$20K (or a possible 120K) for your soul?

[Mouseferatu]

Back to freelancers. Mike is right. It is near impossible to get on time stuff from freelancers.

E-mail me. We'll talk.

 

[Nightfall]

Well don't worry Undying One, I don't go with the whole drama issuse any way. Starving artists are like some gamers I know. They stand around screaming "Hey I'm the baddest man on the planet"...just before a couple dozen Death Knights appears.

Btw, Mike that just show they like your work...or need you to sign away your soul a little more.

 

[JESawyer]

Second, never submit anything that you'll be scared to have someone reinterpret. RPGs are a genre where everything is written in sand.

Interesting choice of words.

 

[Krug]

I dont say this to brag becasue frankly who would admit being an attorney, perhaps the most reviled profession after insurance salesman...

and telemarketers.

 

[Pramas]

(As an aside, the big barrier isn't necessarily the pay rate. You can probably freelance on the side for a year or two, do good work, up your rate to 4 cents, then work your ass off lining up work. You'd be shocked at how rare it is for a writer to turn in readable, coherent manuscripts on time. I never knew this was a big deal until I'd been doing it for over a year. The problem is that companies have this thing about waiting for freakin' ever to pay their freelancers. I still haven't been paid for books that were published 4 months ago. The key is finding good companies that treat you like a contractor, not like some idiot who's just happy to see his name on a book.)

One of the first things you learn as a freelancer is what "pay on publication" really means. Typically, contracts offer you payment within a month of a book's release, which sounds pretty reasonable. However, the game industry is notorious for shifting release dates, product cancellations, and everything in between. I have been paid for some jobs 18 months after completing them, I have had entire jobs vanish into a black hole and never reappear, I have had my work published and then had publishers try to pay me a "kill fee" instead of the agreed upon payment. Being a freelancer in the game biz is surely a learning experience.

With Green Ronin, I always try to keep my experiences in mind. From the beginning, I was determined to treat my freelancers well, to offer them a fair rate, to give them proper credit, and to pay them promptly. In short, I try to treat my freelancers the way I would have liked to have been treated when I was a freelancer. If you treat people well, they'll do better work for you. That way, everybody wins.

 

[Kai Lord]

Mouseferatu: My only mission is to get in the publishing industry. And getting second with 20K doesn't do it. Agreed?

Lady Dragon: (sarcasm) Yup, and I can get a million bucks for staying on an island with some ridiculous schmoes and winning some crazed immunity challenges! Eight times what WoTC can offer.(/sarcasm)

Kai Lord: The parentheses are just for sarcasm. With a couple of exceptions, like the ones you mentioned, the rest have one major hit with the rest almost forgettable except for the fanatic. Will I be the next Spielberg or Shakespeare or Cameron? If I say yes, I have worse than illusions of grandeur.

You're missing the point. Roland Emmerich directed Independence Day, Stargate, and Universal Soldier. Sure they all sucked, but HE loved them all. So if you don't think you can be the next Shakespeare (but hell why not?) at least you can be another RE.

 

[Monte At Home]

In short, I try to treat my freelancers the way I would have liked to have been treated when I was a freelancer.

I feel, and attempt to act, the same way. Every publisher should be an ex-freelancer. Maybe freelancers would be treated better in this industry, then.

Oh, and I just have to say (because the original statement made me laugh out loud), that as someone who's published novels, short stories, and 14 years' worth of game products and articles (not to mention various types of writing from ad copy to nonfiction), has been taught by instructors like Gene Wolf, Octavia Butler, Greg Bear (and others), has worked as a professional editor, and has run a design studio, I figure I know about 5% of what there is to know about writing.

Maybe together, DragonDroid, the two of us know it all.

 

[TalonComics]

Monte, are there publishers who aren't ex-freelancers at this point? We all had to start somewhere right?

To me what is the weirdest thing about the gaming "industry" is strange family that has emerged from 20 plus years of gaming material. Writers who were editors, who then start their own company, who then disappeared to re-emerge 10 years later as a freelance writer/designer for another person who did the exact same thing they did. It's almost like the comicbook industry except wackier.

Let's hope it always stays this way.

~Derek

 

[Pramas]

are there publishers who aren't ex-freelancers at this point? We all had to start somewhere right?

Yes, there are plenty, particularly amongst d20 companies (many of whom had no game industry experience of any kind before getting into the biz).

 

[Fiery James]

I'm one!

Yes, there are plenty, particularly amongst d20 companies (many of whom had no game industry experience of any kind before getting into the biz).

I'd like to think that FDP is an example of the "good" version of this. There are "bad" versions as well, I'm sure.

Interestingly enough (well, maybe only to me), our first freelancer ever was Mike Mearls. Second was Kieran Yanner (now working for Sword & Sorcery), third was Claudio Pozas, and fourth was Monte Cook.

Not a bad list, if you ask me. Talk about getting lucky out of the gate.

Of course, in the last 2 years, we've had two artists bail on projects, one artist disappear, and one artist submit a finished piece that looked *nothing* like the work in his portfolio and is now collecting dust.

- James