The Price You Pay

Before you read anything I’ve written in this space, take a look at the piece Teddy Wayne has in McSweeney’s today. I won’t excerpt it here, because it’s that short and you can read it yourself. If you don’t want to take the time, it’s a riff on the cliche that “every man has his price,” and Wayne is essentially pointing out that since he’s never gotten any money from McSweeney’s, his price must be exceptionally low.

I came away from the piece with two initial thoughts. One is that I don’t understand why McSweeney’s agreed to publish it. I’ve authored or co-authored ten pieces for McSweeney’s since 2008, and I’ve had at least that number rejected, so I have a good idea about what their editorial policies are. (And, of course, I haven’t been paid a nickel for my efforts, same as Wayne.)

One thing that McSweeney’s seems to avoid is the self-referential. You’ll never see the site poking fun at its own quirks, which is why The Onion gets to do it. One of the few substantive edits I’ve ever gotten was a joke about people reading McSweeney’s at work; it was accompanied with a gentle reminder that such antics were perhaps more suited for Yankee Pot Roast. I got the point.

But Wayne’s piece isn’t just self-referential, it’s critical. He hasn’t gotten paid by McSweeney’s. Neither have I. The only way to get paid that I know about is to win the columnist contest, and that seems to me to be a piddling amount of money for the effort that you’d have to put in to it. (I applied one time, pitching a series about horrible lunch destinations in the greater Trenton, New Jersey area; they didn’t bite.) Wayne suggests that a minimum payment of $5 per piece would be “insulting.” I wouldn’t go that far; I wouldn’t be insulted by a $5 payment, although dealing with the resulting 1099 would be far more trouble than it was worth.

The other thought was that Wayne is just trolling people for reactions. His complaint about the wretched plight of the male midlist author is a classic of the genre. If Wayne is just trolling for the sake of trolling, that would explain what he’s doing, I guess, although I don’t know what he gets out of it or why McSweeney’s is letting him do it.

But does Wayne have a point?

I don’t think so, and I think I know why, and it doesn’t have anything to do with McSweeney’s or Teddy Wayne or Dave Eggers. It has to do with me. I am cheap. I am absolutely not willing to pay anything to McSweeney’s for the stuff I read online. I don’t subscribe to their print publications (not because they aren’t good or because I can’t afford it but because I have a ridiculous amount of other stuff I’d like to read that I don’t have time to read now). And there are a lot of other people like me. I would guess that we’re in the majority. As long as most people won’t pay to read McSweeney’s (and they won’t), and as long as McSweeney’s won’t take outside advertising (and they haven’t), there isn’t any money to pay writers. That doesn’t seem like an unreasonable conclusion.

And it’s not as though simply spending time writing stuff entitles you to get paid for it. I am not going to make a nickel off this little article, and there’s no reason why I should.

But does writing for McSweeney’s get you anything?

Honestly? I don’t know. I have the McSweeney’s name associated with everything that I think might help sell my book. I don’t know that it’s helped me any. It may give me a veneer of legitimacy, which you need as a self-published author. I don’t know. I do know that my friends are family are cordially sick and tired of me saying that I’ve gotten something new published, so there’s that.

I think I’ve gotten more out of McSweeney’s than they’ve gotten out of me, but it’s close either way. It’s more fun and less dangerous than coal mining, so there’s that. I’ve connected with some other talented writers who I wouldn’t have necessarily connected with before. I have paid a price, in time and creative energy, to be sure. But sometimes, you don’t pay the price. You enjoy the price.

What I can say is that there was a summer day, back in 2009, when my kids were babies, and for some reason I had a free day at home, and the time to write. It seemed like a miracle. I was racking my brain trying to think of something to make fun of, and I’d read one of those NYT travel pieces where they spend 36 hours in some exotic location like Paris or Bora Bora or Fort Worth, and that seemed ripe for parody–if I could find the right hook. “36 Hours in Bedrock?” A little too cartoony. “36 Hours in Winterfell?” A little too bloody. And I remember standing there, in my kitchen, in front of the big huge butcher block where I do the prep work, drinking a Coca-Cola Zero, and it hit me. “36 Hours on Tralfamadore.” It took me maybe an hour to write, and I sent it out, and it got published, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s the best and truest distillation of the way that you write for McSweeney’s. I wouldn’t trade that creative spark, and its ultimate expression on the site, for five dollars, or five hundred dollars.

Five thousand dollars, now you’re talking my language.