Why Are So Many People Willing To Write For Free?
Think about your day job for a moment. (I’m assuming you have one, but you probably do.) Whatever it is you do for a living, whether you’re a brain surgeon or a barista, I want you to imagine your boss walking up to you and saying, “Hey, listen, I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve decided I’m just not going to pay you anymore. This job is giving you good experience and exposure, I think it’ll be good for your career, so you should be willing to do it for free.”
I don’t know about you, but I’d be out the door so fast the sonic boom would knock his coffee cup right off his desk.
And yet, when it comes to writing (and in my experience, web design and graphic design, and I imagine this applies to all kinds of creative fields), there are a ton of people out there who will, in fact, just straight-up ask you to work for free.
Take a look at some of the market listings on The Horror Tree, which is a fantastic resource for horror writers. Half the markets listed on there — hell, more than half, it seems like — are for “Exposure Only.” Or a contributor’s copy. (I’ve seen a few where the contributor’s copy is a free download of a PDF version of the book. Gosh, thanks!)
As other artists have said — “People die of exposure.”
Why are writers willing to do this? I mean, I kind of get it — you want your name out there, you want people reading your work, but . . . if some other guy is going to be making money selling a book that has your story in it, and you’re not seeing a dime of that, then — isn’t he ripping you off? What’s the deal, here?
You can only sell your First North American Serial Rights to one of your stories once. That’s kinda the whole idea, there. If you really think your writing is solid, professional-quality stuff, then you deserve to get paid for it like a professional. And if you don’t think your writing is good enough to actually be selling it somewhere, then for Chrissakes, you don’t want “exposure” yet — get yourself back to your desk and keep working on your material until it is good enough.
Now, if you want to donate a story to an anthology whose proceeds are going to charity, then that’s one thing. Or if you want to give away your own fiction directly to readers, without going through some middleman, that’s something else, too. But if you’re willing to let someone else actually make a profit off of your hard work, then I think you’re being taken for a ride.
