In case you missed it (and if you follow me, you probably didn’t), the Kickstarter campaign for Fireside Magazine- Year 3 just ended, successfully funded, with a few hours to spare. I’ve known Brian White, who started the whole thing, for a while, and he is one of my favorite online friends. But I don’t have any personal stake in it- none of my work has ever appeared there, though I hope it does, one day. My love and respect for what Brian is doing is, basically, because I’m a writer of fiction.
Allow me to explain. I have a friend who is a blogger, writes press releases, that sort of thing. I was talking to her and she talked about press releases paying a dollar a word.
A dollar. Per word.
I would kick a puppy to get paid a dollar per word.
Obviously, it’s far from realistic for fiction, for a whole lot of perfectly good reasons. Pro rate, according to SFWA, is $0.06 per word, and while a lot of markets pay that, they are highly competitive and many, many more pay less. Now, I’m not complaining, at all- these are just the facts that set up why what Fireside does is awesome.
Fireside pays $0.12.5 per word. Over double the new pro rate. It is great enough that someone is doing it, but even more so that people are rallying behind it, for years now. A friend of mine tweeted, as Fireside was facing another monster climb, that they had gone back to the well too many times. But then, the rally came again and Fireside cleared its goal by $1,000.
Maybe I never make twelve cents a word. Honestly, that’s OK with me. I’d take it over not, ya know, but the reality of it is that someone will, and that is good for the industry, for writers, and- most importantly – for readers. That people care enough to put their money forward to support writers getting paid well, well, that matters.
As with what I am doing with my own campaign, I hope that a few years from now, Fireside will have provided the template for how things are done.
deanfortythree 