While it is true that all the bigger, well-respected SFF markets pay, there are many smaller ones that do not, and of those that do pay, there are many that offer only a token payment.
I ran a search just now on The Submission Grinder. I found a total of 178 markets for a SFF story. Of that 178, 90 were paying markets, leaving 88 non-paying. Of the 90 paying markets, 47 pay 1c (USD) per word or more, leaving 43 that pay less than 1c per word. Only 15 pay the current SFWA minimum rate of 8c per word.
Yeah it’s next to impossible to make a living as a writer in contemporary times. That’s largely a thing of the past, when art was still valued as a serious form of depth and entertainment. That’s all fallen by the wayside due to social media, YouTube, TikTok, etc. Fewer people read in general, and those who do have a harsh attention economy to deal with.
It definitely feels like being a professional author is a fool’s errand. The supply of people trying to “make it” far, far outstrips the demand of readers. There’s just such a glut of content, in every medium. :/
This puts succinctly some things I've been wondering about lately. I've spent years looking into and submitting to both sides of the aisle, I suppose, and this answers a lot of questions about what I was seeing. Great article!
Back in the nineties Glimmer Train paid $1,000 per story, and they loved publishing unknown writers. They didn’t care what your name was or who you knew or where you went to school. It was just about the stories. They continued to pay well until their closing. Playboy paid 5k per story for literary fiction. And for a short time around 2015 CNet was publishing literary fiction for a feature called Technically Literate for 3k per story. Alas, those days are gone. There are far more places to publish, but those big paychecks are exceedingly rare.
I wonder where Substack now sits in this, with some fiction writers seemingly doing well from the subscription model. I'm not sure how many there are or what the income is, though I note that Elle Griffin did post a bit about earners across Substack and Patreon.
Great article as always.
While it is true that all the bigger, well-respected SFF markets pay, there are many smaller ones that do not, and of those that do pay, there are many that offer only a token payment.
I ran a search just now on The Submission Grinder. I found a total of 178 markets for a SFF story. Of that 178, 90 were paying markets, leaving 88 non-paying. Of the 90 paying markets, 47 pay 1c (USD) per word or more, leaving 43 that pay less than 1c per word. Only 15 pay the current SFWA minimum rate of 8c per word.
Yeah it’s next to impossible to make a living as a writer in contemporary times. That’s largely a thing of the past, when art was still valued as a serious form of depth and entertainment. That’s all fallen by the wayside due to social media, YouTube, TikTok, etc. Fewer people read in general, and those who do have a harsh attention economy to deal with.
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
It definitely feels like being a professional author is a fool’s errand. The supply of people trying to “make it” far, far outstrips the demand of readers. There’s just such a glut of content, in every medium. :/
This puts succinctly some things I've been wondering about lately. I've spent years looking into and submitting to both sides of the aisle, I suppose, and this answers a lot of questions about what I was seeing. Great article!
Back in the nineties Glimmer Train paid $1,000 per story, and they loved publishing unknown writers. They didn’t care what your name was or who you knew or where you went to school. It was just about the stories. They continued to pay well until their closing. Playboy paid 5k per story for literary fiction. And for a short time around 2015 CNet was publishing literary fiction for a feature called Technically Literate for 3k per story. Alas, those days are gone. There are far more places to publish, but those big paychecks are exceedingly rare.
Great read. Thought-provoking.
I wonder where Substack now sits in this, with some fiction writers seemingly doing well from the subscription model. I'm not sure how many there are or what the income is, though I note that Elle Griffin did post a bit about earners across Substack and Patreon.