
Cash for Words: A Brief History of Writing for Money - samclemens
https://newrepublic.com/article/139769/cash-words-brief-history-writing-money
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mojoe
I pay by the word, so this author and I have complementary perspectives (I
publish a small science fiction magazine,
[http://compellingsciencefiction.com](http://compellingsciencefiction.com)).

First, I certainly don't think that paying for content decreases quality in
any way. Every argument I've heard against paying authors is incredibly
nebulous, and it's generally accepted that statistically you'll get better
work (in any field of human endeavor) when you economically incentivize
people.

Second, this quote was very interesting to me:

“So far online self-publishing has been the preserve of fan fiction and
erotica but it can’t be long before high-quality fiction starts to emerge.”

After thinking about the entire ecosystem for a bit, my conclusion is that the
above quote is probably completely wrong. The main issue is that there is SO
MUCH bad writing produced compared to good writing. I receive 300-400
submissions a month for my magazine and most of them are not publishable (and
my editor friends tell me that these numbers are low). Because of this hugely
skewed ratio, it is very unlikely that "high-quality fiction" will "start to
emerge", mainly because readers on the internet are unwilling to sift through
all the chaff. For great writing to 'emerge', it requires both someone to read
it, and for that someone to have enough influence over their friends for their
friends to read it. I'm not sure that those two conditions will ever be
satisfied well enough to be an effective screening system. It will be
interesting to see how the ecosystem evolves, though.

~~~
pryelluw
Have you thought of writing a guide to help people submit higher quality
content? Might prove useful. :)

~~~
mojoe
I've certainly considered it -- I would like to write some blog posts on it at
the very least. Many submitters ignore my existing guidelines
([http://compellingsciencefiction.com/submit.html](http://compellingsciencefiction.com/submit.html))
already, though, so I question how much impact such a guide would have.

~~~
lappet
I really wanted to submit a story to you but I see that you are not accepting
any right now. Can you please share when that would change?

~~~
mojoe
We won't be officially accepting stories until March 1, but if you send the
story to my personal email (joe@compellingsciencefiction.com) I'll evaluate
it.

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brachi
> it might actually benefit a writer not to rely on books as their main source
> of income.

As long and energy and time left is enough to work just for the love of it.
Although I might not feel like work, producing quality work certainly takes
considerable amounts of time and energy. Side projects are hard to even
complete without discipline and focus.

> Money obscures one’s relationship to work; it distances us from ourselves
> and the things we make

Reminds me of the discussion here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13326792](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13326792)

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paulpauper
_“Luckily, the freedom offered by the Internet offers a chance to resurrect
the idea of writing for love, not money,” waxes Rahim. “So far online self-
publishing has been the preserve of fan fiction and erotica but it can’t be
long before high-quality fiction starts to emerge.” In two thousand years, we
have not strayed far from Pindar’s long-ago complaint: “Men used to write for
love alone; now they write for money.”_

Yeah but they are not mutually exclusive. You cannot write for money if your
quality is total crap, because no one will pay you a respectable amount of
money (and I'm not counting o-desk where you get paid $1 for 500 words).

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tomcam
Money doesn't taint everything for me. Therefore the rest of the article was
impossible to agree with as the generalization it became by that initial
declaration.

~~~
nikdaheratik
That's not the thesis of the article. The thesis is basically that Simonides
and other writers got alot of flak for wanting to be paid, but the author
believed that the flak was really for pointing out a relationship that was
already in place, just in a kind of reciprocal gift economy instead. More to
the point, that the gift of words in the previous economy was always
reciprocated by something _more valuable_ so that the writer would remain in
the patron's debt.

So the people who believe that writing should always be untainted by money (or
reciprocity) are failing to understand and live up to either the patronage
system or the "modern" monetary payment system.

~~~
tomcam
From the article:

> Money taints everything, why not writing too?

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kbuchanan
Don't forget that even writers who charge by the word have to set a price per
word. A better writer can charge more, while still achieving a target quality.

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UhUhUhUh
And let's not forget Dostoievsky. He was paid by the word as well and since he
was a severe gambler...

