June 06, 2007

Literary Pubs Usually Equal Crappy Pay
printable version

Angela,

Loved your comment to the reader complaining about literary publications saying they cannot afford to pay since they don't carry ads. These publications get my goat. Even as nonprofits, they are required to operate in the black. They are required to have a budget, and they function as a business with all the expenses and issues of the for-profit publication down the street. The for-profit would go under if it could not pay the bills. Why not the journals?

Bottom line...if a publication is in the business of publishing writing, and cannot afford to pay the people that fuel that business, then they ought to go out of business. They pay the company that prints the darn publication, don't they? I think we could do with fewer such publications anyway. What's so noble about exploiting writers that they so arrogantly profess to support with "bylines and exposure"? It's pure cannibalism.

Oh, please. I pay the writers who write for me. When I can't, I write the articles myself. Sometimes I think those journals like to whine just to fit the struggling writer image. However, they aren't the ones struggling. It's the writers who are working 9 to 5 in an unfulfilling day job with dreams of writing fulltime, or living hand to mouth because such publications feed on their blood.

Sorry, spent the day researching markets for my FundsforWriters.com readers, and just had a belly-full of web sites professing they could not afford to pay writers for one excuse or another. Hate it when they think someone else has to pay the price for their "hobby" as you put it so well.

Hope Clark
Editor
http://www.FundsforWriters.com