The rates at which hobby RPG-writers work are disheartening.

[Deleted]

Hi,

www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?2301-What-s-a-Freelance-RPG-Writer-Worth

Looks to me like our hobby might well benefit from a good dose of old-fashioned socialist redistribution.

Yours,

Rafe

[derv]

It's an interesting discussion point. A few thoughts of my own-

It seems to me that writers in the early part of their careers have always had to struggle to make a living. This is true of artists too and it isn't just this hobby. The ones who make a name for themselves can demand higher prices.

Along those lines, .01 cent a word might border on exploitive, but I don't feel the same for .02 cents a word. It's just hard to make a living. Really, this comes down to a subjective opinion. The point is, if people are willing to write for .02 cent a word or even .01 cent a word, they must be making it work somehow.

This topic is also where you will find some harsh words for the do-it-yourself and give-it-away for free crowd in the hobby. The reason being, it seems, is that it makes it harder for the for-profit crowd to charge reasonable prices. As a consequence, they have to control costs. Part of that is in what they pay writers.

My last thought is that if price per word could be regulated with a minimum, what would the outcome be? Could the small publishers absorb it? Or would it simply mean fewer writing oportunities because they can not operate and still make a profit while competing with larger publishers?

[Scott Anderson]

Build a better mousetrap...

Zak S has (he says) paid his rent in downtown LA for months on his initial Red & Pleasant Land print run with no signs of letting up.

You get paid what you're worth, more or less. Aside from the very tip-top producers in the arts, nobody makes a living at it.

If you want to make a living, go work on an oil rig.

This is harsh & snarky I know. But, we do what do because we love it, and if the paycheck comes, all the better.

Furthermore, I can't pay text book prices for RPG books. That's what would happen if writers were paid good living wages.

[bat]

To be fair, and I really cannot stand zak at all, we do not get along, he wrote and illustrated R&PL and had it published through his buddy. So his results will be atypical. If anything, he is doing it right, do it all yourself and either self publish or know the publisher.

[Deleted]

I am not saying this is a simple matter, BUT...

My big beef is mainly the copyright leeching that goes along with the low salaries: You don't just write for a line, or, noawadays, for a publisher, you typically also sell your IP. Meaning, you sell a year's work for pocket money, AND lose all your rights to further develop a setting you've created. Meaning, your campaign now belongs to someone else. - That's not okay, as I see it.

Now, you can, of course, maintain that all sales are, usually, at least, each writer's free will, but given that the entire gaming infrastructure in the US operates like this, an author has little other choice than to undersell his content - or to try himself at some form of self-publishing. IMO, the system needs to change - we need to get away from a corporate-owned hobby, and back to an author-owned hobby, to use some rather epic terms.

[derv]

I might be more empathic about the injustice if you were telling me the BIG publishers were only paying .01 cent a word. The article really only points to the fact that there are better opportunities for those who pay their dues and have talent. Some things involve sacrifice to get in life.

[Deleted]

Feb 8, 2015 12:32:21 GMT -6 @rafael said:

IMO, the system needs to change - we need to get away from a corporate-owned hobby, and back to an author-owned hobby, to use some rather epic terms.

Any successful author-owned product will turn into a corporation. It happened to Gary all those years ago. An author-owned hobby is inherently unstable, falling apart the instant the public demand more of a product than one person can produce.

[bea]

My first reaction at this is not about the level of the rates per se... It's that I find it inherently counterproductive to pay someone per word they write. That either means you set yourself up to do some extremely heavy editing or be prepared to publish works that will - qukte likely - be heavy on text regardless of the level of useful content.

[Scott Anderson]

Per word payment does seem a little weird.

[tkdco2]

Hasn't per word payment been the norm for freelance writers for years? I didn't realize it was that low, however. Of course, it adds up if you're writing a book about 100 pages long.

[Deleted]

What we would all benefit from is a complete redo on copyright law. Right now it is being re-written constantly in a way to prevent Disney's Mickey Mouse from going into the public domain and benefiting mainly the Disney's of the world. If something is constantly in print, then fine the copyright not expiring is not a problem. However, if it goes out of print after a set number of years the copyright should expire. Corporations and businesses should not be permitted to own copyrights/IP, only lease them for specific blocks of time (say a max of 5 years, maybe more) then renegotiate. Make work for hire strictly illegal: writing, designing, inventing, painting - anything copyrightable or patentable can only be owned by the person(s) doing the creative work. Businesses can not own it, ever. Copyright runs 20 years and it enters the public domain. The only exception is if it stays in print, if I create something and I or my heirs keep it in print then the copyright will not expire (Mickey Mouse is safe). If my book stays available for sale as a pdf (or equivalent) or in a hard copy form for the next 10,000 years then my IP remains the property of my heirs for the next 10,000 years. If I or my heirs do not keep it available for sale and it goes out of print then the copyright expires. Simple and it restores at least a little balance between the creative person and the publisher.

However, there is no cure for the starving artist, you either get lucky or you pay your dues and keep a full or part time day job (and perhaps a working spouse)for a long time. As this is real life, many will never succeed or only be discovered after they have passed on. Unfortunately rates are low, but many markets are small and people are trying to get a piece of a small pie.

[xerxez]

Well said Perilous.

[sepulchre]

Hedgehobbit wrote:

Any successful author-owned product will turn into a corporation. It happened to Gary all those years ago. An author-owned hobby is inherently unstable, falling apart the instant the public demand more of a product than one person can produce.

Not meaning to derail Rafe's fine post, but have to ask this: As I am wholly unfamiliar with the meeting of demand and Gary's prolific endeavors, what do you imagine might have been the consequence of letting more time elapse between releases? I realize the modules themselves (what remained to purchase once you acquired the AD&D Manuals or previous rules)did not rake in a large profit, but by the late 70's people were crazy about the product, appears to me that demand would not have abated? That is to say, TSR appeared to be pretty stable in that period, no?

[Scott Anderson]

I agree with Perilous about copyright law. It's too bad that the party with the best lobbyist gets to write law. On the other hand, people ought to be able to sell anything that's otherwise legal to anyone old enough to enter into a business agreement.

[desertscrb]

Feb 8, 2015 10:15:48 GMT -6 @rafael said:

Looks to me like our hobby might well benefit from a good dose of old-fashioned socialist redistribution.

And exactly how would you go about redistributing? Who gets to decide what gets redistributed, and who it goes to?

[waysoftheearth]

Copyright law exists to protect the rights of the creator.

Copyright is a legal right created by the law of a country, that grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights to its use and distribution, usually for a limited time, with the intention of enabling the creator (e.g. the photographer of a photograph or the author of a book) to receive compensation for their intellectual effort.

See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

If a creator agrees to work for hire that is their individual business, but nobody can really force anyone to work for hire at one cent per word, or any other rate. But I agree that working for nix is extremely common when you're starting out at the bottom of the food-chain, no matter the industry.

I recall reading somewhere a book publisher who lamented receiving an average of 20 unsolicited manuscripts per day for years on end, so I can imagine that a very low open market rate might be, in part, a mechanism to discourage an enormous deluge of submissions that some unfortunate salaried editor would then have to read! So basically, it costs them money to take submissions.

As hobbyists, we perhaps need to recognise that we are (or the majority of us are; I'm sure there will be exceptions) just hobbyists. We do what we do because we love it, but that doesn't imply that we are all professional grade writers. Most of us (self included) are not pros--and that's why the print on demand model is a better fit for most of us.

Breaking into the "next level up" is hard work, for sure! I applaud those that have tried and/or are still trying

[Scott Anderson]

Exalt, ways

[bea]

In the end I think we have to accept the fact that very (very very very) few companies in this hobby have the capability and routine of sales to have any idea how well a given product is going to sell. I know at least two publishers who've openly stated that they budget each product based on how much they're willing to lose if it doesn't sell a single copy - basically how much they're willing to spend to see their vision of it fulfilled, regardless of the market reception.

It's a small market; one shouldn't count on being able to make a living in RPGs.

Incidentally, one shouldn't actually count on ever being able to make a living in creative writing. A frighteningly small portion of writers do. I have a friend who just had her third novel published. Her short stories have been in some quite notable anthologies, and have been longlisted and shortlisted for awards. Her writing pays enough for the moment to allow her to work only four days a week on her "regular" job. She's spent a decade investing every bit of time and energy she can into her writing career.

Last year I started publishing material on the RPG scene, and I've been very much surprised and delighted at the amount of money my work has accrued. My Psychedelic Fantasies adventure has earned me $30 - despite the fact that it's Pay What You Want. The fanzine I run has a net profit of almost $150 on the 3 issues so far released (I don't pay writers a dime for their submissions for that one, but I feel okay about that because profits go to a gaming club - I get paid as little as everyone else! ).

I expect every minute I spend on this hobby to be non-profit, until otherwise proven. This is also why I've invested my energy into a career that will reliably pay my bills for the foreseeable future rather than try to be a writer, regardless of how much that appeals to me.

[snorri]

Feb 8, 2015 10:15:48 GMT -6 @rafael said:

Hi,

www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?2301-What-s-a-Freelance-RPG-Writer-Worth

Looks to me like our hobby might well benefit from a good dose of old-fashioned socialist redistribution.

Yours,

Rafe

That's one of the reasons i'm a marxist activist. In a socialist world, I would have more free time to write rpgs

[Deleted]

Feb 8, 2015 22:47:20 GMT -6 desertscrb said:

Feb 8, 2015 10:15:48 GMT -6 @rafael said:

Looks to me like our hobby might well benefit from a good dose of old-fashioned socialist redistribution.

And exactly how would you go about redistributing? Who gets to decide what gets redistributed, and who it goes to?

I was making a, wait for it, a joke. However, some of the bigger publishers could certainly afford to share the loot a bit more progressively. For example, I recall to have heard that the average author's salary for a module to the old Necromancer Games was about 500 $ per 100 pages. - A module that the publisher gains ALL the rights to, and is free to recycle and resell at will. For example, I'd be interested in knowing whether NG and other companies are giving their writers percent shares of the PDF sales - that are going a decade after the original print run.

Now, I agree with all that, for example, @theperilousdreamer has said about startups having to pay the learner's fee, but what I find unfair are what I am inclined to call adhesion deals: The common practice that you have to sell your IP for all eternity. This has blocked almost everyone within the hobby from developing its own respective creations:

Like, should Gary Gygax really have been forced to rewrite his Castle Greyhawk dungeon as "Castle Zagyg"? Or, by the law of common sense, should a man like Dave Arneson not have been allowed to continue his own creation, Blackmoor, at will, instead of re-licensing it from the company he sold it to as a youngster? - Doesn't feel just to me.

Brave Halfling Press, for example, (whom I usually speak badly about because of the failboat that is their DCC kickstarter, BTW) had a much more humane and intelligent approach: You would license BHP your IP for three years only. That way, they could do their business, and afterwards, you could at least return to work with your own ideas.

I mean, we obviously have to distinguish between the size and the nature of each author's contribution, also between and the size and the nature of the publisher's re-use of an author's IP - but especially when the texts in question are more or less generic in nature, I am convinced writers need a better recompensation.


Sorry for the rant. To quote a famous movie, this is just, like, my opinion.

[Finarvyn]

Another point to keep in mind is that histoically in the game industry the company name has always been the selling point, and not the author's name. Who knows offhand who designed Monopoly? Or Hungry, Hungry Hippo? Or Candyland? Or most Avalon Hill wargames? Game

Gary Gygax broke the trend quite a bit when TSR started featuring author's names on products. Now we sort of expect it, at least in the RPG industry, since an RPG or a module is often more like writing fiction.

[Deleted]

Feb 9, 2015 4:06:19 GMT -6 @rafael said:

Now, I agree with all that, for example, @theperilousdreamer has said about startups having to pay the learner's fee, but what I find unfair are what I am inclined to call adhesion deals: The common practice that you have to sell your IP for all eternity. This has blocked almost everyone within the hobby from developing its own respective creations:

Like, should Gary Gygax really have been forced to rewrite his Castle Greyhawk dungeon as "Castle Zagyg"? Or, by the law of common sense, should a man like Dave Arneson not have been allowed to continue his own creation, Blackmoor, at will, instead of re-licensing it from the company he sold it to as a youngster? - Doesn't feel just to me.

Brave Halfling Press, for example, (whom I usually speak badly about because of the failboat that is their DCC kickstarter, BTW) had a much more humane and intelligent approach: You would license BHP your IP for three years only. That way, they could do their business, and afterwards, you could at least return to work with your own ideas.

That is my point the selling your IP for all eternity. IMO the only solution to that is to make it illegal. You can only sell the license but only for set length of time 3-5 years at a time seems reasonable.

[kesher]

Back in the day, though (1980s), I only paid attention to who was illustrating TSR products, as opposed to writing them.

This is a great discussion! One thing I haven't really seen mentioned is that the RPG industry as a whole barely breaks even. And the market bears what the market bears. I mean, I think those prices are ridiculous, that paying/word is ridiculous (seems like it should be a negotiated single sum/project to me), that IP laws are ridiculous, and are legislated purely to the benefit of corporations. However, the single-most salient point, IMO, was already made above--if industry writers were paid what we might consider a "fair" wage, AND got to keep possession of their IP, the whole RPG industry would price itself right out of existence. I honestly don't think it anything to due with "paying your dues" as an industry peon; it seems instead to me like basic economics.

Anyone who's going to try to make any money in this industry should probably just be clear on what their personal definition of "success" is. I remember, back maybe in 2006, Vincent Baker saying that he made enough from Dogs in the Vineyard to buy a used car--he considered that to be a success.

ALSO, I have to say any argument made that people writing for this hobby and giving their product away for free somehow harm the potential earnings of those who are trying to make money from it is ridiculous on the face of it. The companies who can afford to pay writers anything substantial (are there maybe, what, three or four of them?) couldn't care less about the huge glut of freely offered content.

[geoffrey]

Feb 8, 2015 12:06:19 GMT -6 Scott Anderson said:

Zak S has (he says) paid his rent in downtown LA for months on his initial Red & Pleasant Land print run with no signs of letting up.

I am not surprised. Consider:

Zak illustrated his own book, and thus the publisher did not need to pay an illustrator.

I imagine that Zak gets 50% of the profits of his book (which is what I get from James Raggi, who publishes both Zak and myself).

Put those two together, and Zak is probably netting over $10,000 for his book. If he had been instead getting paid 2 cents per word, his book would have to have been 500,000 words long for him to net $10,000.

[EdOWar]

It'd be nice if independent game writers could make more off their work, but keep in mind everything is entered into voluntarily. There's no law that says you have to sell your IP to a publisher; that's just a term of the contract, which you can try to renegotiate. Granted, that may mean you also don't get the job, but that's life.

Similarly, you can try to lease your IP as well, though I imagine most publishers would want to lock things down for more than just a few years. They are taking a risk, after all; it's reasonable to expect some return on the risk.

If you don't like it, then you can try your hand at self-publishing, and assume those risks (and rewards) yourself. Or get a day job, and write for fun and beer money.

[desertscrb]

Feb 9, 2015 4:06:19 GMT -6 @rafael said:

I was making a, wait for it, a joke.

Sorry, I need to recalibrate my humor settings.

I agree that some of the rates mentioned in that post are pretty pathetic. If that's the case, authors shouldn't write for those publishers.

[Scott Anderson]

Nobody can force you to work for a price you don't agree to. Nobody can force you to sell something for a price below that which you are willing to sell it. Please consider these statements carefully.

You want work? Go dig me a subway! This RPG stuff we do for love. There ain't any free lunches.

[Vile Traveller]

To turn the topic on its side, the rate at which hobby RPG-writers work is disheartening because we are so slow! And I speak as an expert on the matter of sloooow writing. Well, perhaps not the actual writing itself, but at the rate texts are actually completed which is often glacial. And, of course, this is a direct result of the rates for which hobby RPG-writers work, because if they were not disheartening we could all chuck in our day jobs and get on with it!

[tkdco2]

And I thought I was the only one dragging my feet on this. I don't feel so bad now.

[Deleted]

Feb 9, 2015 18:01:39 GMT -6 Scott Anderson said:

You want work? Go dig me a subway! This RPG stuff we do for love. There ain't any free lunches.

Yes, yes, BUT that nobody can make a decent living on RPG writing alone is largely a product of the least-cost policy that publishers have taken since pretty much the beginning of 2e, back 1989. The demand is certainly there, and those who break with the established publishing house/publishing system and do their own thing (like, for example, Monte Cook), are usually reasonably well off.

It's the mid-tier guys that are exploited to a point when writing becomes straight-up uneconomic for them.

How can that be changed?