Writing for Pennies: No One Wants to Pay Writers What They’re Worth

Writing is work.

It can be fun work. It can be hard work. It can be therapeutic, helping us work through our person struggles.

It can be all of these simultaneously.

We can write commercially. For public consumption. For ourselves.

In any case, writing is work.

It takes time and effort to articulate thoughts, ideas, and feelings on the page. This is especially true for those of us who want others to read our writing and understand it, to get the point we were trying to make or understand the meaning we were trying to convey.

It takes time and effort to craft a narrative. To write fiction and non-fiction stories. To develop characters. To set each scene so the reader is properly oriented, for stories do not and cannot take place in a vacuum.

It takes time and effort to write poetry. To find the right words, the right meter and verse, if those apply. To compose one’s words in such a way to appeal to all the senses, to move the heart and soul.

Regardless of what, why, and for whom we’re writing, one thing remains constant:

Writing is work…and no one wants to pay us for it.

I’m sure many people will read that statement and counter-argue, citing authors who have become wealthy, or at least make a good living from their writing.

However, they are the vast minority, the handful of exceptions to the rule.

For every J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, and George R.R. Martin, there are hundreds of thousands of aspiring writers, bloggers, journalists, and poets working their asses off and pouring their hearts and souls into their writing.

Most will never even be noticed, much less make money from their efforts.

Thanks to modern technology, anyone can write and self-publish. From novels to poetry to short stories to blogs, there are hundreds of online platforms on which people can post their writing. Some of them pay writers for views and/or time subscribers of the platform spend reading their work. Some payout bonuses for a number of stories published for writing something that gets selected as a featured story. Some even have digital tip jars where readers can remunerate their favorite authors for their work.

Here’s the thing.

The platforms that pay barely do so. Some require a post to get 1,000 views before offering a $20 payout.

Some pay $0.01 or less per view.

Some pay an undisclosed, yet pitifully small amount per minute members spend reading a post.

The lesson here is you’ll only earn decent money from a post that goes viral.

And in the age of viral videos, written content that goes viral is pretty rare, comparatively speaking.

Even if you write something that takes off, there’s still no guarantee of it resulting in a decent payday.

A few months back, I had a post here on Medium get just under 14,000 views. It’s the most viral thing I’ve written to date. You know how much I’ve earned from it?

$23.44 so far.

Yes, it’s better than nothing, but not by much. That will maybe get me lunch delivered off of Grubhub…if I order from somewhere cheap.

What’s frustrating is there have been platforms that initially paid writers close to a living wage for their work….then changed their payment policies and/or rates to drastically cut what they pay their contributing writers.

NewsBreak famously offered writers contracts of around $1,000 per month (which is good, and more importantly, STEADY money from writing) before cutting rates and changing their requirements for authors to earn from their platform. Many writer friends of mine have left the platform, feeling disgusted, exploited, and frustrated that the income they relied on dried up seemingly on a whim.

As much as I enjoy writing here, Medium very quietly cut their rates after paying out $100,000 in cash prizes for their writing contest this last summer…$90,000 of which went to four people. Great for them! Sucks for the rest of us.

How do I know the rates were cut? I mean, besides the fact that my earnings are currently 1/3 to 1/5 of what they were before the writing contest winners were paid.

I’m getting the same number of views I did over the summer. But the read ratio has gone waaaay down (I had around a 60% read ratio…now it’s down around 28%), leading me to believe that they altered the algorithm that measures member reading time — the thing that determines how much we get paid — requiring subscribers to spend more time reading (or at least scrolling through our posts) for views to count as reads.

Moreover, Medium differentiates between member or “internal” views, which can count toward reads, versus non-member or “external” views. We get paid for internal views. We don’t get paid for external views.

That viral post I wrote?

98% of the viewers were external. Hence the pittance I’ve currently earned from it.

It’s not just blogging and creative writing endeavors that skimp on paying writers, if they pay anything at all.

Recently, I’ve been looking for writing-based jobs to supplement my meager income as a blogger, part-time teacher, and track coach. Many of the listings I’ve seen have positions open for “volunteer” writers.

Oh, these companies still expect you to work like you’re getting paid…but you’re not.

Which begs to question, what other professionals would we expect to work for free? Sure, some volunteer their time and skills outside of work hours.

For example, I have a friend who is a dental hygienist who recently volunteered at a free dental clinic for veterans.

She did so out of the goodness of her heart. But she collects a paycheck for her regular work hours during the week. No one would dare ask her to work full-time on a volunteer basis.

Writers and other people in the arts are told they should be grateful to get anything for their efforts. Sometimes this can be as little as a free copy of a publication in which their work appears. Often, it’s nothing more than a publication credit.

The prevailing attitude seems to be, “Wait, you want money for your efforts? Hey, Phil, this jackass wants to be paid for his writing! Isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard?”

Of the jobs that actually pay, many of them have so many requisites that I don’t know how anyone gets hired.

Also, no one writing these job postings seems to realize the problem with requiring 5–7 years’ experience and familiarity with a dozen different programs and formats for entry-level positions.

I’m sure several people are arguing that, just because you write, it doesn’t mean you have to be paid for it. That’s valid inasmuch as writing can be a very personal thing.

If you’re keeping a journal or diary, odds are you don’t wish to share what you’ve written with others.

If you’re writing fan-fiction, maybe you don’t want to share your work with anyone outside of your particular fandom, or with anyone at all.

I once had a writing student who was incredibly talented. As a high school student, she could already construct plots and character arcs as well as most people I knew who’d been writing fiction for years. I had a conversation with her about possibly publishing her stories in literary journals or entering them in writing contests. She just shrugged and said, “I don’t care about any of that. I just write because I like it.”

Hard to argue with that.

I, however, am writing from a place of wanting to make a living as a professional writer. Outside of coaching track, teaching, and eating copious amounts of chicken wings in one sitting, writing is one of my few talents. It’s a job I can do from home, coffee shops, or any part of the world I travel to. It’s a job I can perform from my wheelchair.

And yeah, I want to see my novels on bookstore shelves one day.

Lofty aspirations aside, writing is something I love. I’d still do it even if I wasn’t getting paid for it.

But I’d really like to get paid for it. It’s that whole “Find a job you love doing, and you’ll never work a day in your life” approach.

All I’m advocating for is that people in the professional world and across various online platforms recognize that writing is work. It’s a job, even if it’s a side-hustle we do after we get home from our day-jobs.

That, when I tell people I’m a writer, they don’t immediately follow up with, “That’s great, but what’s your real job?”

I’m asking that we be properly compensated for our work. That the places that profit off the backs of those of us who create their content, who pay us pennies in exchange for our hard work, stop finding ways to pay us even less than they already do.

Don’t promise us a living wage, then three months later, change your “terms and conditions” so you’re paying us a fraction of what you initially promised.

Sadly, none of this will ever happen.

Whether it’s greed, disdain for those of us who write, or well-meaning but unsustainable business models, there are always new writers willing to fill the void left by quality writers who leave penniless and disgusted…until there’s not.

It was Nathaniel Hawthorne who said, “Easing reading is damn hard writing.”

He’s right.

And a little appreciation and recognition of this in the form of a living wage would be nice.

If you liked this story and/or my writing, sign up for my email list to stay up to date on new stories, upcoming features, and cool news. C’mon, support a struggling writer already!

Do you enjoy the content but you aren’t a Medium member? Sign up here to become a member and get unlimited access to all of my stories as well as other writers who might tickle your reading fancy.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Vocal, and BitClout.