Negotiating Your Own Rate: Magazines
Even with your first magazine sale there is still some room for negotiation. There are basically three separate situations here.
Speculation: When you submit an article “on speculation,” this means the editor is willing to look but not necessarily buy. If he or she likes the article they offer you a standard fee. You can accept this, or you can counter that the article is worth a little more, and state exactly what you want.
I have been successful at this most of the time. A few times, however, I have lost my editor over this when I have inquired about payment. In one case, a trade journal paid $250 for something I had worked hard to research. When I asked for more, the editor blew up and said he’d decide what to pay. When I run into this attitude, I take that magazine off the list because I know, in the long run I’ll never make any money working for them.
Assignment: After you have sold a few articles to a magazine you should stop doing anything on speculation, and start asking for an assignment. For assignments, all rates should be negotiated in advance. I make it a point to ask for either twenty percent above my last fee for that magazine or for about twenty percent above the rate stated in Writer’s Market.
Price the Query: Since I frequently write articles for magazines I have never worked for before, I always state the price I want at the bottom of the query. Usually I set the price from twenty to thirty percent above the rates the magazine says they pay. Or if I have been working for similar magazines and have already established a rate, I ask for that rate, even if the magazine says it pays less.
Does this work? Of course it does. Most smaller magazines pay the price I ask. Actually I don’t use this system when working for major magazines. I simply negotiate the fee in advance. But for smaller publications this works.
This article compliments of: The Professional Authors Newsletter
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