Writing for Free
Oct. 18th, 2012 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alanajoliI admit, I have largely stopped doing volunteer writing. When I first started doing game-writing, I worked for free, or worked for product credit. To me, this was doing time: eventually, by doing enough volunteer work, I'd get some writing gigs. And largely, that process worked. Which meant that I stopped volunteering.
Ah, but Alana, you say. You blog. You write reviews you don't get paid for. You guest blog. You post free fiction from time to time. How does that gel with your aforementioned mercenary disposition?
In truth, it doesn't always gel, and that's why a lot of those free projects get pushed aside for contract work. But while I don't have a great answer to that question, I thought that Ilona Andrews did a fine job describing the free vs. paid conundrum here. She (or, really, they -- Ilona Andrews is a husband/wife team) are currently publishing a free serial (link on the cover image), which eventually they'll turn into an e-book for pay, but in the meantime are doing it for-the-love.
Here's where I think this works in their favor. When I get free stuff from a writer, and I like their stuff, I'm far more likely to shell out for their books, e-books, heck even t-shirts based on their work. I think a lot of free writing (blogs included) creates a sense of community, ownership, and loyalty. This is absolutely true of Web comics -- just look at the Kickstarter success of Rich Burlew's Order of the Stick -- and I think it works for fiction writers, and even publishers (look at Tor.com), as well.
At any rate, the Andrews's thoughts are quite insightful. Clearly the topic has been discussed whenever Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day comes around (link is to James Patrick Kelly's Asimov's article on the debate), but with all the interesting ways of getting content to readers that are growing and changing (crowdfunding, donation-driven, free, traditionally paid), I think it's a conversation that continues to be worth having.
Ah, but Alana, you say. You blog. You write reviews you don't get paid for. You guest blog. You post free fiction from time to time. How does that gel with your aforementioned mercenary disposition?
In truth, it doesn't always gel, and that's why a lot of those free projects get pushed aside for contract work. But while I don't have a great answer to that question, I thought that Ilona Andrews did a fine job describing the free vs. paid conundrum here. She (or, really, they -- Ilona Andrews is a husband/wife team) are currently publishing a free serial (link on the cover image), which eventually they'll turn into an e-book for pay, but in the meantime are doing it for-the-love.
Here's where I think this works in their favor. When I get free stuff from a writer, and I like their stuff, I'm far more likely to shell out for their books, e-books, heck even t-shirts based on their work. I think a lot of free writing (blogs included) creates a sense of community, ownership, and loyalty. This is absolutely true of Web comics -- just look at the Kickstarter success of Rich Burlew's Order of the Stick -- and I think it works for fiction writers, and even publishers (look at Tor.com), as well.
At any rate, the Andrews's thoughts are quite insightful. Clearly the topic has been discussed whenever Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day comes around (link is to James Patrick Kelly's Asimov's article on the debate), but with all the interesting ways of getting content to readers that are growing and changing (crowdfunding, donation-driven, free, traditionally paid), I think it's a conversation that continues to be worth having.
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Date: 2012-10-19 04:01 pm (UTC)1. Writing for money for this work--the most obvious one, in many ways, but even it subdivides into flat fee versus royalty sorts of distinctions.
2. Writing for marketing/writing for publicity--this covers all of the various loss-leader writing that people do (things like Ilona Andrews work, things like Sarah Rees Brennan's free novellas and short stories to support her novels, etc.)
3. Writing for volunteer purposes--writing for charitable causes, writing to support a nonprofit, etc.
4. Writing for networking/CV building--if I write this for them now, they (or a competitor) may hire me to write something else for them later.
5. Writing as practice/skills development/so that later writing will be better.
6. Writing for the love of writing/writing for the sake of art.
All of the things we write serve one or more of those purposes. None of those except maybe 6 is writing for "free"--it's just a question of which forms of compensation. But writing for traditional, credited paid publication serves almost all of those goals--it brings in money now (1), it builds a fan base and helps sell other works by the author either now or in the future (2), it helps build a CV and build network ties to the publisher (4), it's still writing which improves skills and develops craft (5), and hopefully it isn't completely hackery done as a chore (so 6).
It still makes sense to say "because I can accomplish 2 and 4 and get paid for it, I don't want to not get paid for the sake of 2 and 4." But it equally makes sense to say, "the problem with 4 is that the publisher gets too much of the value and I don't," where a self-publishing route that includes free things released as 2 may make as much sense, because the total revenue still makes it worthwhile. Even paid short stories typically don't pay enough to be "worth it" but if they find additional audience members, they're worth it. But that means that, despite being paid, they're mostly "free writing" in the sense of being principally motivated by 2, 4, 5, and maybe 6. So rather than focusing on whether something is directly paid, I'd focus on what the author gets out of it. Is it marketing? Networking? Working on the dream piece that they have always wanted to write?