paying writers

  • This Is Literary: A Conversation with Taffy Brodesser-Akner

    This Is Literary: A Conversation with Taffy Brodesser-Akner

    Taffy Brodesser-Akner discusses her debut novel, FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE.

  • VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Jaquira Díaz

    VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Jaquira Díaz

    Jaquira Díaz discusses the challenge of writing about family members, her greatest joy as a writer, and her literary role models.

  • Labor of Love

    Writing as art can be what economists call a “non-market” activity. The time we spend writing poems or novels, like the time we spend doing laundry, is usually time not spent earning a dollar, even if we hope to see…

  • Self-Publishing Vs. Traditional Publishing

    Who hasn’t felt that awkward moment between laughing and crying when the question, “do writers make money?” pops up? Unlike movie-makers and musicians, exact figures for authors’ earnings have always been notoriously difficult to retrieve. However, with the advent of Amazon’s…

  • Net Worth

    …we’re all still struggling to ascribe value to a digital product. Keeping a literary magazine alive in 2016 may seem impossible, but there are still those out there who are making it work. The Billfold asked the team behind Midnight…

  • Oxford Lit Fest Will Consider Paying Authors

    Last week, Philip Pullman pulled out of the Oxford Literary Festival because the event does not pay authors. Now, Oxford, at least, is saying that it will consider paying all speakers for its 2017 event. This will be a challenge,…

  • Unique Pageviews Don’t Pay Your Web Hosting Bill

    Wil Wheaton created quite a fuss last month with an essay about Huffington Post’s request to republish an essay from his blog sans payment. When we called attention to a Salon article discussing paid versus unpaid creative work, Gawker had a…

  • Computers Replacing Writers

    There are those companies that don’t pay their writers to produce content in order to save money, and then there is this. Narrative Science software produces content. It’s being used by twenty companies in order to avoid taking on more…