Writing Pro Bono

Content Does Not Want to Be Free

Today’s episode is brought to you by that guy who went viral last month because he wanted a professional editor to edit his entire manuscript for him and take care of all the self-publishing details for him, for free, in exchange for exposure.

I got to thinking about this after reading Katherine Crighton’s recent article, How to Sell Your Fiction. Listen, they would know; they sell fiction all the time. One of the things they talked about in this article (go read it) is identifying what you want to get out of publication: Is it money? Is it a publishing credit? Is it readers?

Many writers starting out want to put a toe in the water and see if people want to read their work before they begin submitting to paying venues and hanging a shingle out as a professional writer. Likewise, a person who wants to break into the editing industry as a freelancer might see a need to get some editing credits under their belt before charging a professional rate for their services. This is normal and sometimes (regrettably) it’s even necessary. But when you’re putting yourself and your work out there for free, how can you make sure you’re not being taken advantage of? How can you screen out the freeloaders trying to grab your content to find a good opportunity.

Exposure is a neat word because it almost always means something you don’t want. Off the top of my head, here are some of the many things you don’t want exposure to:

• Omicron variant

• Subzero temperatures

• Harvey Weinstein

That’s why I think it’s so funny right on its face when someone wants me to do something for them in exchange for no pay but in exchange for exposure. The first thing I want to know is, exactly what exposure am I getting. “Everyone’s going to read this!” I need you to define “everyone.” These folks always seem to have a detailed list of what they want you to do for them, but they never have the details nailed down regarding what the exposure will do for you.

For instance:

• “People will read your writing!” How many people? How many hits does your site get per month? How many hits does the average story get in its lifetime? How many paying readers do you have?

• “We’ll feature you heavily on our social accounts!” How many followers do you have? When you have run promotions like this, what’s the clickthrough rate for your website or Linktree?

• “This will get seen by all the right industry people!” Who are these right people? What’s the circulation of your industry rag? What kind of uptake have previous contributors seen?

The song remains the same: You have some kind of creative or practical skill like writing, editing, making art, making music, programming, and so on. Someone wants your help with their project in the form of your work product, but they don’t want to pay you for it. Their pitch is that if you contribute to their project with your skill, they will reward you with exposure by crediting you prominently so all of the eyes they get on their product will find out about your contribution and make rain for you. Do this one job now for free and it will return many paying jobs in the future.

I think many of us see that, spelled out in black and white, and know we would not be persuaded to do this thing. We’re too savvy for this and we know our worth. The pitch above is one that I’ve been hit with (for writing and for editing) and I know my visual arts friends, tech development friends, and music producing friends get hit with it all the time. If you know how to make something, someone will suggest you make it for them for free and they’ll show it off on their Insta and you’ll get tons of orders. 

This falls under the same broad heading as, “I’m the idea guy and you’re the do all the work guy.”

However, when it comes to editing and especially writing, there are a lot of “write for us in exchange for exposure” situations that I come across all the time that writers willfully participate in perhaps without doing the diligence required to make sure they know what they’re getting into. Today I want to talk about some of these situations, when you might write (or give your writing away) in exchange for exposure, and how to evaluate them critically to make sure you know what you’re in for.

The first thing to know is, there’s nothing wrong with making your own writing available directly to readers in the form of a blog, low-cost Patreon, self-published e-book that retails for free, or something like that. That’s not the type of working-for-free that I’m talking about. When you publish your own writing and make it available free of charge, you’re doing that for you. It’s when someone else requests your writing and will receive the benefit of it but your return comes in the form of exposure that you have to watch out.

Works for Hire

I talked a bit about works for hire in a previous article about copyright. In short, when you create a piece of writing (a manuscript, poem, play, screenplay, etc) you naturally own the copyright to that; you do not have to register the copyright or fill out a form to own that copyright. You just have it. The exception to this is when you create a piece of writing as a work for hire: A work for hire is copyrighted to the person who commissioned it. This is true whether money was exchanged for the work or not.

Writing (or any other copyrightable creation) is considered a work for hire when:

1. It is created by an employee as part of the scope of their job; or

2. A work is “specially ordered or commissioned for use” if both parties agree in writing that the work is being made for hire.

The first caveat I am presenting today is the work for hire caveat: If someone wants to commission writing from you, for instance, to be part of their product or compilation or collective work, and you agree to create this writing as a work for hire, they and not you will own the copyright to the writing. This is different from writing something and granting a license for a literary journal or book publisher to publish it, in which case you retain copyright of the work but you grant limited license to the publisher to reproduce and distribute it. If you write something as a work for hire, you do not own that writing.

Sometimes anthologies and journals will put out “calls for papers”: For instance “Hey, we’re doing an issue on chandeliers. Do you have a story about a chandelier? Send it in for consideration.” Submitting a paper or story in response to a call for papers is not the same as being commissioned to create a work for hire, but if you’re not familiar with the industry and how it works this can be a tricky difference.

Importantly, when you create a work for hire the copyright defaults to the person who commissioned it (whether they are paying money for it or not) and if you want to retain the copyright for yourself then that provision must be part of the written agreement. Also important: When writing is made as a work for hire, there is no requirement that the commissioner of the work acknowledge you as the author at all (unless you stipulate so in your contract). That’s how people are able to use ghostwriters but then put their own name on the book as the author—the ghostwriter created the manuscript as a work for hire. The person who hired them owns that writing. If they want to call themself the author, they can.

In short: If you choose to create writing for someone else’s project, make sure you protect yourself. Insist on a written agreement that spells out who will get what rights to the finished product and who will own the copyright.

Contests and Vanity Publications

I’m lumping these two items under one heading because they operate in similar ways. Remember the call for papers I mentioned above? Let’s revisit it.

• A writing contest is opening to receive entries. There’s no entry fee. The reward for winning is a contract with the publisher or publication in their online journal. 

• A new volume of an ongoing short fiction anthology is opening for submissions. It costs nothing to submit and the best stories will be selected for publication in the anthology, which will be available as an e-book and print book.

They’re not charging you anything to submit your work, so how could this be bad for you? What’s the catch?

Writing contests (and I’m sure this is equally or more true of contests in other creative arts) can be even more predatory than your cousin’s friend’s girlfriend who wants you to help her with the script for her TikTok reality show. There are many reputable contests out there, and reputable journals and anthologies, that do not award cash to winners. That said, it’s awfully hard to distinguish them from those contests, journals, and anthologies that are actually rewarding winners with . . . the opportunity to make a purchase. And, listen: Everybody wins.

The way these products work is they solicit entries far and wide. It’s free to enter—I’m not even touching the subject of entry fees today but sometimes they have entry fees—and every submission is a winner. Every submission is selected for publication. You’ll get an email after a while letting you know that your piece was selected for inclusion in Volume 436 of World’s Best Chandelier Stories And Other Light Sources—and how to buy your copies. The idea was you’d win exposure to readers of the anthology if you won, but it turns out everybody won and the readership of the anthology is you.

When a book publishing contract is on the line, you may find that the terms of the contract are unfavorable or downright ridiculous when you “win.” For instance, you may find yourself offered a contract to publish your book as long as you defray the costs of production out of your own pocket. Or you may find the contract stipulates that you must purchase a certain amount of copies of the book as part of the deal—and whatever number of copies that is, believe me, that is the total they’re going to print.

These contests may also try to sell you other items related to your big win (trophies, plaques, certificates) or they may sell ancillary services like editing. An “agent” or “editor” might reach out to you to let you know that they saw your story in the anthology (or on the website of winning stories) and they think you have something really special, and then offer a fee-based contract or representation. 

In short: Predatory contests, journals, and anthology projects are out there. Their purpose is to find writers hopeful to get their work out in front of an audience and then squeeze money out of them on the backend. Don’t jump on a solicitation to submit your work without first verifying that the solicitor is a legitimate publication.

All of publishing is notoriously hard to break into. It’s hard to start a paid writing career (especially your own writing as opposed to, say, technical writing). It’s hard to start a paid editing career. Opportunities may come your way to write or edit so you can build up your portfolio of published works or happy clients so you can put them on your resume or in your agent query. 

Make sure you evaluate the sources of these opportunities carefully so you know for sure that you’ll be the one getting the exposure (and not the person who commissioned your work) and that the audience whose exposure you’re counting on receiving is not made up of you, your friends and family, and your fellow contestants or contributors.

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