average hourly rate for professional writers

average hourly rate for professional writers

The Importance of Paying Professional Writers Fairly

1. Introduction

Creative minds are the backbone of the media, setting trends and making decisions that affect the entire nation. From this standpoint, an article by Jennifer L. Bowie speaks loudly about how crucial it is that society pay its professional writers fairly. At this moment, paying writers an unfair wage is causing an exodus of talent, wherein writers are finding that they cannot support themselves and their families through their trade and are thus forced to leave the field. As their availability dwindles, corporations will turn to unqualified writers who will work for less, paying them to essentially do less because they are accustomed to working in a set time frame. This will cause a crippling blow to the nation’s media. We will be left with writing that is repetitive, bland, and lacking in insight, mirroring the work of the unqualified writers who will produce it. The effects will be far-reaching and detrimental. Low wages for professional writers not only determine the quality of the writing but also the amount of time and effort that one is willing to put into it. A job that pays too little leads to dissatisfaction, and dissatisfied writers will only put in the effort required to get the job done. They will not strive to go above and beyond, and in many cases, the poorly paid work that they produce will reflect their attitudes.

Writers are essential to our society. They provide us with a vast outlet of literature, art, and information. They are the workhorses of the media. We depend on them for our news, TV shows, radio programs, and films. Writers are even responsible for the dialogue on the cereal box. Despite the overwhelming demand for their services, professional writers are often underpaid. Supporting oneself as a writer can be difficult, as there is often no guaranteed work or weekly paycheck. Forcing writers to accept low-paying jobs as the market pushes for lower salaries. This leads to a shortage of qualified writers willing to work for such meager wages. Underpaid writers must often seek to supplement their incomes with other work, which in turn takes time away from the writing that they should be focusing on.

2. Factors Affecting Hourly Rates for Professional Writers

A vast number of writers, who usually write in newspapers, magazines, or simple editors, are usually salaried. They would be given wages on a monthly or yearly basis. Very few of them are paid per article. They are usually deprived of getting the pay they truly deserve because their salary does not commensurate with the article they have written or their article quality. Most of the time, it also does not meet the payment standard when compared to other salaried jobs in the same country if the living. There’s a saying that “A writer with a great flair might not stay as a writer.” It’s true because there is little or no chance for promotion in the writing field. This is when they move on to become freelancers because it pays more than salaried writing and they have the liberty to manage their own time.

Factor 1: Writer’s salary conditions

3. The Benefits of Paying Professional Writers Fairly

On the other hand, it has not been the particular work of professional writers that organizations and authors have been getting for the low rates. In a number of cases, professionals alone rely upon writing to get by. Due to the fact that writing isn’t seen as a labour-intensive work, writers are often faced with low-paying work due to stiff competition, and as such, the field is usually taken up by those who are in transition financially, students and non-English speaking authors. Most of the truly skillful, instinctive and experienced writers often give up and work in another industry. This acts as a major blow to literate culture. Literature, and in that extension culture, does not exist without the written word. The best way to attract writers back to literate culture is to pay them a decent wage. A fair wage provides security, motivation and a true sense of accomplishment. Security in work comes from knowing that time spent on a task will be adequately reimbursed. Due to that writing is not always an exact science and can take a lot of time and energy; motivation comes from feeling valued and properly rewarded for work done. This leads to a sense of accomplishment, taking pride in a piece and being satisfied with one’s task, knowing that with quality writing, comes quality pay. An accomplished writer will continue writing and produce more quality work.

4. The Consequences of Underpaying Professional Writers

A survey conducted by the National Writers Union in 2004 found that fifty percent of writers who make their income solely from writing earn less than $15,000 per year. This trend has continued if not worsened. According to an article by Nathaneal Johnson on the website of The Washington Monthly in 2008, many high quality writers are being out-priced by outsourcing. He claims that lawyers and doctors who have become proficient in English are willing to write for a much lower pay in order to earn money on the side. They often take such writing jobs in order to fuel freelance ambitions in unrelated fields, thus wage dividends can be sufficient. While education level and quality of previous experience generally yield better pay in professional fields, this is not the case with freelance writing.

Sensational writing has become a phenomenon. The New York Times bestseller list used to be the holy grail for aspiring writers, now the standard has spread to blogging, web writing and e-publishing. The idea of hiring high quality professional writers is no longer exclusive to professional publications. Unfortunately, the caliber of writing is frequently below par. This is more often than not a reflection of the low pay most writers receive.

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, paying professional writers fairly is not only very beneficial to the writers themselves, but arguably also to the consumers of the writing. Even though there is considerable evidence and rationales as to why professional writers should be well-rewarded for their work, the disturbingly low pay for much professional writing indicates that the economic situation is far from ideal. There is no easy fix for the complex set of economic conditions that underlie the problem, and moreover individuals and institutions in the highly decentralized field of professional writing will always have diverse aims and constraints influencing their actions. However, public awareness of the issue and its implications could lead to improvement. Despite the discouraging state of affairs that has been described, there are numerous examples that not only is it possible to pay professional writers fairly, but it is also conducive to superior writing of all kinds. For example, good pay has long been the norm for writers of popular fiction published in book-form, and statistically this area of professional writing has produced a disproportionate share of lasting cultural artifacts. This would seem to indicate that pay and quality are related, and so anyone with an interest in the quality of writing whether as reader, editor, or writer themselves, has reason to promote the best possible pay for writing.