Do I Continue To Write For These Folks? Ask Anne, The Pro Writer

(www.thegoldenpencil.com)

Hi Anne,
I have a question that I didn’t specifically see addressed on your Web site and was hoping you could give me some advice.

I’m a stay-at-home mom and freelance writer. I have several clients, including a regional magazine I’ve written five stories for thus far.

The magazine contracted to pay me $100 per article and payment was to be received after the magazine hit the streets. I started writing for the magazine in the summer and have received payment the first two articles without incident. The company now owes me $300 for three articles I wrote for the October/November edition that came out last week.

I normally wouldn’t worry about the payment being late, but I received an email from the editor today saying that the magazine was having financial problems and they would need to lower their payments to writers. She said this would take effect for the December/January edition and I have two articles due Saturday for that magazine.

I asked her about October payments since I hadn’t received mine and she said she didn’t know and would have to ask the publisher. She also told me they were trying to figure out how to pay for those assignments and that is when they decided to lower prices for future work.

I’m really questioning whether I should continue to work on these two articles that are due Oct. 11 if I’m not sure I’ll get paid for work I’ve already done. She at first told me the check was in the mail and now she’s saying she doesn’t know what has happened with the checks. She also told me that despite my signing a contract to get paid $100 for the next two articles due Saturday they will only actually pay me $90 each.

What would you suggest I do? Any advice you give me would be helpful.

Thanks,

SF

Dear SF,

I hate this sort of thing at least as much as you do. Unfortunately we may be seeing more pay issues with the current economic confusion.

First of all, I always worry about late payments because the often signal financial problems. If you haven’t sent an invoice showing a late charge, by all means do so right away. It should go to their accounting department or bookkeeper. I suspect you may have real trouble collecting. Hopefully I’m wrong.

Next, I would call the editor back and tell her two things:

• You won’t submit anything else, even the articles you’ve contracted for until they get current on their payments. They’ve already breached their contract with you and you’ll never lose by protecting yourself in a professional way.
• That reducing your pay to $90 is unacceptable. (The truth is that saving $10 to you and even every other author in the magazine isn’t going to save the publication.)

I’d call because you don’t want to alienate this editor; my guess is she will soon be with another publication. So keep it friendly. Let her know you understand it isn’t her fault, which it isn’t, unless she’s an owner.

Finally, if you think there is some real advantage to you to do the two articles for $90, go ahead. By advantage I mean keeping the editor happy for future stuff there or elsewhere, or prestige, etc. But if you do so, know they may never appear or if they do, you probably won’t get paid.

Do you have a question about freelance writing? Ask Anne, The Writing Pro – that’s me ;) Ask in the comments or send an email and put Q&A in the subject line so I can sort it out from spam and I’ll do my best. Meanwhile, you’ll find some Q&A’s here:

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