I recently turned in a first person piece as it was assigned to me for a women’s monthly. I’ve written for the mag tons of times and have a great relationship with my editor. They loved the piece. However, right before the story was to go to print, one of the top editors pulled it. Now they want me to re-write it and turn it into a general story on the subject with lots of quotes from doctors and others.

Can I ask them to pay me for the rewriting, not to mention the inconvenience?

Many thanks,

K.

Absolutely. They not only approved the article, but now they want a completely different article. It’s not your fault they’ve changed their minds about what they want. Tell them they need to pay you another fee for the new original article, and ask them to pay you a kill fee for the first article, if you think you can resell it elsewhere. If you don’t think you can resell the first article, don’t ask for a kill fee. Let them keep the article and you keep the money they paid you for it.