Editors—You Can’t Make a Living Without Them

Editors—you can’t live with them and you can’t live without them. The truth is you can’t make a living without them. When you work with a good one, you’ll know it. And when you work with a bad one, you’ll wish you hadn’t.

If you’ve been freelancing for any length of time, you’ve probably dealt with editors who neglect to respond to your queries, are vague about what they want, make you do incessant re-writes, and then, of course, there are those who take forever to pay—or don’t pay at all.

It’s possible to have a successful freelance writing career if you know how to handle editors. Most beginning and a lot of other writers take the submissive role in the editor/writer relationship. That’s you’re first mistake.

Remember, you’re in business for yourself. You’re a business owner and as such have the right to negotiate terms. Don’t let your editors walk all over you. Sure, you’re desperate to get published and ultimately to get paid, but becoming a puppy with a ring through your nose or even worse an editor’s slave won’t get you anywhere.

Let’s start at the beginning. You researched the market, came up with a timely, compelling idea, and sent a great query. Weeks pass, and you still haven’t heard from the editor. Now what do you do?

Editors are notoriously busy people, but many of them don’t know how to communicate with their writers in a businesslike manner. This is where you have to take control of the situation. Follow up your initial query with a brief Email in which you’ve included your original pitch and ask if the editor is interested in the idea. In fact, you should have asked that question in your first query. Let the editor know that if you don’t hear from him or her in, say, two weeks, you’ll pitch your idea to other markets. Don’t sound threatening, but instead act like a professional. This type of response also shows that you’re serious about your business. But if you don’t hear anything in a reasonable amount of time, pitch the idea to another publication.

Once you get an assignment, has the editor given you detailed instructions or did he or she offer only vague suggestions. First, make sure you lay out exactly what you’re planning to do in your article query. If the editor agrees to what you’ve proposed, you’re all set. However, many writers leave the details up to the editor. If the editor gives only vague directions, you’re stuck. There’s nothing worse than researching and writing an article only to have an editor reject it because it isn’t what he or she wanted. And how were you to know? You’re not a mind reader.

When you get your assignment, make sure the editor gives you the following information:
    1. Exactly what you’re to cover in your article.
    2. The number and type of sources if you haven’t already noted this in your
        query.
    3. How many words your article should be?
    4. The due date—this is usually two weeks before the editor really needs
        the article.

If you’re dealing with a vague editor, you may want to write your own assignment letter, then ask the editor to confirm the details. This will also help you to avoid multiple revision requests.

And what do you do with an editor who consistently pays late or not at all? You wrote the assigned article and sent it in on time. You answered a few follow-up questions from your editor and submitted backup material for fact checking if necessary. You’ve completed your part of the deal, so where’s your payment?

To fully understand how this might happen, you have to understand the payment process. Just about every publication has an editorial side and a business side. While the editor commands the editorial side, the business manager and/or the accounts receivable department commands the business side. It’s the editor’s job to send your invoice or a work order to the accounts receivable department in order for them to cut you a check for your article.

Some publications have large staffs, but at others a few people do all the work. The smallest staff may consist of three or four people while larger publications have hundreds of people working for them. Both can be problematic when it comes to getting paid on time.

It’s your job to stay on top of your accounts. At first, you probably don’t care when you get paid because you have a day job to pay the bills. But once you quit your regular job and start your own business, you’ll need the money to come in regularly to keep your cash flow in line.

Make sure you send a complete invoice along with your article. This should include the date sent, title of your article, pay rate, publication date if known, due date, projected payment date and your contact information. Be sure to ask when the publication pays writers when you first get the assignment. There should be no guessing or assuming when it comes to money.

If I don’t get paid, send Email reminders to the publication’s accounts receivable department with the attached invoice to save the staff the time of looking through old messages or piles of paperwork for the original. If you still get no response, send a hard copy by regular mail. And if that doesn’t work, send it again by registered mail.

Remember, you are the one who has to take charge of business dealings with your editors—or at least meet them halfway. Don’t let your editors run the show completely. It’s just not good business.

Make More Money Freelancing

In today’s topsy-turvy world of freelance writing, making a lot of money is nothing more than a pipe dream for most. Making any money is more realistic. It has become harder and harder to do so with the flood of new media. So how can you make enough to pay the bills—and not count on your spouse’s paycheck. Ladies I’m speaking to you.

The first thing you have to learn to do is to do your best for whatever you’re getting paid. This can be a challenge as many publications have cut their pay rates in the last several years. To make sure you come up with good content, you need to be as organized as possible, so you don’t spend countless hours on a job that pays a low rate.

There’s an old saying: “You get what you pay for.” While that may be true, a lot of editors want more than they’re willing to pay for. You can make your articles seem better if you include lots of details and keep them short. Generally, a shorter piece take less time to write. So stay focused on your topic. Get excited about it and let that excitement spill out to both your editors and readers.

The second thing you must learn to do is negotiate. Most writers shy away from this because they assume that if they push too hard, their editors will reject them. That may be true when you first start working with an editor. Rule Number One: Don’t negotiate on the first job with an editor. Do the best you can on it and win that editor over. You might consider doing two or three jobs for that editor before asking for more money. Sometimes, an editor’s hands are tied and he or she cannot give you more. But usually they have some leeway in what they pay freelancers. Some writers get paid the minimum while others get the maximum.

Start out by asking what the editor can pay for the assignment. It’s at this point that you must decide if you can economically do the job. Is it worth your time? Will it be easy enough to make lower pay feasible? If the answer is no, tell the editor you’re sorry, but you can’t do your best on the job for that price. Believe it or not, there are other fish in the sea.

Once you feel confident enough to negotiate, think like you’re at a public market in a foreign country where bargaining is the norm. Before you begin, consider what you are presently being paid and then figure how much more you can accept. Ask for 50 percent more to start. Don’t get greedy. The editor may counter with 25 percent more. It’s just like bargaining for a souvenir. If you don’t get your price, be prepared to walk away. If the editor likes your work enough, he or she will counter with an acceptable offer. You’ll be surprised how often this works.

In order to be able to negotiate successfully, you have to have shown the editor that you can get your articles in on deadline. If you discover that you’re going to be late, call the editor and let him or her know. They really appreciate that. In fact, they’re smart enough to have given you a deadline that is actually a week or two ahead of when they actually need the article. So there’s a little wiggle room. But don’t count on this. Some editors work right to the wire.

Lastly, as a business person, it’s important for you to follow up. Remember, editors are busy people. Besides dealing with other writers, they’re dealing with various departments. After you’ve sent in the assignment, wait a couple of days and then send a short Email asking if the editor received it. If you mailed it, give them a call in a couple of days. Both the U.S. Postal Service and Email can be unreliable.

The editor will tell you when he or she plans to run your article. Once that date passes, send another message asking for a copy or two of the issue in which your article appears. And if you haven’t received payment by the negotiated time, contact the editor about it. And don’t forget to let the editor know how much you enjoyed working with them—if you did. Don’t lie. There are some editors who are hell on wheels to work with. In their case, move on to another publication. Don’t torture yourself, no matter how much you’re paid.

NOTE: For additional ideas on negotiation, read my blog from Feb. 1, 2013---"10 Ways of Improving Your Chances in Negotiation."

Payment in Advance

As a freelance writer, there aren’t many opportunities to get paid in advance. Book writing is about the only one.

The advance is the money a publisher pays you for the time and effort put into the writing of a book. Traditionally, the advance has been perceived as a loan made by the publisher to you to keep you alive and producing until the royalties from your book begin to come in—at which time the publisher will recoup his or her loan by withholding the amount of the advance from your share of the royalties.

The advance also reflects the book’s potential for sales. The better the potential, the bigger the advance. If the book has a smaller target readership, then the publisher will offer a lower advance. In this case, there’s no way you can live on just the advance while writing the book. It’s important to remember that during your negotiations.

In the case of many books, where the royalties don’t amount to as much as the advance, the advance serves as an out-right purchase price by the publisher. So it’s important to negotiate for an advance which represents either a fair return for your labor as a writer or the best return you can reasonably expect since you most probably won’t see any more money. When negotiating your advance, point out that the publisher is going to get a far better book if you’re free from money worries and can concentrate on your work.

Some publishers will tell you their advance is small because they expect to invest heavily in promoting the book and that, therefore, you’ll be money ahead in the long run if the contract promises larger than usual royalties to make up for the skimpy front money. But in reality, publishers aren’t doing much promotion today, especially small ones. That means you’ll be out begging people to buy your book just to make up the difference between your advance and your royalties.

Today, publishers sell many of their books wholesale to book distributors, so the royalties from them amount to only a fraction of what you’d receive from retail sales. And competition from the digital book market clouds the situation further.

Your publisher may try to recover all or part of your advance when, for any reason, he or she chooses not to issue a book. Yes, after all the work you put into your book, it just may not get published. Perhaps the market for that topic collapsed or there’s a downturn in the economy. This is clearly unfair if you have kept your part of the bargain faithfully. So, at a minimum, make sure that the language of the contract shelters you against recovery attempts. If you deliver your work on time in the form and content specified, you have every right to the advance money.

Book contracts can be very confusing. Make sure that there are no penalties for not meeting your deadline. So safeguard your advance by making sure the contractual deadline gives you enough time to meet all your obligations.

The book advance isn’t the only way you can finance your book project. You should also consider possible perks like expenses. How will you pay extra costs for travel, extensive research, artwork, photographs, charts, computer printouts, periodicals, books, photocopying, researchers, or secretarial help?

Your publisher will expect you to cover most of these expenses, so it's up to you to ask for help. Will the editor send you books for research that she has on hand? Ask for anything that would help. It can't hurt to try. But ask early. Realize there are limitations. Give your editor time to justify your expenses with the editorial board. Some publishers regularly agree to such arrangements with authors, others seldom if ever. And keep in mind that it's sometimes easier for an editor to justify such expenses as these than a more sizable advance, especially for new writers.

10 Ways of Improving Your Chances in Negotiation

As you progress in your freelance career, you’ll find that you’ll need to start negotiating with your editors if you expect to get paid more money. In the beginning, you had no recourse but to accept whatever a publication paid. But as you move on up the ladder of success, you’re in a position to ask for more pay. But to do that, you’ll need to negotiate.

Negotiation is a two-sided process. If either side weighs heavier than the other, it’s out of balance. Since you’re the one who will be initiating the negotiation most of the time, it’s up to you to make sure all your ducks are in a row. Otherwise, the other side will get the upper hand and control the process, usually not in your favor.

Here are ten things you can do to make sure the negotiation goes well and in your favor. Keep them in mind each time you step up to ask a client for more money or a more reasonable deadline. And as in any bargaining situation, be prepared to back away.

    1. Sell yourself on your idea first.
   
    2. Get to the right person before you start your negotiation. Let’s face it, there’s no point wasting your
time talking to someone who’s in no position to talk money.
   
    3. Know why you deserve what you’re asking for. Your resume and hourly rate schedule will help you here.
   
    4. Before you negotiate, get a good night’s rest. Being well rested will boost your confidence, improving your chances during the negotiation.
   
    5. Make sure you take the right approach at the start of the meeting or phone call. Remember, you want the client to think your idea is his or her idea and that you’re just calling attention to it.
   
    6. Think big. Always ask for more than you think you’ll get. You can always go lower but never back up once you’ve come to an agreement.
   
    7. Keep some other ideas in reserve. Be prepared to counter a negative offer with an irresistible idea.
   
    8. Offer to help the client. See the negotiation from his or her point of view. Does he need to make money or save money or reach more readers?
   
    9. Make your client think he’s getting the better part of the deal. If you do, he’ll want to do business with you in the future.
   
    10.  If you’re client gives you the your price-is-to-high treatment, don’t retreat. Be ready to explain why your price is a bargain.

Getting Paid What’s Due

It’s hard enough working as a freelancer, but add to that the frustration of not getting paid on time or not at all and it can become a nightmare. For most writers, bill collecting is a time-consuming and distracting endeavor. But in today’s economy it has become a fact of life. Just as the people you owe come after you if you haven’t paid your bills, so should you go after those who owe you.

Often you’ll see the signs early on. An editor fights with you for a few more dollars payment. Or perhaps he or she doesn’t let you know up front that the publication will be paying up to two months after publication. If you notice clues like this, it’s better to back away from this market because you’ll surely have problems down the line. But many writers hesitate to do that or to hassle their editors about payment for fear of losing the work.

Timely billing is the first step toward timely payment. Send an invoice with every piece you produce. Make sure that you put your Social Security number on it. Sure, everyone is telling you not to put your Social Security number on anything, but this is a bill and today, businesses use that number to identify you.

Also, make sure you state your terms of payment, unless otherwise arranged. It’s a good idea to ask an editor when the publication normally pays writers before you begin working for it. State on your invoice exactly how you want the check made out—John Doe or John Doe Communications, etc.

If you’ve incurred any expenses that you’ve previously discussed with the editor, include them on the invoice. Some editors ask that you bill them separately for expenses. Enclose copies of receipts if your editor requires them. If you’re sending your invoice by Email, scan your receipts and send image files of them. If sending by regular mail, send paper copies. If you invoice correctly and keep good records, you’ll find you can prevent problems from arising. Remember to keep copies of all your invoices. Mark those paid when you’re paid and keep an eye on those not paid as yet.

If you haven’t received payment when you expected it from an editor, send a pleasant Email reminder. Jog the editor's memory if a few weeks have gone by without payment. Editors get busy and many are  overworked and understaffed. Your invoice may have gotten misplaced. If you receive no answer within 10 days after this reminder, however, the editor may be ignoring you.

A firmer letter, sent by regular mail, should remind the editor that you met your obligations and you request that he meet his or hers. If you receive no response from this, then call the editor on the phone to find out what’s going on.

If none of these tactics work, then you can resort to charging interest on unpaid accounts over 30, 60, or 90 days, just as you’re charged if you're delinquent in paying your bills. While you may not receive the additional amounts, you'll get a businesslike message across.

If all else fails, you can always take the publication to small claims court. Depending on how much you’re owed, this can be more of a hassle for you than just admitting defeat and claiming the unpaid amount on your income tax. If an editor contacts you and tells you that the publication is having problems, back off a bit, but not too much. After all, you deserve to be paid for what you have done.

Generally, slow-paying markets don’t pay expenses. If you’re having problems collecting payment for the writing you’ve done for them, chances are they’re too strapped or cheap to pay for expenses.

Avoiding Deadends and Deadbeats

As you move forward in your freelance career, you’ll no doubt run into deadend markets and deadbeat editors. Perhaps the only problem you’ll have is to wait for the acceptance of your pieces. But chances are you’ll have many more negative experiences.

Editors are busy people. When an editor says he or she will send a reply to your query tomorrow, you can bet it will probably not arrive, at least not for a while. It pays to follow up with all your correspondence. Sending a polite reminder is good business, not hassling an editor.

Maybe you’ve been working with an editor for quite a while. You believe you have a good relationship. He’s told you that he likes your work. Then one day, you fail to get a response. It turns out that he moved on to a completely different type of publication—without telling you. You can try to track him down, but you’d be better off finding a new market.
                                         
In these uncertain economic times, it’s not unusual for a magazine to fold precipitously. You may have been waiting patiently to get paid, and it isn’t until several months later that you discover that the publisher went bankrupt.

Writers used to have to worry about whether the U.S. Postal Service delivered their manuscript. And even if your manuscript arrived it then got stuck in the mailroom. There seemed to be a definite relationship between how many floors a building had and how long your article sat in the mailroom. And if you sent your work to one of the higher paying periodicals, it most likely ended up in the slush pile where it may have sat for several weeks before an unpaid intern took a look at it.

Your article is accepted; you're jubilant. Then you get word from the editor that she had to kill your article. Even then you have to wait an unduly long time for the kill fee. Needless to say, the article's timeliness has been its undoing—the poor thing now is dead. You can’t even send it elsewhere.

And if you think that one or more of these may happen to you at various times, think again. It’s not uncommon in the freelance biz for nearly all of them to happen at the same time or at least one right after the other. It’s enough to drive a writer crazy.
                                               
Can you spot these possible disasters beforehand? In some cases, yes. But most of time, no. In fact, you may have no indication that a problem exists until the worst happens.

You can prevent some negative experiences from happening by taking a few precautions. Many writers refuse to do more than send a query to a new publication, then sit back and wait for the results. You’ll soon discover that there’s always a shakedown period at a new publication. You don't want to get caught in the fallout. Some magazines just don’t make it.

Magazines that pay on publication are notorious for creating problems. Publishers want to hang on to their money for as long as possible. Many times "pay on publication" means "several months or more after publication." But then, you may be trying to get into a new market. The number of publications paying on acceptance has dwindled with the recession. Do your homework and study the markets before you decide to send any work to them.

One tactic you might use is to wait the required time for an answer from a publisher or editor, then send a registered letter advising you're withdrawing your manuscript or query. You’ll then be free to submit it elsewhere.

To avoid problems once you get an assignment, you should make sure to immediately follow the conversation with a follow-up letter of assignment—sent by Email or regular mail—detailing the article topic, length, agreed-upon rates, delivery date, and expenses to be paid.

Lastly, save all Email messages from editors. When you do have a problem, you can then send forward the original message to the editor who may be denying what he or she said in the first place. It’s only then that you’ll exclaim, “Thank God for Email!”

Tapping the Markets

As a beginning writer, you must try to place your work in almost any publication just to get some credits. However, most markets open to novices pay little or nothing. And while you’ll get some credits, you may starve in the meantime. These first markets include church publications, fillers for local newspapers, and features for weekly newspapers. The amount you get paid doesn’t seem to matter as much as seeing your work in print. But when the initial thrill of publication wears off, it’s time to move on. You've paid your dues and sharpened your writing skills.

The next step is to assess your financial foundation and potential. If easy, though insufficient, income sources have to kept food on your table while you experiment with higher paying markets, you should be sure that you can rely on your initial markets for steady assignments and that you can shorten the time required to complete them. Try squeezing your bread-and-butter work into the first week or ten days of every month. That way you’ll be assured of at least some money to pay your bills.

Also, are you psychologically prepared to face these writing chores every month. While they may seem like a bother, the work you get from them will build up both in credits and cash.  Conversely, can you quickly switch over to even more demanding but business-expanding assignments, perhaps even within the same hour?

Your progress might proceed like this: Currently, you’re writing a combination of feature articles for several local newspapers in your region and brief but interesting local travel stories. If you play your cards right, you might even be able to sell the same article to say four or five publications, as long as their readerships don’t overlap. This way you only have to write an article once, but get to sell it several times. Your weekly article may bring in say $35. If you sell to five papers, that’s a total of $175.

Check with your editors and line up a three or four months of work for them. But to plan that far into the future, you’ll need ideas and that’s where those clips you’ve been saving come in. Clips are like fine wine, the more they age, the more valuable they become. Digging through them will provide you with lots of ideas—many of them updates on the topics covered. Topics are constantly being redone and published again in this business.

Go back and study those periodicals where you bombed out the first time. Editors change and you’ve grow more skilled, so your chance of scoring with them the second time around is good. Carefully peruse their table of contents.  How do their published articles differ from yours? Are they offering their readers lots of tips or are they more general in scope. Can you revamp any of your queries to include details you missed before? Perhaps you've misread or misinterpreted the writer's guidelines, or possibly the editorial direction has been altered while you’ve been concentrating on other publications. If you can’t rework your queries, look in your folder of clips to see what you can find for higher-paying markets. Set yourself a timetable to send out 20-25 new queries within two weeks to the markets you've picked. Work as furiously as you can on this to get the ball rolling. Then while you’re waiting, you can work on some of your bread and butter assignments.
   
Pull out all the stops. Sharpen your writing technique. Study the work of writers you admire— analyze it and compare it to your own.  Copy a paragraph or two, then print it out double-spaced, just like your own work. Doing this will help you see it as writing on a computer and not the printed page which will help you compare better compare to y our work. After you do this, rewrite what you’ve copied in your own style, using your own words. Try this exercise from time to time during your writing career.

Staying Afloat Without a Paddle

As important as the quality of your writing is to freelancing, so should your financial base. Too many beginning writers only daydream about how wonderful it would be to strike out on their own and get paid for their writing. In order to stay afloat while freelancing, especially in the beginning while you’re opening markets and gathering clients, you must have money to pay your bills.

If you’ve ever bought a house, you know how careful you have to inspect it. Once you sign the sales agreement, you’re stuck with it, no matter what problems may arise. The same goes for severing the financial cord to your fill-time job. By doing thorough research and planning carefully, you’ll be able to concentrate on your writing and not have to worry about how you’re going to buy food or pay for heat and fuel for your car.

When I began freelancing, I decided that if I had to work part-time at any point in my freelance career that I would only get a job at something related to what I was doing. I figured that if I working thinking and working with writing or any of the subjects I wrote about then I might also gain some knowledge or insights to help me in my writing. I wrote about travel and tourism, so I worked as a travel agent. I wrote about the Internet and technology, so I learned to design Web sites for small businesses. I even did public relations writing—I got plenty of press releases and learned to write good ones from them.

But the job that has offered me the most opportunities was teaching what I loved to do best—writing. No, I didn’t teach in public school or college. Over the years, I’ve taught continued education courses at a number of colleges and universities as well as community evening schools in my area. I knew that I really couldn’t write all day and all night, so I scheduled my classes during the evening hours. No course is longer than eight weeks and each session runs for two hours. I work as an independent contractor, thus setting my own schedule and creating and writing my own courses. Once a course is “in the bag,” I just have to reap the profits.

The experience I gained teaching writing courses propelled me into an even more lucrative sideline—business writing workshops. I earn more in a six-hour day doing this than writing two or three articles. But instead of presenting these workshop constantly, I’m selective and only do them occasionally.

Another sideline related to my course work is lecturing. I’ve amassed loads of information on a variety of subjects, as well as photographs of the same. I began assembling these into one-hour lectures that I present at retirement centers and at conferences. Again, once a lecture is all assembled, it’s easy to draw from my inventory and reap the profits.

When, do you ask, do I have time to write? Believe it or not, I have a lot of time because I set my own schedule. All my teaching venues know that if something comes up, I may need to cancel a class and make it up later. All have been very accommodating. Plus, I get all sorts of ideas when teaching others.

My Web design business kicks in when times are slow. It takes a lot to put a good site together, so I take on only one client at a time. The pay is usually worth it.

During the recent economic downturn, my ability to turn a profit with my other ventures has paid off handsomely. All of these ventures come under the umbrella of Bob Brooke Communications, my brand name and the company I created.

The Money Migraine

Collecting the money owed to you can be frustrating and time consuming. In this business, we call it a “money migraine.” Some markets pay on time all the time, other are just the opposite. I got paid for my first article exactly one year after I sent it to a magazine. At the time, I was so excited about being published in a national magazine that it didn’t dawn on me that if I wrote full time that I would starve if I had to wait that long to be paid.

The better markets out there do pay on time and do respect writers. But some of the middle markets and, especially those at the bottom of the ladder, drag their feet. One magazine even offered me free advertising for the $1,500 they owed me for several articles. Now why would I advertise in their magazine?

The first step in timely payment is to find out when you’re supposed to be paid. Don’t hesitate to ask a publishers when they pay writers. Some pay on acceptance, some on publication, and some after publication. Knowing when you should expect payment will help you know if you should take further steps.

If payment time passes, send a second invoice, accompanied by a friendly reminder. Hopefully, the publisher may have just forgotten. Editors are busy and sometimes overworked. Or perhaps your invoice got misplaced. If you receive no answer or money after 10 days, it’s most likely that you’re being ignored.

Send another letter, reminding the editor that you met your obligations and insist that the publisher meet his or hers. If not answer again, it’s time for you to call. But often this has no effect.

What should you do now? If all else fails, you can take a publisher to court-–small claims court, that is. The only problem with this is that you have to do that in the county or town in which they’re located. For a small fee, you can file a claim or have someone locally file one for you. There’s a good chance you’ll get the money owed you, but you’ll have lost that market.

In my experience, nearly all publishers eventually do send payment–albeit very late. Continuing to work with a slow-paying publisher is a decision you’ll have to make. Sometimes, it’s a one-time event, but there are publishers who operate by the seat of their pants. You’ll have to decide if it’s worth continuing to work with that publisher or should you put your energies into finding a new one.

Payment on Acceptance or Publication

Writing for publication can have its drawbacks. For beginning writers, just getting published is enough. But for professional writers–those of us you need to get paid for our writing–when and if we get paid becomes a continual concern.

Professional writers’ associations like the prestigious American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) continually say writers should get paid on acceptance. That means getting paid the moment an editor accepts an article or short story. Well, that’s easy for them to say.

In today’s madcap word of publishing, fewer and fewer publishers of periodicals are paying their writers on acceptance. They want to keep their money as long as they can, and so do their advertisers, who are paying their bills later and later. So what is a writer to do?

First, find out beforehand when the publication pays its writers. You can easily find this in such directories as Writer’s Market, published by Writer’s Digest Books. If you don’t see the publication you’re interested in within its pages, then call the editor and ask. Too many magazines, for instance, want your story months ahead of time, but don’t pay for perhaps a year later. You can’t wait a whole year to shop at the supermarket!

Many publications pay on publication–or more to the point, perhaps 30-60 days after publication. If you’re expecting immediate payment as soon as your piece is published, don’t bet on it. This has become more the norm than not.

The argument ASJA makes is that payment on publication may mean never. What they mean by this is that the publication may close up shop before you get your money. Unfortunately, in today’s economy, that’s the risk you have to take. Otherwise, go get a job at McDonald’s.

In order to write and publish and still get by, you need to work on a number of projects. Always have something in the works. Sending an article or story off every so often will make sure that the payments also come in every so often.