The rate of pay and prices has one the greatest effects on who will work for what and why. In the table top RPG industry, 4 cents a word for writers and $250 a page is a “good” pay rate. But what do you get for those rates, I mean from the business perspective? If you get paid those amounts and your product does sell, whose fault would that be? Even better, does the writer or artist talk any blame for the product not selling? Where does the responsibility of poor sales fall? Better yet as a writer or artist SHOULD you take responsibility for poor sales on a product? Paying higher rates does give you one advantage over paying lower rates, you receive more response for work and you can pick and choose who you would like to work with. So once again I am thinking about raising our pay rate at LPJ Design. The better question is why do you think I should pay you 4 cents a word for writers and $250 per page for artist to work for LPJ Design? Talk t you later…
who edit's your work?
ReplyDeleteProfessionalism is a two-way street. Pay a professional rate, get professional writers. The Horror Writers Association currently determines 5 cents per word to be professional rate.
ReplyDeleteThe RPG hobby is a small niche industry where there is a lot of competition for entry-level writing jobs.
ReplyDeleteWorking for an established PDF publisher such as LPJ Designs is a good way for new authors to get some exposure, but most freelancers will quickly move on to bigger and better things if they don't get paid at the current market rate.
Maybe the best approach would be to adopt a tiered model - pay a low rate for work by previously unpublished authors to minimise the risk to your own businbess it they crash and burn, but offer a higher rate to regular contributors who have proven that they are dependable and can meet sales thresholds. It might even be possible to scale the pay rate for each project based upon the average sales figures for that particular author, providing ambitious freelancers with an incentive to do well. I don't know how popular this approach would be though.