As a ‘beginner’ writer, I understand that I need to do my share of unpaid writing gigs before I can start getting paid, but I must admit it seems a little unfair to pay writers of one medium and not another. It sends out a message that blogging isn’t considered real work.

A lot of people use blogs as significant source of media consumption, and hopefully, as we become more aware that we’re doing this, blogging will become a more legitimate (and better paid) medium to publish in.

I can’t say I’m surprised. All the usual suspects seem to have realised the importance blogs and websites play in their profiles, and are now lining up writers to provide regular free content that they wouldn’t publish in print. It’s fascinating really. It’s almost as if the mindset is ‘well, there’s no way in hell we’d publish this on paper, but I guess its fine for the blog. Chalk another one up’.
Everyone seems to be lining up willing writers to provide as much content as they can, as often as they can. (Perhaps there’s some grand online advertising plan down the track?) The reality is, even if writers selectively demanded payment for blog posts, or online newspapers, there are armies of writers gagging to provide content for free (look at the influx of ‘guest posts’ to blogs of late. Who’s getting paid here?
The whole game seems to be either work unpaid, or work for advertising, which is almost as exciting as working unpaid. It’ll be interesting to see how Electric Literature in Brooklyn goes with their heavy digital push. It looks amazing, paying $1,000 a story, very ambitious, and yet a year from now, will it be like everyone else and just fall by the sidelines unless some big fat government grant comes to the rescue year on year? I’m praying they at least outlast my subscription.
How would a plumber feel if you called him up, told him your toilet was busted, and said, hey, if you come and fix it, you can use it as a ‘profile building exercise’, great exposure! You could even stick it on your CV…How’s that for payment?
People vote with their wallets. (Look at launches for literature journals in Melbourne. Everyone goes, nobody buys). If I was honest about it, I wouldn’t read half the shit I read on the internet if I had to pay for it. It’s all very depressing indeed.
Fingers crossed someone nuts all this shit out very quickly and comes up with a working system, otherwise we are all going to be working at Starbucks trying to flog e-books on iTunes.

Such a struggle. For young writers – you gotta be present, you gotta make yourself known amongst all the noise – but then how do you progress if even large organisations cannot afford to pay you? And while you’re doing all that writing for free, under somebody else’s guidelines, what is happening to the creative self? Are you growing as a writer? If you are – maybe it’s worth it. If you’re just under a lot of stress and it’s difficult, and you’re not enjoying it, let alone getting anywhere, is it really worth it? I think people have to ask themselves these questions. Young writers should only do this if they want to, not because they think they ‘should’.

Both you and I, Lisa, risk being hypocritical in these kinds of discussions because we have asked writers if they would like to give us content for free. We are not the ABC, but do writers feel the same kind of conflict writing for us? I know I’ve finally gotten to a stage where (as a writer) I’ll be very selective about writing something for free, and won’t do it often. But two years ago I wrote a lot for free – and it did work to get up my list of publications and get me ‘known’.

Where the conflict lies, as you and Elena pointed out – is that one medium (radio) is being legitimised, whereas another (blogging) is not. In a very public way. I understand about organisational budgets and things like that, but like the SLV, it would have been good if they found a way to monetise it before going ahead with it!

And as Genevieve said on Twitter – the radio show is so good, more transcripts from the shows would have sufficed.

Nonetheless – I’ll be reading it, and I know some of my young writer friends will go for the job (and I’ll support them). I just hope they consider it at length in relation to their writing/criticism career, whether it’s worth it, all those questions above…

Side note: Electric Literature is fantastic, and I paid for it. Brad – love the plumber analogy, too.

Does this mean I can invoice you for my guest post?!

In all seriousness, I think the lack of pay for online writing (‘blogging’) is related to the general confusion and ‘catching up’ companies and businesses in publishing face with the advent of the e-age. They’re still figuring out how to make money off it, and until they do they’re taking advantage of those people willing to write for free. Sure, some people would write for free anyway because there are other kick-backs, but they too might get to the point where they ask, “What’s in it for me?”

And THAT is the bottom line, isn’t it, after all is said and done.

Hi Lisa, interesting article. As an emerging writer I’ve had my own personal blog for 6 months now but when Overland asked me if I wanted to blog for them I was more than happy to. The way I look at it is that it is SO hard to get ANYTHING published in print these days and any kind of exposure will benefit my profile. It’s sort of like marketing. If I posted an article on my blog 20 people might read it. If I posted in Overland 300 might. I do limit how much time I spend on blogging for Overland and I have to admit that if I was getting paid I would probably blog more, but that’s just the reality of the situation. I hope to obtain a blogging position one day where I do get paid. This industry is all about being patient and I’ve learned that the hard way.

Surprised that the blogging positions are unpaid? I’m surprised you’re surprised! With no $ in, how can there be $ out?

This is the new standard model of commercial online media, eg The Punch, etc. Get paid in profile, in broadening your audience, if you believe that is worthwhile.

When will people realise that there is no business model for paid online media creation? Do it for the love or not at all.

Brad, who is going to sort it out? Sitting around waiting for it to happen is not going to achieve anything.

I really agree with you that it’s because blogging isn’t seen as legitimate writing. In some sense, I agree with the notion comparing my work on my blog to say, my fiction.

I write a post, perhaps skim over it twice at most and it usually takes half an hour of work.

My short story that I subbed to Voiceworks? Months.

Not that I’m saying bloggers shouldn’t get paid, but just a theory on what isn’t seen as ‘real.’

I disagree with the ‘legitimate’ part. Being immortilised in print had prestige because it was rare.

Print is expensive. Interwebs is cheap, and has encouraged a quantity of content to be created that would not otherwise exist.

We never paid for content. We paid for paper and plastic with content on it, and to have this distributed to us in the physical world.

Now we receive our content through the aether for free. It has no physical form.

You can’t work on finding a solution to the problem until you correctly define the problem:

Q: how to get people to pay for online content?

A: ???

I don’t think this is so much about online writing being taken less seriously or having less quality control. For example, The Age now doesn’t pay for uncommissioned op-eds. And I’ll put just as much time and effort into researching, writing and editing for my various blogs or for The Enthusiast as I do for all my other freelance work.

Rather, the first thing I thought was that Express Media’s involvement turns this into an exercise in ‘giving emerging writers a go’, which is a strategy of exploiting inexperienced workers that is by no means limited to blogging.

I also disagree with Fitzroyalty’s claim that there is no business model in paid online media. There’s the Gawker Media model of paying writers in proportion to the traffic their work gets, and the Crikey/New Matilda “$100 a pop” model. But the key thing, I think, is the attitude of the media proprietor: recognising and valuing authors as the engines of the site content.

At The Enthusiast, we are keenly aware of not wanting to exploit writers we can’t afford to pay, so we have a very small stable of contributors. We are working hard on a new advertising strategy for the site but until that bears fruit, we are willing to accept a temporary situation of having fewer stories and doing most of the unpaid work ourselves.

We’ve done too much writing for free to feel okay with making other people do the same.

Been re-reading this debate as I am considering applying to blog with The Book Show.

I really do wish it was a paying gig, especially since they obviously are able to compared to small organisations.

But I feel like I’d do it anyway, even though as a socialist, I would usually refuse to ever do unpaid work on principle, but do this because I see it as ‘fun’ compared to other work, which I think is something organisations consider, that people will do it for free more than other industries.

In a sense, they would pay if less people did it for free and I think they take advantage of that.

I’ve read Ryan’s post and might leave a comment. I agree that those debates are separate.

I think I will still apply because I don’t think me not doing so will change much, and will more likely just mean I’ll miss out.

I think you should apply with no ill feelings. It would be good fun, and exposure doesn’t hurt.

It’s just a shame there aren’t more paid gigs around (that’s my biggest frustration with this kind of thing). I mean, if there’s a market for pet psychologists, there’s a market for people paying for good writing digitally.
I think some blogs / websites have better content than some of the books I’ve read. To say they are less worthwhile is a bit narrow – although there’s plenty of crap out there. The McSweeney’s internet news thing is great, I love reading their little blog / stories. It made me buy their iphone app. Same with Opium Magazine. I liked the content, so I paid them money so I can keep reading it.

Here’s an idea, tell the book show to buy you a subscription to some literature journal as payment. It’ll be a tax deduction on their part anyway – plus it would support something you like to read and keep some shoe-string lit journal editor running for another 3 months.

[...] I’ve been reading Lisa Dempster’s recent post questioning the legitimacy of blogging, which has brought what I think is an important debate to the forefront about writing and the M [...]

[...] Blog’ with the makers of Voiceworks, Express Media, there has been a flurry of discussion after Lisa Dempster raised the issue that the project, with significant funding, will not be paying the bloggers that [...]

As someone who has moved out of the business world and into writing, I feel more writers need to take Glenn Murray’s approach (to copywriting) and say NO more often: http://ow.ly/YOcs. I know this won’t happen – I do free stuff too from time to time – but it would help a lot in the long term if we didn’t. Certainly we should be saying no to the sort of request I saw the other day for “5 x 500 word articles at $1 each” – each ARTICLE that is.

Having said that, it would also help if those ostensibly supporting the writing industry were willing to pay their writers – even a token amount would help.

By the way, this discussion is as relevant to writing for print as it is to online writing, isn’t it.

I don’t know of many newspapers or magazines paying anything within coo-ee of the MEAA recommended rates, and there are plenty not paying at all – or am I missing something?

Fuck the Bookshow.