How Do You Figure Out Payment?
Dear Horace Greeley,
Why do publishers pay per word for submissions? Are magazines paying per letter? Per space maybe? Space gives letters their meaning. Shouldn't we pay per keystroke, as a retribution for physical labor? Or what could be the reason to not pay writers per sentence?
Oh, wait a minute!
Are editors paid per letter? Per minute? If editors are paid per letter, no wonder books drag on forever. "Add more adjectives!“
Are longer words better than short ones although they transport less meaning per letter? Short and simple: short IS simple. Time is essential. Meaning doesn't wait to be edited, much less understood.
Why would magazine subscriptions be paid per print while they are edited per word?
For the same reason as submission guidelines are ever fattening and bloating in synonyminfested possibilities to edit-away my spaces. While editors cashin adverbs - letter after letter. Here is an adverb: Cha-Ching.
Because space-letters have a meaning? In love poetry. War memoirs. Even dictionaries, full of sweet sounds the longer spoken out, the more remind you of your French speaking love, whispering sweet long nothings into your ear. Or a dying son writing his mother before his end. She will keep every single one of his words in her mind. Or in an editor‘s view: Words matter most in a dying son’s note - priceless, but his mom could still bill for the spaces?
Ok, on dict.leo I searched up another word for cheap and I found that there are 9 words for "being in love" in English but 24 words for being cheap. What does that tell us?
Without spaces, everythingwouldlooklikethis! It’d be linguistic chaos - anarchy in, and end of Times, New Roman empire! Take this last greeting from me: my allencompassinglyshly ...wait a minute!
Holy editor! I get paid per word, and editors get paid to "correct" MY money away!?
Stylistic nuances, my assay: You guys have been filling your pockets with millions and millions, of spaces after commas, oh nooooo spaces after points aswell (practically spaces aswell). I am not even going to mention wording, stanzas and all the other cashcows.
Oh and one thing:
Syntax is a hoax!
I built in some nasty typos, hidden and time costly clothed in satirical fake letters - oh yeah, that is a thing!
I survive on the streets, practically "from" the streets. Writing cheap editor-letters, novellas and other insults to the unknown heroes of meaning. The unsung saviours of rhyme.
Spaces!
Try to see it this way: keeping it short means just using more space-letters.
Let us for once embrace their broken and rejected expressions, their unsung heroic selfsacrificing service to us!
[Respectful space before final edit]
[O k ]
Spacetime!
Even physicists know it‘s about space-time!
Yours kindly
Where’s My Money?
PS: While-we-poets-starve-between-stanzas, Guidelines - bloat in adverbs - get bigger and bigger - just like the boni for rejections.
Let this "guide" you: End-the-500-word-max.-count-for-letters-submitted-by-readers-via-submittable-because-someone-just-maybe-might-find-a-solution-to-hack-the-system-and-submit-way-more-than-500-words-not-because-he-hates-editors-NO-it-is-because-he-is-a-crazy-austrian-exlawyer-that-loves-to-write-in-english---------do-you-want-me-to-stop-?--------------;---------oh-I-can-make-this-easily-the-worst-thematic-miss-ever-to-have-been-submitted--------so--------here-are-my-demands------before-I-let-you-do-your-jobs-again--------I-want-an-unmarked-mint-fresh-issue-of-RITUALS-where-I-got-published-and-THANKYOUandSORRYforBEINGsoCREATIVEinFINDINGwaysTOmakeTHIShappen-which-I-couldnt-afford-to-order-otherwise------;;---AND---a-Helicopter-with-enough-gas------in----1-hour!
Just kidding, I still have like-ok-this-was-my-last-word-so-I-will-press-submit-now-and-read-you-guys-soon-it-was-a-pleasure.
No to wordcollectors!
Commaheists,
„correcting" words from MY paycheck!
Dear Where’s My Money?
You raise many good points, and in such a truly original way (which I appreciate).
The underlying assumption at work here is that there is a pool of money, and that by editing your work the publishers are keeping it for themselves rather than passing it onto you, the person who is doing the actual work. The reality is more complicated than the family tree of the old Norse pantheon.
The only publication I can speak for with any authority is our own, so my answers will reflect the business practices here. Zoetic Press is self-funded, meaning that the publisher pays out of pocket for the website, the Submittable subscription, the contributor payments, the software for layout and production, etc. These costs are offset by the income from magazine purchases. Our average expenditure exceeds our average income by 2500%. This means that we’re not getting fat off the money we’re stealing from our contributors. You’re making far more from this venture than we are (although, Mr. Austrian Lawyer, I would like to point out that you may think you have gotten around the 500 word limit with your last all-hyphen extravaganza, if we were paying for it [which we aren’t], you’d still only get one cent for it).
So, why do we do it? We do it because a world without art isn’t a world we want to live in.
The second question is why magazines pay by the word. First of all, we only pay by the word for prose. We pay a flat fee for poetry and visual art. We do it that way mostly because these are the conventions of the marketplace and make it easier for both buyers and sellers to compare markets. There’s a reason why large-scale barter fell out of favor: if I need eggs but all I have is apple trees, but the person with chickens doesn’t need apples, I’m not getting eggs, am I?
There’s also a reason why we, as editors, get to edit your work and base your payment on the final edited piece. It’s because 1) we’ve been doing this for a long time (I personally have been doing this since 1841) and have a sense of not only what generally constitutes good prose, but what Zoetic Press in particular is looking for and 2) our editors are all volunteers, and to the extent that they have to spend extra time on a piece to edit it, the payment will reflect that. Another reason to keep an eye on how long a piece is and how many pieces are being published is that we do have a print version of the journal, and a longer book costs more to print. We often make less than $3 on each print copy of NonBinary Review, but we offer it because lots of people like a physical book rather than an ebook.
You seem to chafe at the line or character limits placed on work, while submission guidelines go on forever. Once upon a time, nobody had guidelines, but people submitted unreadable twaddle in enormous amounts, in unreadable fonts, in twee colors. Editors instituted rules, but people kept sending in submissions that did nothing but waste editors’ time. At Zoetic Press, all of our editors are volunteers with day jobs - their time is precious, and every submission that doesn’t follow our guidelines (which have now had to be spelled out in exacting detail just so people can’t claim they didn’t know what we’re looking for) takes time away from a submission we might want to publish. Also, nobody is getting paid for the submission guidelines, so it doesn’t matter how long they are.
At the end of the day, the literary landscape is a barren wasteland, especially for those not working for or with a Big 5 publisher. Literature is competing with streaming media, social media, and, frankly, anything else that requires less effort. But that is why we are so very grateful for you. From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you.
Your humble servant,
Horace Greeley
