A few days ago, I got the news that a women’s magazine in Singapore that I have been working for as a freelance proofreader will be discontinued; December 2013 will be its swan song issue. I guess it’s just the way of things – hard copy monthlies are going the way of the dodo. I’m also sad cos it means I have lost a source of income. <\/p>\n
I think the only way for a magazine to survive is to go online, have an international readership, and have new content every other hour. Hard copy monthly magazines aren’t timely enough anymore. Even news a few days old is considered stale. A magazine that targets Singapore female readers who are well read is fighting for a really tiny slice of the readership pie. <\/p>\n
I’m not even sure if value is attached to good writing anymore. So many articles I read these days, even those from reputable websites, contain grammatical and spelling mistakes. It feels as if no one has proofread the article; it’s only about churning out new content. <\/p>\n
Recently, a friend messaged me and asked if I could share my freelance writing contacts cos she is thinking of going into food and hospitality writing. <\/p>\n
I hate to burst her bubble but even I’m now looking for extra gigs to supplement my meagre income. And the reality is that writing about fun stuff like food, travel and hospitality doesn’t pay. I mean why would anyone pay you the same amount to write about fun stuff compared to the boring stuff like finance? Then no one else will write about the latter, right? <\/p>\n
The several times I wrote freelance for some articles about food, travel (no, I didn’t get to travel, it was just written based on research), and spas, the pay was miserable. Factor in the time spent on the legwork, calling people to arrange appointments and photo shoots, transport costs that can’t be claimed, time spent writing and rewriting, and the assignment turns out to be more of a loss-making venture or one that allows you to break even at best. And if you are lucky you might turn in a measly “profit”. Often, publications pay peanuts but expect a lot. Some are also lousy pay masters because they don’t pay on time or might decide to spike (ie not to publish) your submitted article and then not pay you for the work done. FYI, they are obliged to pay a spike fee. <\/p>\n
For the fun stuff it’s really a case where you get paid in kind. Sure, you might get to try the most decadent food on the house, get treated like royalty by the PR staff, stay in the swankiest hotels, luxuriant in indulgent spas etc, but at the end of the day you don’t see the money. It’s fun especially when you are in your 20s straight out of university. But after a while when you find that you have little money and savings, suddenly it doesn’t seem so fun anymore. <\/p>\n
But that is the reality for most writers. Writers in general just don’t get paid well. Exacerbating that fact is that people are not used to paying for content online, which is the medium in which everyone is heading to these days for their media consumption. If news websites with high quality content like the New York Times is struggling, what hope is there for smaller publications? It’s a vicious cycle: if people aren’t willing to pay for content, writers will never be paid well. It’s a struggling artist kind of existence.<\/p>\n
You remain in writing (or something related to it) either because you really love it or you’re stuck in it because you have no other marketable skills. I fall in the latter category and have concluded that writing is best left as a hobby. <\/p>\n
Bottom line: If you want to make money, crunch numbers, not words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few days ago, I got the news that a women’s magazine in Singapore that I have been working for as a freelance proofreader will be discontinued; December 2013 will be its swan song issue. I guess it’s just the … Continue reading