So ... What is Your Worth as a Nonfiction Writer?

So ... what are you worth? $1 a word? Twenty cents?

Pretend with me, for a moment.

There is a project that will take this amount of time:

8 hours of research
8 hours of writing
2 hours of editing and polishing
2 hours of administrative work (going to post office, phone calls, etc.)

The total is 20 hours of your time – and 3500 words – about 15 pages of double-spaced manuscript. So what is this project worth? How much are you going to charge/collect for doing this work?

Let’s look at this project two different ways – by the hour, and by the word. Suppose you receive 20 cents a word. That means you get a whopping check of $700. If you were to be paid $1 a word, you would be paid $3500. Quite a range, indeed.

If you accepted the $700 rate, you would be paid a rate of $35 an hour. The $3500 rate is $175 an hour. Most nonfiction writers would be happy with either of these rates, but obviously happier with earning $175 per hour.

Now, what would you agree to do this project for? $500? Now you are being paid at $25 an hour. Still not a bad rate. Until you start to add in the other factors.

First, what is your overhead? Every writer has some overhead, but too few bother to consider it. Some of the overhead items are: telephone, Internet access, postage, computer and equipment expenses, and supplies. If you are using a home office, you might overlook the added expenses you are incurring for electricity, heat, air-conditioning, and other utilities.

Then you need compensated for your marketing time (in my How to Make $50,000 a Year as a Nonfiction Writer course, I suggest that all writers should be marketing at least 20% of their time.) That is one day out of five. One day you cannot earn any money – and something that needs to be added in to your rates.

That means that you need to add 20% on top of your rates to pay for the down time. You need to add a bit more for your overhead. You do that, just to break even.

So why do we have writers on the Internet bidding against one another to do work for less money? There are several freelance “agencies” that do just that – and these are a bad idea for you.

For some reason, many nonfiction writers want an easier way to market their manuscripts and services. It is as if the query letter is too much work. So along comes the websites that offer this easier way to market and find work for nonfiction writers.

There are several, and expect more to pop-up. Elance.com (www.elance.com), freelanceworkexchange.com (www.freelanceworkexchange.com) and Creativemoonlighter.com (www.creativemoonlighter.com) are three of the biggest.

The concept of these websites is simple. Buyers of writing and editorial services simply post their project, and then a nonfiction writer can bid on the job. The writer pays a fee to be listed, and pays another fee when they get the work. That second fee is a percentage of the total fee of the job.

On the surface, it sounds great! A place to find freelance work. A place to bring buyer and seller together, and a place for the freelance writer to earn a respectable income.

But is it?

What happens is that “Writer A” bids $1000 for a project. Along comes “Writer B” and that writer, also wanting the project, bids $950. “Writer C” follows with a bid of $900. Before long, we are at “Writer T” with a bid of $475. Who is winning here? The buyer and the website – not the nonfiction writers -- are the winners.

Suddenly by using a website to find work, the nonfiction writer is reduced to the level of a used car salesman making a deal. And think about how we as a society treat used car sales people. You go to the car lot, you almost dare the sales person to come near you – you make them stand 20 feet away as you decide the terms of the conversation and sale.

Your worth as a writer is determined by you. If you are willing to work for 5 cents a word, then that is your worth. If you are willing to enter into a shark-like feeding frenzy, designed to drive your fees downward, then whatever you end up with is your value as a writer. This type of selling of your services makes little sense.

Sometimes, new ways are not as good as the old. It is far better for you to plan your writing career, quietly and purposely building your credits through query letters, quality writing, and a boat-load of writing credits. Websites that reduce your value as a writer are not the way to build a respectable writing career.

One writer named Barbara, said in a post on a newsgroup about these bid-for-less websites, “Most of the so-called 'freelance employment agencies' on the web end by forcing writers to bid against each other for jobs. The lowest bid usually wins, damn the quality. I can find plenty of jobs paying peanuts on my own, thank you very much, and I am totally opposed to having to bid against fellow freelancers.”

Picture yourself standing in front of an audience – the author of 1000 articles and 8 books. Is there any prestige in that image? Or are you the writer that just agreed to do 20 hours of work for $136, so as to win a bid on a website? Will you have enough money to even attend the presentation of the writer that approaches the craft professionally, and built credits and a career?

Decide now what kind of writer you want to be – with a used car sales mentality – or a professional – and set your rates accordingly. Keep working your markets. Write those query letters – and keep on marketing. Let your competitors bid against each other – while you take a different road to success.