When the economy is bad — and bad it is these days without a lot of quick relief in sight — aspiring authors get exploited. Actually, aspiring authors are exploited when the economy is good, too. There has never been, nor will there ever be a paucity of sleazy agents, publishing houses, vanity presses, teachers, literary managers and advisors or other predators looking to cash in on someone's dream of becoming the next Stephen King or David Mamet. It just gets worse when unemployment is high because you have all these people outta work, looking around desperately for a new and lucrative career.
A good/honest teacher of writing (now sadly deceased) was a gent named Bill Idelson, who also had a nice career as a writer and actor. Idelson used to teach his students that, "In order to break into the business, you have to let someone else exploit you a little." Depending on how big that "little" is, I might argue the point. I would say that any situation where you pay someone else to submit or publish your work, no matter how reasonable the fee may sound, is unacceptable exploitation. So is writing on "spec" on someone else's project. It is Kosher to pay for a good, legit writing teacher or seminar to help you learn your craft and how to market it. That's assuming the fee is reasonable and if you don't know what reasonable is, you need to find out before you write so much as a check.
But anything more than that is…well, I'd use one of those metaphors about volunteering to bend over, grab your ankles and invite someone to service you from behind but I think Rush Limbaugh now has them all copyrighted. And also conceivably you might enjoy the physical version of that whereas paying money to get your work submitted or published will just make you poor and unhappy.
I have occasionally encountered wanna-bes whose attitude is, "Yes, you're probably right but I'm determined to become a successful writer and that's the only opportunity I have." That's brain-dead stupid. Imagine if your goal was to play for the Seattle Mariners…or maybe even to get on a professional baseball team. Imagine that some odorous homeless guy came up to you on the street and said, "Gimme a thousand dollars and I'll introduce you to their talent scout" and you forked over the cash and said, "Well, gee…it was the only offer I had."
Well, paying someone to submit your writing or to publish it or — the big new scam — entering a "contest" is even stupider than that. Because in the one-in-a-zillion cases where it does lead to a real writing gig, the following rule applies: If you come into the business as an exploited amateur, you pretty much stay that way. You become the guy they go to whenever it's like, "We need someone for this project who'll do tons of work on spec and won't complain if we pay him bad money…or never pay him at all." They don't usually say it quite that explicitly but that's what it amounts to.
As you might imagine, this post was inspired by a real-life incident. I get a lot of calls from writers I know who are outta work — some good friends, some not…some I barely know but they've suddenly decided we're bosom buddies. The other day, I got one from a fellow who is desperate and not because he's not working. This guy is working his butt off. The problem is he's not getting paid for all the stuff he's writing.
A self-described manager-publisher-producer had an idea for a new comic book that, he said, would easily become a smash hit in that format, a bigger hit as a line of toys and the biggest hit as a $50 million+ CGI animated feature. My friend thought he was being hired to write the first issue of the comic and would be paid. Nope. The manager-publisher-producer appended a little codicil: "You get paid when I get paid" and there was no deal in place to publish or pay anyone. And then the m-p-p asked my friend to also write up a bible for the potential animated series, a treatment for a potential live-action movie, a set of character descriptions for toy companies to consider, a scenario for an XBox game, etc. My friend invoked the "it's the only opportunity I have at the moment" rationale and did all or most of that for, of course, no money.
Finally, he refused to write another syllable without pay. The m-p-p came back to him and said, "Look…you have a lot of time invested in this project…" Which was true. And what my friend was all too aware of is that he didn't own this project. The manager-publisher-producer-asshole owns this project so my friend can't take all his work elsewhere to try and sell it. The producer guy said, "What we need to get all these investors and studios interested is product. We need to get the comic book published so we have something tangible to show them." My friend agreed that made sense…up until his exploiter suggested that he, the unpaid writer (a) find a brilliant artist who'd also work on such speculative terms and then (b) self-publish the comic. In other words, he was told, "You finance this book with my characters so maybe I can sell a movie."
My friend couldn't have felt like more of a pigeon if you'd tied a little message to his leg and told him to flap his wings and fly somewhere to deliver it.
This is the worst example I've heard in a long time of a writer getting manipulated into a horrible deal because of his desperation 'n' dreams…but the lesser cases end no more happily. This especially applies to vanity presses and "writing contests." Another writer friend I have — a successful one named Lee Goldberg — spends a lot of time on his blog exposing such writer-screwing scams. First rule of professional writing: They pay you, you don't pay them.
I know times are tough. Believe me, I know times are tough. But there's never a good moment to let yourself be exploited by people who think you're so hungry, you'll work for promises…not until MasterCard accepts promises from scumbags as payment.
