, “but our advertisers are gone, the book is half the size it was two years ago, and content, we don’t need content, we have a backlog of stories that could last us for years!” The editor had come from a travel writer’s conference; we were having lunch in a divey Mexican place near my house. “I tried to be positive at the conference,” the editor said, “but I’ll be honest with you, I just don’t know how a new writer can break in right now.”
There’s another piece to the problem, too. It is absolutely possible to publish, get paid, make fair cash as a travel writer. But I think a lot of it depends on what you want to write. Doing guidebook work crushed any desire I might have to do service writing. Don’t mistake me, I see the value in this kind of material. But I don’t want to write it, no more than I want to crank out dozens of short posts for content networks. If your heart lies with the travel essay, the story, your market collapses even further.
I never considered that I was giving my work away by publishing it here on Nerd’s Eye View. Who was I giving it to? My 400 loyal readers? I had two things in mind for my blog — I still wanted to share my travel stories. And I wanted to have a kind of portfolio of my work. I wanted a gallery space for my art. Nerd’s Eye View has been, for me, the equivalent of an open studio where readers and maybe, if I got lucky, editors could read my work.
If you open the doors of your studio and show off your work, a buyer can come in, pick up a piece of art, give you some money, and take it home. I’d like to think that’s possible with writing — that I could sell a piece from this online portfolio, it could be published elsewhere, and maybe, depending on the terms, I could pull it from this site, at least until the rights reverted back to me. I’ve sold two stories this way — digital reprints, as it were, both to excellent venues. In one case, the publisher didn’t pay me as well as if it had gone to them first, in the other, I got paid full price. And for both stories, I didn’t have to pull the originals.
Without this showcase for my work, I wouldn’t have sold those stories at all. And without opening the doors to my work space, those editors? They’d have no idea who I am. The first one, the one who says I’m giving it away? That editor essentially wants to commission work. That’s okay, I get that, and I love being asked. I understand. But would the editor be asking for work if I wasn’t writing here? It’s speculation, but probably not.
Earlier this summer I pitched another publication. I missed the target but I got a terrific note back from that editor. “We love your writing! Please send us something else that’s a better fit. And hey, if our direction changes and we can run your story, we’ll be sure to let you know. We’re actually planning something similar for next year, I promise we’ll be in touch if that happens.”
I’m terrible at pitching, I don’t understand the travel writing market, I’ve got zero desire to pursue service work, I’m not on the networks. But I’ve been invited to write, to submit stories, to travel. Why? Without this blog, I’m invisible.
The editors, the publications, the interactions… none of this would have happened had I not been “giving away my best work” via Nerd’s Eye View. Of course I’d rather sell stories, of course I would. But given the alternative — pitch my way out of obscurity one essay at a time — I think “giving away my best work for free” has been the right choice.
Photo: Michael DiBitetto‘s printmaking studio in Eugene, Oregon.
I am ALWAYS so appreciative of your thoughtful posts about the travel-writing industry, Pam.
I appreciate your pointing out that it’s not service-writing opportunities that are in decline, but rather, perhaps, narrative-writing opportunities. I write the former, and I’m up to my ears in work for websites, custom publications and corporations who need helpful content. I may not be the strongest 2,500-word essayist, but dang I’m good at guidebook-like content and smart tips, and those opps are out there.
I hear ya.
I sold my work for years (and still do, of course) before I started blogging, which I did because I was starting to hate writing. Blogging restored the joy, allowed me to write my heart instead of writing to this or that publication’s demographic. I had one or two clients who loved my work for what it was, but those publications folded or changed hands or focus or otherwise succumbed to this lousy publishing market.
I’d much rather be paid for every word I write. But these days, I mostly depend on editing and unsexy writing for my income and find writing joy in my blogs.
And I SUCK at pitching stories. I don’t know why, but I do and always have.
I make my living doing unsexy writing too. I’m okay with that, mostly.
And I suspect there’s something about priorities that explains why we both suck at the pitch. I’m not in sales. I don’t like working in sales. And pitching,it’s sales. I understand why people get agents. Those people do sales.
All I have to say is that from what I’ve observed in the food scene good writers and photographers that have blogs seem to be the ones that are making it (selling stories, books, getting photography contracts, etc.), so I’d think it’d be the same in other genres. Also- the pros who want to connect and grow their audiance have started blogging themselves.
If I was that editor’s boss, and I knew his thoughts about bloggers, I’d be looking for a new editor- one who would comb the blogs, and be taking a few online ‘art walks’ to find new talent- especially talent that had a proven ability to develop readership.
I guess I just don’t see the personal blog as equal to a publication. I mean, Nerd’s Eye View isn’t Sunset Magazine, right? I’m not trying to resell work that went to paying markets at all.
In the editor’s favor, they are indeed seeking original work. There’s scouting, and then, they want the new best stuff, NOT the stuff that’s already live on the web.
I guess my general thought is that the editor needed to be thinking in terms of scouting, and not whether your personal content was free. It’s an online portfolio and an indication of the style you write in, and the quality of your content. Admittedly, I could see being a little wary if you’d already covered a topic they were interested in, but I would think that to be a hazard with strict ‘professional’ only writers as well.
That, and from what I can tell, writers get better the more they write (usually), so having a solid history, both personal publication and professional publication, would be a good sign to me.
Then again, since I like narratives, I say write your own book 🙂
Point take, and well clarified. Thanks.
Ooh, I was hoping I’d see your thoughts on this come out eventually, Pam!
For myself, I’ve always tried to hit kind of a happy medium on this front. I generally blog snapshots and anecdotes and off-the-cuff thoughts and that sort of thing – hopefully writing them well enough to showcase what I can do – but save full-fledged narratives for submissions.
Will you be my agent?
Heh. What’s the going rate?
I agree!
Like Eva, I usually post summaries and snapshots, but save the actual meat for potential paying articles.
Until I can eat solely from blog revenue (which isn’t my current path at the moment), freelancing remains my primary source of income.
It’s a rare person who is as good at the business side of art as the creative side. Those are two different skill sets.
It’s impossible to quantify what monetary benefit your blog yields. Certainly it’s a living CV of your voice, skills, eye, interests and taste. And as someone who reads your blog as a friend, I appreciate that you make it available to the schmucks like me who are unlikely to make you any money. 🙂
What would that magazine editor say about writing made available for free on the web after it’s been printed–is that a devaluation? If not, what’s the difference? And how great is the chance that a hypothetical magazine reader would otherwise encounter the same piece of writing by a hypothetical blogger with decent but not great web traffic?
“I’m terrible at pitching, I don’t understand the travel writing market, I’ve got zero desire to pursue service work, I’m not on the networks. But I’ve been invited to write, to submit stories, to travel. Why? Without this blog, I’m invisible.”
Love that part! I definitely agree that first establishing a blog for yourself will get you noticed and sharing that passion for writing isn’t necessarily free if it’s on your blog, BUT, word will spread about your stories (as it obviously already has) and then hopefully you pitch or get approached for paid assignments. That’s the toughest but coolest opportunity.
But then again, what do I know? I’ve been in this game for just about 3 years and slowly working on my way to getting paid to be writing and editing. Maybe one day I’ll get on a press trip. . .
Tough but cool. That’s the meat right there. And it’s how I feel about my Antarctica gig. I’ve got most of my good gigs by just sitting at my desk working on my writing. I don’t have a LOT of them, but I’m really proud of the ones I have had.
I related to this post very much. As a travel blogger who sometimes manages to get things in print (and wants to get more in print), I often find myself pondering the role of the blog. On one hand, I hear exactly what you’re being told. On the other hand, I do see lots of bloggers who seem to be getting great opportunities thanks to their online presence. What I’m seeing more though is that the choice is between opportunities, which “pay” in experiences (while the real would still demands cash), and getting published in well-paying markets. I haven’t seen too many examples of people succeeding remarkably on both fronts.
I also related to your comment about the lack of markets for narrative travel writing. I’ve done two guidebooks, and I’ve written a few service pieces here and there, but at heart, I’m a story teller. Stories are what I love (to write and to read). What I want is to be inspired to go to a place or experience an event or meet people. I can figure out the hotel and restaurant part on my own. I also relate to not being good at pitching. I absolutely hate to “sell myself,” which also explains why I will never be on anyone’s travel bloggers to watch or top Twitters list.
If you figure this out, will you let us all know? And please don’t quit blogging. You tell wonderful stories and are one of my favorite reads.
Pitching to other markets doesn’t get you on the top blogger/twitter lists, writing an awesome blog does. Pitching gets you published and, hopefully, paid. Just wanted to make that distinction. But being on those top lists doesn’t generate a lot of income if you’re me, which I am. 🙂 It does bring opportunity, and I would be totally disingenuous if I said I wasn’t pleased about that.
Thanks for the super kind words. It means a lot to me.
I’m curious if you really think that just writing an awesome travel blog gets you on top lists. Some of the ones that are consistently at the tops of those lists are the ones I like reading least, because I think the writing isn’t that great–it’s done with an eye toward marketing and keywords. Of course, it all depends on the list.
And I guess I should have made a better distinction about what I meant by “selling myself” and pitching. Obviously, I don’t think pitching (and hopefully getting) articles in paying markets has much effect on blog/twitter lists. But I don’t think it’s fair to say that pitching is exclusive to paid markets. Blogging itself might not require pitching, but you do have to “sell” yourself in various ways to get readers.
Lemme also make better distinctions here.
Most lists express personal choices. Almost Fearless just published their favorites, Leif Pettersen published a list recently… both of those are personal. Lots of lists are link bait, too, they’re valueless as arbiters of what’s interesting. Metric driven lists have their faults too — Google might LOVE a site, but critical humans may find that same top ten site badly written. As you’ve said, it depends on who’s doing the list. What I probably should have said, was that I’m not sure getting on a list is that useful of a goal, but doing awesome writing is. And YES, I am firm in my naivete that good writing is the way to get there.
As for the selling piece, I think there’s a difference between selling and being social. I loves me some social media — I work at home, I’m alone a lot, the internet is full of my imaginary office mates. (Wow,that sounds a little sad. I swear, I’m not sad.) I feel like you need to show up and participate in social media, and if you’re yourself and your work is good, things will grow out of that. I DO think the social part is important, or you’re invisible, as I mentioned above. But hey, even that was a haul for me, I only JUST started paying attention to Facebook. [See also, this.]
Mad self promoting is a different skill, one I don’t really have. Folks who are good at that will always push through to the front of the line because they can. I’m circumspect about this and try not to let it bother me. I don’t always succeed.
If you ever stop blogging I will go into a decline. (No pressure).
Unsexy work pays. Blogging for free keeps me sane. That hasn’t changed yet, and it might not for a good while yet. It may never. I hope I’m prepared for that reality, because it means I’m truly in this for the long haul, not just a fair-weather freelancer….
But yes. Your reason for blogging is my reason for blogging. The fun, yes, but I want to show what I’m capable of before someone pays me to do it. Not after – *before*. It’s portfolio work, or to use Chris Guillebeau’s term, “legacy building”. It’s my rep, and I’m building it (for free).
(Which makes me twitchy when I write something a bit goofier than normal. And I hate that feeling, even though it’s (a) a sign of my growing self-importance and potential obnoxiousness, and therefore worth listening to…and (b) probably going to stop me burning bridges before I’ve crossed them).
“Blogging for free” only applies when you’re blogging for peanuts, the $10-for-20-posts stuff. I wouldn’t stop anyone doing that, but I’d strongly urge them to reconsider. Get paid nothing initially, be yourself online in your full, glitzy, all singing, all dancing voice-of-many-colours, and take a shot at getting paid properly somewhere down the line. And in the meantime – craft, improve and connect. It’s boot camp.
That’s why I blog right now.
And I love that you wrote a post about it. 😉
Yet another top postie note on this business we call blog. I really have to wonder if it’s worth harbouring any anxieties about whether blogging can help land article pitches. People have such mixed experiences and views on it. I went to a travel writing workshop recently, mainly because one of my favourite writers, Rory MacLean was one of the tutors. There I was told never to flag up your blog to print editors, that it’s more likely to harm their perception of you than do you a favour. But they said that you absolutely should to their online counterparts as they’ll be switched on to how blogging works and free of some of the prejudices which do exist among entrenched ‘old school’ travel editors.
As for pitching I think so much of it is pot luck. Alls yer can do is put your best foot forward, keep it brief, research the title blah blah blah.
But who knows what pushes certain editors buttons? The last commission I got came as result of my email getting hacked. Everyone in my add book got a nice little viagra link, this reminds Mr Editor to get in touch, I pitch him some ideas and he buys a few, mainly because he’s scrabbling about trying to fill pages at the last minute. They were more or less the same ideas I sent him a month earlier, perhaps polished a little because I was feeling confident due to his interest. Go figure!
But at the same time, I recently I got onto an Australian online marketing agency’s books purely on the strength of showing them one blog post.
But, no, you’re not ‘giving away your work for free’, or if you are it’s not without some sound logic. You’re investing in your future as a writer, letting people ‘try before you buy.’
The tricky question is when and where you offer a juicy tidbit of your wares, and to whom.
I always hear writers say don’t put anything on your blog that you think you can sell, and I agree. I write about travel, but I blog about wine because it’s not something I think I could sell. I don’t consider myself a wine writer. I do it for myself and for fun, but over the last year it has landed me all sorts of oppourtunities including press trips. None of which I actively solicit. I don’t even have any contact info on my blog.
In the meantime I pitch and sell my travel stories. One of which I almost posted but now am glad I didn’t.
I think blogs are important to showcase your writing style and give visibility as you say. But maybe writing on a tangential topic is a way to give writers visibility with out giving content away.
I ONLY write on tangential topics. My whole writing life is a tangential topic. But also… I did, as a result of that editor’s comments, work on something off the blog that I normally would have posted directly to the site. I’ve also pitched a few things here and there and then, when they were rejected, posted them to the blog instead of continuing to shop them around.
I hate the shopping around part. ((Sigh.))
Mm.
I like this.
*goes away to think over*
Pam, this IS a publication. Granted, its a small publication, but it is most certainly a publication. You got content and you got readers. Everything else is just a matter of scale.
Larger print publications are big enough that they have division of labor. You have different people doing advertising, circulation, layout, etc. One big problem with being paid to write is that you are divorced and isolated from the business side of the publication.
You also brought up something I’ve though was extremely unappealing about doing freelance writing: pleasing editors. Ultimately (in a business sense), the audience for a writer isn’t the readers but the editor. If you please the editor you are in, and if you don’t you are out, regardless of what the readers think.
I’ve been tempted to try and get a print gig just as an experiment. It is never something I’d want to do on a regular basis, but it would be fun to try at least once.
I’m a publisher by default, in that I publish my work to the web. Thing is, while I do all the stuff you mention, I’m a writer before I’m anything else. I don’t think being separated from the biz end is a bad thing, it allows me to focus on what I love best, WRITING.
I also like working with editors, good ones, anyway. A good editor makes me a better writer. A good editor tries their best to select work that represents the desires of their audience. Sadly, they’re also constrained by the business piece, and good editors are few and far between.
I’ve worked with crappy editors who changed the entire voice of my story. Some online pubs don’t even use them, letting their writers go live with the glory and horror of all their bad mistakes. That cheapens everyone’s work.
Back in high school, I remember reading small mimeographed magazines. Usually they were a full sheet or a half sheet of pages crammed with stories or poetry. These little magazines were circulated by hand or mailed from one person to another. The short stories sometimes had no discernible point and the poems often seemed to be a pastiche of beat themes.
My point is that the people who put these out had a need to get their stuff out there. Nobody was getting paid but, on a tiny scale, they were publishing themselves and their friends. Usually, there was no way to contact the creators of this stuff. And any contact would have been by “snail mail” in those dark pre-internet days.
I read this blog because I know Pam and I hear her voice as I read. I am no blogger. I write the occasional song because I have to write songs. Ninety percent of my songs are garbage that no one will ever hear. But I keep at it because, every once in a while, something works. My mates say “We gotta play this”. That keeps me going. Anything else is gravy.
I struggle with this too. While I’ve watched other bloggers chase SEO and load their blogs with giveaways galore…sure, they make money–some of them significant amounts. But at the end of the day, their content makes my stomach churn. Money or not, I have no desire to follow that path.
There are days I ask myself “Why do I blog?” After spending countless hours massaging text and editing photos, some days, it feels like a creative form of torture.
Not only is my blog a form of CV, each post helps me refine and develop my point of view. Topics I was merely curious about now move into an active exploration. Whether I write about it or not, it’s a form of engagement with a subject that takes on more thoughtful approach. Would I have pursued it without my blog? Probably not.
It also has opened doors and provided access to people and opportunities I would have never had. How many times have I opened an e-mail, astonished by the opportunity? More than I can count.
I’ll admit, I’m still shocked when I meet someone who has read my blog, but it’s gratifying to see the impact it’s had on others. While few people ever comment on my blog, I have met readers who actually quote my work back to me! It makes up for the large number of days I ask myself, “Is anyone listening???”
Pam, I admire your work. While NEV may not be lucrative in the monetary sense, the dividends appear extremely worthwhile. 🙂
I turned to blogging as my print markets started going belly-up or simply slashing their freelance budgets to zero.
More importantly, I liked writing…and I liked writing about travel in the Midwest. It’s something I had the rare occasion to do in print (crammed in among numerous gigs for local business stories and advertorials about assorted plastic surgeons, cosmetic dentists, and “medi spas” )…but going online and publishing myself gave me a chance to reinvent myself as a travel writer and break away from some of that dues-paying stuff I did for years.
As for the 10-20-dollar-a-post stuff, it seems to find me, but I’m at the point in life where it makes more sense for me to let others pursue those “opportunities” and continue following my own bliss. If I’m lucky, the $$$ will follow, if not, well…that’s why I still keep the “day job” 🙂
Anyone like you who can show up at the New York TBEX travel blogger’s conference and say from the stage, “Hi, I’m Pam Mandel and I write a blog called Nerd’s Eye View….” and have the entire ROOM immediately erupt into clapping and cheering and yelling….
Name me a print pub that gets that kind of spontaneous reaction from its audience. You can’t.
We love ya, Pam! Money, schmoney. 🙂