Pay on Publication or Pay on Acceptance?

Be sure to check out the current post on The Renegade Writer, where Linda Formicelli has reprinted her Writer’s Digest article, “Waiting for Dollars: Pay on Pub vs. Pay on Acceptance.” It’s a must-read for freelancers, whether you write fiction or nonfiction.

Linda gives both sides of a situation that writers face every day — whether to write for magazines that pay on publication or for those that pay when an article is accepted. It’s a fair and balanced piece, and I found it enlightening that editors revealed why they pay on publication or why they do not. Despite what many writers may believe, paying on publication is not always an arbitrary decision.

On the writer’s side, Linda includes responses from current and former freelancers and representatives of the National Writers Union and the American Society of Journalists and Authors, in which they share their views about accepting assignments from pay-on-publication magazines. Sometimes writers must wait six months or more to be paid. What’s more, writers can’t even sell reprints of their articles until they have actually been published, limiting their ability to make money on their work.

Linda’s article offers negotiating tactics and ways writers can lessen their risk of getting burned when magazines go out of business, plus advice on how to play it smart and profit from writing for pay-on-publication magazines.

Everything Linda writes is first-rate and this article is no exception. After you read it, please let us know about your experience with (and your thoughts about) pay-on-publication and pay-on-acceptance magazines.

Please leave a comment.

©2007 by Laverne Daley

TAGS:
writers,
editors,
pay on publication
pay on acceptance
magazines,
freelancers