“Short on Cash? The 10 Bills You MUST PAY NOW — and Three You Can Let Slide”
I’m sure you’ve read some variant of the above article in the last couple of months. In this economy, a lot of folks are strapped for cash, so prioritizing bills makes sense if you can’t pay them all all at once. People figure: What’s the worst that can happen if you don’t pay the mortgage? You get booted out of your house; that’s very bad. What’s the worst that happens if you miss a payment on the sofa set? The repo people show up a couple of months down the road; that’s not as bad. Keep the house, risk the couch. Kind of a no brainer, right?
Well, guess what, fellow freelancers: The publishing companies we write for are struggling, too, and if they can’t pay all their bills all at once, they have a similar hierarchy. Turn off the electricity or piss off a freelancer? It’s a no brainer for them, too — and guess who’s sitting right at the bottom of the list? That’s right: We are.
The absolute worst worst worst worst worst part of freelancing is dunning for payment. It is worse than rejections, worse than not having your e-mails read or responded to, worse than not ever finding your books in the stores, worse than coming up with the perfect query to your dream market only to learn that they assigned the exact same idea last week to someone else, worse than giving a book signing where no one shows up, worse than an Amazon rank of 1,254,687, worse than the editor who came to your house and invited you for dinner suddenly not answering any of your e-mails — ever.
I am terrible at the business stuff. If I had wanted to be a business person, I’d have gotten an MBA and I’d have probably made a heck of a lot more money (until lay offs, that is). I’m sick of reading terrible contracts, and sicker at having to negotiate them, sick of having to say, “No, I won’t write this time-sensitive article to your exact specifications, then wait to be paid for 6 months until you get around to using it” or “No, I will not sell you all rights to a story it cost me $2000 to research for $500.” I’m sick of turning articles in on time only to face the yawning silence of an empty e-mail box. But most of all, I’m sick of dunning. My job is to turn in the assigned article on time. The publisher’s job is to pay for it. End of argument… Or it should be.
So how to shake lose the cash? By employing a three-pronged strategy of
- Avoiding problem payers in the first place
- Being proactively defensive with the gigs you take on
- Going after what you’re owed.
This is a long article, so I’m dividing it into sections: Next up: Avoiding Problem Payers.
