The Renegade Writer Blog

(Reprinted from Writer’s Digest)
by Linda Formichelli

Imagine this: You find a nice formal outfit at a local clothing store, but instead of whipping out your credit card, you tell the cashier that you’ll pay for the suit only should an occasion arise where you actually wear it.

Sounds silly, right? But that’s the same situation writers face every day when they’re offered assignments from magazines that pay on publication instead of on acceptance. These magazines offer an assignment, accept the article, edit the piece, hold it until print time, publish it–and then, finally, pay the writer. And that’s assuming that the magazine doesn’t change its editorial focus or go out of business in the meantime.

You can never know whether a magazine pays on publication or on acceptance until you look at their contract; though you’d expect only smaller magazines with little financing to pay on publication, this often isn’t the case. “You can’t generalize,” says Dian Killian, journalism division organizer for the National Writer’s Union and director of the Publication Rights Clearinghouse. “Magazines tend however to give better contracts and terms than newspapers, across the board.” Web sites often pay on publication, but that’s because many of them post articles so quickly that it’s impossible for them to pay before publication.

The Magazines’ Side: Payment on Acceptance

Magazine editors that pay on acceptance are concerned about fairness to writers. “Since Family Circle maintains quite an extensive inventory of accepted articles, I think it would be unfair to withhold payment until we publish,” says deputy editor Nancy Clark. “Once a writer has successfully completed an assignment, he or she should be paid as promptly as possible.” Pam Chwedyk, editor of Minority Nurse, agrees. “We’re quarterly,” she says. “When a magazine is published that infrequently, it becomes necessary to pay on acceptance. If we bump an article, it’s an unfairly long amount of time for a writer to wait.”

Paying on acceptance helps keep a magazine competitive. “If a magazine wants to attract and continue working with the best writers, it has to be writer-friendly,” says Chwedyk. “Paying on acceptance is one way to do this.”

Many magazines don’t like to have piles of unpaid invoices languishing in their accounts payable departments, and find that paying on acceptance is a good way to keep their finances in order. “Prompt payments keep our books clear,” says Mary Chollet, managing editor of Well & healthy Woman. “We are pleased to pay our writers as soon as their submissions are accepted and/or edited.”

The Magazines’ Side: Payment on Publication

Magazine editors offer several reasons for paying on publication instead of on acceptance. Some magazines, for example, are on tight budgets and need time to earn the money to pay you. “I can accept articles for [my newsletters] in one day that total over one thousand dollars,” says Angela Giles Klocke, editor of The Writing Parent and The Writing Child. “I operate on a shoestring budget and rely on advertising, sales, and my own writing sales to pay writers. There’s no way I could pay for all the articles in one lump sum. So I pay once they are published, which leaves me time to then earn that money.”

Pay-on-publication is also an easier system for magazines, since they can pay all their writers at once instead of dealing with invoices spread throughout the payment period. “For Adbusters–a non-profit mag with a small staff–it is largely a question of practicality,” says senior editor James MacKinnon. “We typically hit the ‘acceptance’ point for most pieces fairly close to deadline anyway, so payment after publication is a simple system that allows us to pay everyone at once and limits the likelihood of error. Being able to pay in a block like this also simplifies our financial workings.”

Editors also say that paying on publication gives them more time to guide newbie writers. “Pay-on-pub allows us to work with new and emerging writers, non-journalists, and others outside the professional core of writers,” says MacKinnon. “We often work with people to develop their initial idea, take a new approach, or extensively fine-tune the writing; other magazines would simply dismiss these writers as non-professionals. At what point, in a process like the one just described, is material ‘accepted’?”

Finally, there’s the CYA aspect; editors don’t want to put out money for something they may not be able to use. “In our case, as a custom publisher, we must let our clients approve manuscripts and design, and at any point, they could decide to pull something or change something. That almost never happens but it is an option for them which would leave us with having paid for something we then could not use,” says Rebecca Rolfes, senior VP and editorial director for Imagination Publishing. “Kill fees are, of course, part of our contract, but we can’t tie up our editorial dollars for articles that clients may want to drop or hold until later.”

The Writers’ Side

Editors may have their reasons for pay-on-pub, but that doesn’t make it any easier for writers who accept such contracts. After all, as the name implies, if your article never makes it to publication–even through no fault of your own–you won’t see one sou. “I was burned by a new publication that insisted on paying only upon publication, but they assured me that they would run my article in a couple of months,” says Maureen Dixon, a former freelance writer who now writes public relations materials. “The publication folded–of course–the month my article was slated to run.”

In the wake of the attacks in New York and Washington, many publications threw out their editorial calendars to accommodate more timely pieces on homeland security and letter-opening tips. The delayed articles might still appear in print some day, but that’s little consolation for writers holding pay-on-pub contracts.

Even without delays, publication lead times are often six months or more, and that’s a long time to wait to get paid. What’s more, you can’t sell reprints of an article until it’s actually been published, which curtails your money-making power even more.

That’s why both the National Writer’s Union and the American Society of Journalists and Authors urge writers to reject pay-on-pub contracts. “We encourage members to negotiate contracts that stipulate payment on acceptance, not publication,” says Killian. “Numerous problems can arise otherwise.”

What You Can Do

If you do decide to write for magazines that pay on publication, take these steps to protect yourself:

* Negotiate. Perhaps the magazine will be willing to bend the contract for you–it never hurts to ask! “I always, always negotiate, and it often works,” says a writer in Burlington, MA. “I simply explain what an inconvenience it is to have my pay rolling in half a year after I did the work, and that it’s my policy to be paid 30 days after submission. It’s only fair.”

Don’t let a fear of confrontation keep you from bargaining for a fair contract. “Personally, I have no trouble discussing money or payment terms with editors,” says Diana Burrell of Boston, who writes for business and health magazines. “I treat my freelancing like a business and don’t see why I should tippy-toe around onerous clauses and payment schemes just because I’m a writer. If you don’t like a contract, speak up. If you sign it, then complain about its crappy terms, you have no one to blame but yourself.”

* Get a firm date. If the editor won’t change the pay-on-pub terms, perhaps you can get her to include the expected date of publication in the contract so that you have some idea of what your cash flow will look like in the future.

* Ask for a kill fee. Imagine researching, writing, and revising an article, and then getting nothing because the magazine decides to change its editorial focus or drop your article for another reason. Make sure you at least get a kill fee for your troubles. Twenty-five percent is standard, but the higher the better.

* Lessen your risk. You stand less of a chance of getting burned (and any burns will hurt less) if you stick with the familiar and the small. Says Kelly James-Enger of Downers Grove, Ill., who writes for health, fitness, nutrition, and bridal magazines, .”I write [pay-on-pub] for two types of magazines: smaller magazines where I have an ongoing relationship with the editors and write for them every issue, and magazines that purchase reprints to stories.”

* Diversify. Writing for a few pay-on-pub magazines won’t make your financial situation sticky if you can rely on a steady influx of checks from publications that pay on acceptance. “If I started accepting a bunch of magazines that paid on publication all at once, it would be tough,” says the writer in Burlington, MA. “The trick is to have many articles in production at any one time.”

Pay-on-pub contracts may not be a boon for writers, but neither are they a bane. Play it smart, negotiate, and don’t plan your budget around pay-on-pub assignments–and you can profit from writing for these magazines. [lf]

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