What's a Freelance RPG Writer Worth?

Freelance writers (as opposed to those on salary) tend to be paid per word. The rate varies from publisher to publisher, and on how experienced the writer is. Ed Greenwood, for example, can command a much higher rate than a new writer can. Obviously only you, the freelancer, can decide what your labour is worth - and if you're an experienced freelancer you probably already have a pretty solid idea what that figure is. But if you're a new writer, you may be a little lost. In this article, which I'll continue to update with new information, I'll tell you what rate a new writer can expect from various publishers.

[Note - this article will continue to be updated and tweaked; folks are suggesting excellent advice to include, so it's worth checking back]. Using publisher submission information on their official websites, and publishers advertising for writers I have compiled the below list. In some cases, publishers have kindly volunteered the information; thank you! At the moment, it's a bit sparse; but I hope it will grow. New writers can use this page to help them determine their own value and check out publishers that interest them. I don't want to tell you what to charge for your writing services, or what to pay freelancers, but hopefully the information here will help - a little bit - in making an informed decision. You can click through to apply for opportunities that interest you.

Advice: Here are a few things to be wary of. They don't have to be dealbreakers, they aren't necessarily bad, and you may well be OK with them, but you should be aware of them. This applies to new writers (and artists, for that matter).

• If you're doing work for somebody, and you're not being paid, you are being exploited. (Doing work for somebody is different to doing work with somebody). Volunteer work obviously falls outside this category, but volunteer work should clearly be volunteer work, not work paid in "exposure" (see below).
• Never work for the promise of "exposure", or for "experience". You should work for money. This is a common tactic, and is often puffed up with nice language, but it is exploitation and you should look out for it.
• Also be wary of jobs offering payment solely in royalties (or a percentage), unless the company has a verifiable track record of good sales - and they should be able to provide you with solid figures. Do not be afraid to ask for these figures; they're asking you to trust them and take a risk by working for royalties only, and if they refuse you those figures you should proceed with caution. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but do it carefully. Royalties on top of a fair rate is perfectly reasonable.
• Be wary of contests which grant the copyright of your work to the company; that's often a way of getting people to work for free. Look for contests which allow you to keep the rights to your work, or which will pay you if they publish your work. There is a caveat to this -- it's reasonable for companies to protect themselves from future claims of similar development to past contest entries, but, as Paizo's Erik Mona says, even then "If we publish it, we pay for it. Period."
• Look at what's being sold. "Work for hire" means the publisher owns the output completely. Other options include "first publication" (in which you retain ownership but the publisher gets to publish it first) and non-exclusive licenses. All of these are OK, but the last two are worth more to you than the former, and may make a lower per-word rate more palatable. If you're writing for an existing setting, keeping the rights to your work is far less valuable to you, because you're unlikely to be able to re-use it (you're not going to be able to re-use material about Drizzt or Yoda, for example). Be wary of work-for-hire combined with a low per-word rate.
• Be wary of pay-on-publication work. That means a publisher can shelve your work and never pay you for it. Take pay-on-acceptance work. Some publishers will portray their policy of paying-on-acceptance as a beneficent act: it's not; it's the baseline you should expect. That said, it's OK if the payment doesn't come instantly, as most publishers do their payments en masse on a periodical basis - but make sure you know when to expect it.
• Don't do "audition work" for free. You should be paid for that, too, although it is fair that that be at a lower rate. Game designer Ryan Macklin has a good article about this.
• If you re-use Open Gaming Content, it is reasonable for the publisher not to pay you for those words.
• If it's not in the contract, ask how stat blocks are paid.
• Finally, don't work in exchange for product.
• Remember, it's OK if a company can't afford you. There's things that all of us can't afford! And also remember that it's very, very difficult to make a living freelancing for RPGs. Some people manage it, but it's not easy!

Please feel free to send corrections or additional information.

The below list shows the rates I've been able to find published online for new writers.

This is just starting rates only. Experienced writers will already know what rates they usually get, and already have relationships with various companies, so they don't really need the information below. If there's an asterisk, then I've been able to confirm that the company in question pays experienced writers more, but it's generally safe to assume that these minimum rates are increased depending on the writer.

I've included links where I can so that you can apply to the companies that interest you.

�

Publisher	Rate/word for new writers	Notes
Paizo Publishing	$0.07*
Wizards of the Coast	$0.06*	Freelance articles for D&D Insider; other writers work on salary
Pinnacle Entertainment Group	$0.06*	"Higher for some folks, plus a % of any crowd funding we do if they're one of the principle creators."
Evil Hat Productions	$0.05
Atlas Games	$0.05
Steve Jackson Games (Pyramid / GURPs PDFs)	$0.04 (Pyramid) or royalties (GURPs)	After publication. "Pyramid pays 4 cents a word, shortly after the article appears in final form in our PDF"; "...our base royalty is 25% of the cover price (this can go up for authors with a strong reputation that helps sell books, and can go down for inexperienced authors or those requiring very heavy edits)."
Vorpal Games	$0.04
Posthuman Studios	$0.04
Pelgrane Press	$0.03*
Goodman Games	$0.03	Link is to Level Up magazine submissions; other submission calls have the same figure
EN Publishing	$0.03*
Drop Dead Studios	$0.025
Fat Goblin Games	$0.02
Dreamscarred Press	$0.02
Purple Duck Games	$0.01*
Frog God Games	$0.01*
Kobold Press	$0.01 - $0.06	"...strict minimum of 1 cent per word... Our rates for established, proven freelancers vary from 2 to 6 cents/word."
Bards & Sages	$0.01	25% on acceptance, rest on publication
Rite Publishing	$0.01*	Rates go as high as $0.11.
Raging Swan Press	$0.01
Open Gaming Monthly	$0.01	"If your submission IS selected, you will receive 1 cent per word for your first published work. If your work requires very little editing (fixing typos, fixing grammatical errors etc.) then that will likely be increased to 2 cents per word. If your work receives great reviews and we use your work in future issues or products, you'll receive 3 cents per word in those future products."
Obatron Productions	<$0.01	Savage Insider; Word Count: 2,000 – 5,600 | $15 – $35
LPJ Design	$0.005* (half a cent)	Up to $0.02 with experience
Rogue Genius Press	royalties only
Ephemeric RPG	royalties only	$1.00 for every PDF or e-book that is ordered

What the Publishers Said
Discussing this subject with numerous writers and publishers turned into a fairly lively debate. Some of the statements made clearly illustrated why it's important that writers make themselves informed. Louis J Porter of LPJ Design says that "You kind find was to save money at the beginning that pays off very well in the long run [sic]" and that "Do I think I could get to a point were I make $10K month doing this, Oh Hell Yes!"

The way LPJ Design finds ways to save money in order to make $10K a month is to pay writers half a cent per word. As he says "if you are a first time writer never have sold ANYTHING to ANYONE, sorry you bring no value to my company... You guys sound like the college grad who wants to get paid $50K for just showing up. LOL!" I found myself very uncomfortable with Porter's language; he later said to one writer "You can die from exposure. Just prove to me why I should pay you more? You do that, you get paid better." and to that writer he later said "And there is the problem, you think this is an equal relationship. It isn't."

That said, the same company's calls for freelancers on various RPG forums take a different tone: "So if you are interested and not sure you think you can be good at this, I will just say, don't miss out on your dreams because you are afraid to go after them...It is your job to loose."

I can't help but feel that "I can't afford writers" isn't an great reason to underpay writers. It's OK to not be able to afford something but the solution is to find some other way to afford it, or accept that you can't afford it. Many small publishers have addressed this issue by using services like Kickstarter, Patreon, and others, which are great alternative models, although not for everyone. Erik Mona asked about products with margins so low that $160 is too much (assuming a 10-page PDF at $0.02 per word) "Does it make sense to put effort into projects that garner so little interest from the paying public that they require shennanigans like that? Is $80 a fair wage for what amounts to 4 days of work?"

And, definitely, the majority of small publishers do not intend to consciously underpay anybody. It would be unfair to point at a bunch of publishers and chastise them for being exploitative, and many tiny publishers can really only afford $0.01 per word (although James Ward observed "At $.01 a word you get what you pay for.") As Raging Swan Press' Creighton Broadhurst (who is a very small publisher and pays $0.01 per word) said, "If I thought I was exploiting people, I would stop doing what I do. But I don't think I am as I'm forcing no one to work with me." And I myself know what it is to be a tiny publisher with incredibly low sales, so I can certainly empathize with that position -- most micro-publishers are run by decent people paying what they can afford.

I have no idea where the line lies, though personally I feel uncomfortable these days offering anybody less than $0.03 per word (I have in the past), and wouldn't consider paying $0.01 per word. But that's just what I choose to do. Most writers I've spoken to agree that 2,000 publishable words per day is a fairly reasonable rate. As game designer Rich Baker observed, "It's hard to knock down 2000 word days, day in, day out. That's an honest 8 hours of work. At $0.05 per word, you'd be making $12.50 an hour... I am frankly appalled at the idea that someone might pay (or take) $0.01 a word in the 21st century. That's saying a writer is worth $2.50 an hour." Paizo's Erik Mona feels that "1 cent a word is not 'bordering on exploitative'. It is exploitative FULL STOP."

[As a side note, using Rich Baker's estimate of 2,000 words per 8 hour day, that works out to $10 per day at half a cent per word, $20 per day at $0.01, $40 per day at $0.02, $60 per day at $0.03, $80 per day at $0.04, $100 per day at $0.05, $120 per day at $0.06, and $140 per day at $0.07.]

With luck, this article should give writers some of the the information they need to inform themselves when considering freelancing, and ensure that the relationship is an equal relationship. I'll keep the table above updated as best I can, and folks can make their own decisions. Please do feel free to correct inaccurate figures or provide additional information! Also, if you're a freelancer, feel free to share rates (don't break any NDAs, though!)

​

 

[Adam Jury]

As a publisher: the writer (and other freelancers) shouldn't be sharing the risk.

 

[M.T. Black]

Is there a reason that straight royalty arrangements arent more common?

 

[James Jacobs]

Is there a reason that straight royalty arrangements arent more common?

Yup; tracking royalty payments gets real complicated, and it compounds as time goes on and more products are created. For small companies, this becomes an increasingly huge drain on resources, and that doesn't even touch the complex tax and legal and other stuff royalties introduce into a company's financials. Furthermore, the amount of money most RPG products produce is a tiny fraction of what a novel might create. Furthermore, many RPG companies have to/need to/choose to purchase all rights to a freelancer's work (this is what we do at Paizo), since it's work for hire—it makes more sense in this case to buy it once and have done with it. For lots of freelancers, getting a big (but one time) check for your work is better than lots of tiny ones spread out over the rest of your life.

 

[jeffh]

And, having people who are widely despised attacking you, your girlfriend and your book...

And your publisher. Don't forget about him.

 

[Starfox]

The OGL accentuates what James Jacobs is saying above; once an OGL publication has been released anyone can re-print it. If the original publisher was working on a royalty model, a third party publisher could publish the same product under OGL and not have to pay the royalty.

Yes, I know I am simplifying; there is trade dress, product identity and all that. Still, the problem is there. Paying royalty for an OGL product seems unsustainable to me.

 

[M.T. Black]

As a publisher: the writer (and other freelancers) shouldn't be sharing the risk.

Some fresh thinking may be needed to resolve the problem (if it is a problem)

 

[Thiago Rosa Shinken]

It would be good to have the OP updated. Four-in-Hand Games, for example, pays better than the top publishers - and they mentioned it at page 1.

 

[lynnfredricks]

Yes, I know I am simplifying; there is trade dress, product identity and all that. Still, the problem is there. Paying royalty for an OGL product seems unsustainable to me.

I think you are oversimplifying.

There are a number of extremely successful (for what they are) OGL based products that come to mind, such as Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Adventurer, Conqueror, King, and Dungeon Crawl Classics. These are "core" products of a system, but they are still OGL.

The problem is frequency of purchase by product type. The number of people who buy adventures or special splat books will always be a fraction of the buyers of the actual game. The more specialized the product, you also run into the other problem of increasing piracy.

The more necessary the product is to the largest segment of participants, the more likely you are going to be able to estimate and generate revenue. Then pricing and presentation rest on top of that.

The Pathfinder core rules book sells. You could get by with a PDF, sure. But the core rules are high quality, and if purchased off of highly discounted sites like Amazon, much less than the cost of a console game. There is a high perception of value in that book.

 

[Steve Conan Trustrum]

Is there a reason that straight royalty arrangements arent more common?

Royalty arrangements can be a good idea for publishers up front (woohoo! No up-front expenses for writers and/or artists!), but can cost money in the long run (wow, this book is selling so well I would have paid the writers and/or artists off by now, but I have to keep splitting profits.)

For example, I released Better Mousetrap for Mutants & Masterminds 2e in 2007. At the time, Misfit Studios wouldn't have been able to afford the type of artist I wanted to provide original artwork for the whole book. As such, an artist I'd worked with who was interested in the project came on board for 50% of the profit in exchange for doing all of the interior artwork in colour (I had already created a cover for it.) As time went on, the project kept expanding so that my share of the writing kept getting bigger, which means the time I'd need to spend on layout would also take more time -- I even did the flat colouring for the interiors to speed things up. By the time BMT came out, the time I'd put into the project was well over half the overall work (I'd guess at least 90% of what needed to be done to get the project out, in man hours.)

In 2012, I decided to re-release the project for M&M 3e. I was still bound by the original contract for use of the book's interior art, and the same artist did a new cover as part of the existing "you do the art" agreement. I then went about rewriting everything for the new rules, which meant adding some new content to get everything to convert as true to the original as possible. It took me about 6 months (spread out) to do the rewrite, oversee playtesting, and then do layout for the PDF/print version and for a tablet-ready, interactive version. The artist, on the other hand, added some new weapons and insignia for the interior at no additional expense (it was considered accommodating the original agreement of providing interiors), a new character art piece (which I wrote the content for), and then the previously mentioned cover (and because the artist was working for royalties, their other, flat rate jobs took priority, delaying the project by 8+ months.) So, I was again doing far more than half the work for the new release, but was still getting 50% of the profits because of the new book being an extension of the original agreement.

I don't begrudge paying the artist this royalty rate or blame him for anything, as it's what we agreed to, but continuing to keep the book out beyond its first (and now second) iteration means more ongoing work for me (say if M&M 4e comes out) while the artist could quite possibly never have to do any more art for it in the future. Because of how the original agreement was written, there is never a need to renegotiate how royalties are split, regardless of the reason why doing so would seem to make sense and be fair. I am bound to keep paying a 50%/50% royalty rate when the division of labour was something I would estimate to be at about 99%/1% with me taking on the heavier share. Considering the 3e version, released at the end of 2014, outdid the 2e version's sales (after 7 years) in just 2 months, you can imagine how frustrating the royalty agreement can be in hindsight given the division of labour behind the 3e release. It would have been better for my return on the project to not use any of the artist's original work, but rather pay him to do all new art at his usual rate, thus keeping all future profits beyond this flat expense for Misfit Studios.

Now, not all of these issues will come up in royalty agreements; most are issues that arose from me lacking foresight (I didn't expect the product to do as well as it did initially, or that its popularity would see the 3e rerelease surpass it so quickly), and it being my first time working with someone on a royalty basis I made some mistakes in how the agreement was prepared. However, you can see why it would leave me shy of doing so again, especially if I have to sell the other participants on signing on with a contract that, while fair to the amount of work I'd put in, on the bare face of it would seem to skew in favour of me. These sort of unforseen circumstances can easily pop up with any royalty-based project because closing all possible holes is problematic -- and the unexpected is something publishers want to avoid. It leads to expensive learning experiences (as my example illustrates.)

 

[Steve Conan Trustrum]

The OGL accentuates what James Jacobs is saying above; once an OGL publication has been released anyone can re-print it. If the original publisher was working on a royalty model, a third party publisher could publish the same product under OGL and not have to pay the royalty.

Yes, I know I am simplifying; there is trade dress, product identity and all that. Still, the problem is there. Paying royalty for an OGL product seems unsustainable to me.

You're assuming the entire book is made open under the OGL (edit: minus the points you mention.) The declaration of content, as well as the demands of the OGL's terms, can be used to create a division of open and closed content that prevents a third party from doing this. Sure, they can take out your rules and the like, but not everything else if you've closed it. There may be a context between the two that doesn't make much sense for a third-party publisher to attempt the former in its entirety because what's been stripped away is required for what remains to cohesively make sense.

There's also the fact that what other publishers are ALLOWED to do via the OGL, as per your concern, is not how the practice tends to operate.

There are very few companies that try the kind of "strip mining" tactic you mention, and they tend to get bad-mouthed by other publishers and the market alike for doing so. Indeed, I think you'd be hard pressed to name anyone who currently makes a frequent, profitable practice of doing this despite there being products on the market that have written content 100% released under the OGL. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who even goes so far as to just extract the open portions the OGL allows and reprint it wholesale. Bits and pieces, sure, which is how the OGL is meant to be used, but not fully extracting all open content for third party retasking. Even when a third party uses open content from someone else's product, be it royalty based or not, there is an overall contextual difference between the source and the secondary product that the two have distinctly different identities in the market whereby sales of the latter are not likely to affect sales of the former.