Jiro Horikoshi wrote:Mind explaining how writer's digest has
Winterslice wrote:far fewer credentials for making standards than a non-profit professional organisation such as SFWA with a wide membership and which is dedicated to the cause of writers making a fair wage
?
Certainly. Writer's Digest is a periodical aimed at making money off of aspiring writers. They have a vested interest in overstating the case of what writers make, to make it seem like a more appealing field to get into. In reality it's a rough business. I'm one of maybe three or four people I know whose writing is their sole/primary source of income.
Take this article from the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers where they talk about some industry standard rates, such as major game publishers offering advances of no more than $4-6k:
http://iamtw.org/articles/business-part-one-the-deal/
Here's a few more articles about what book publishing actually pays:
http://work.chron.com/average-authors-s ... -7181.html
http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2005/02/07 ... iter-make/ (for books traditionally published by major houses, not independent presses -- those figures are much lower)
Or try a quote from
Ursula Leguin:
"The huge advances that you hear of are very rare. Most fiction writers can’t live by their writing alone. I spent nearly ten years sending out stories before I got one published. Being a writer almost always means having some kind of paying job too... and hanging in there!"
And if anything, SFWA doesn't seem professional at all to me. How is an organization that allows anyone who published three short stories to join their group anything but even remotely professional? The fact that solely sales and not quality is a requirement for joining SFWA forces me to cast doubt on its credibility. Also, it's important to realize that wide membership often times actually leads to a
decrease in professionalism. In any case, I would be hesitant to readily apply the suggested standards of a site focused on very narrow genres on a completely different medium.
Ah, no wonder you've completely missed the point of the SFWA, if you don't understand the entry requirements. For short stories, an SFWA member has to have have stories published in professionally-rated markets, meaning major magazines with thousands of subscribers such as Asimov’s Science Fiction, Clarkesworld Magazine, the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show. I'll be impressed if you get a story published in one of those. Their 'quality requirement' is pretty high.
This is going to be my last message on the topic. I encourage you to keep trying to find those markets paying 15cpw for first-time writers with no published credits, and let me know when you do, 'cause I'll surely be interested.
