What's a Freelance RPG Writer Worth?

Zak S · Feb 14, 2018

Steve Conan Trustrum said:
For the freelancers, I guess.

Kinda sucks for everyone else.

Not the customer--they get multi-award winning, fantastic product instead of unloved stuff pumped out to meet demand.

I haven't cherry-picked anything.

The following addresses every point you've made, which all just goes to support one idea:

"
What you're saying is "these bigger companies have to pay creators less and consequently create worse product because they are big".

So clearly smaller is better both creatively and ethically.

So be smaller.
"

If you need to be ethically and creatively bankrupt to run a large RPG business--don't run a large RPG business.

Starfox · Feb 14, 2018

Morrus said:
Royalties are unfair, yes. Good for them.

I'm not saying Purple Duck are right, I merely wanted to point out that this happens. Different takes for different folks. When i was brand new, I wanted a royalty, because I overestimated the spash I would make. Telling a new writer like me that this was unrealistic and putting my feet back on the ground was a good thing, in my mind.

Publishers, particularly the small publishers, are struggling. Their struggles are important part of keeping this business alive. I feel they are all heroic, all of them. All of us may not agree with what all of them are doing, but in one way or another, we're in this together. I believe there's a synergy, that the more products are made, the bigger the business as a whole can get. But this does not mean every product will sell. A specific part of the idea behind the original OGL was that every 3rd party product is effectively a promotion of the leading product. In my mind, that applies outside the scope of any particular ruleset too - yes, the market gets divided more and more, but it also grows.

Sorry if I am sounding grumpy today, I'm ill. Nobody take any of this personally, please.

Steve Conan Trustrum · Feb 14, 2018

Zak S said:
Not the customer--they get multi-award winning, fantastic product instead of unloved stuff pumped out to meet demand.

Except that both companies you keep using as your examples as "ethically and creatively bankrupt" have also won awards, are much loved by their customers, and also meet demand.

But the demand is much larger because their businesses are operating at a level where the core market knows they even exist.

I haven't cherry-picked anything.

Yes you have. I'll even grant that maybe you don't realize it because your approach to business is so limited and binary in its scope of perspective (in so far as, yes, you actually only ever give two possible options in your examples of business operations), but you certainly are cherry-picking.

The following addresses every point you've made, which all just goes to support one idea:

No, you really haven't. It could be that's because of your singular, tunnel-vision perspective of how you think publishing businesss do/should operate, but the outcome is that you have not addressed all my points, regardless. You just pass them by and repeat your previous point, thinking that your perspective is self-evident because you can name a few companies most of the industry isn't even aware of as examples of how you think things should be industry-wide. To you, the word "outlier" doesn't seem to be a thing that actually exists.

If you need to be ethically and creatively bankrupt to run a large RPG business--don't run a large RPG business.

If only running a business could actually be couched in such binary thinking. Reality doesn't work like that, however. The fact that you believe it does, though, is the crux of why you believe you've addressed all my points rather than just bypassing them with your refrain. And the fact that you think any business that doesn't run as you expect is "ethically and creatively bankrupt" says far more against your agument than it does in support of it.

Zak S · Feb 14, 2018

Steve Conan Trustrum said:
Except that both companies you keep using as your examples as "ethically and creatively bankrupt" have also won awards, are much loved by their customers, and also meet demand.

Well which argument are you making here:

-These companies that don't put much money into their books but make lots of money somehow miraculously manage to make good books anyway. And publishers making living wages while paying freelancers subpoverty wages is ethical.

-Ok, fine, they don't manage to make books that are that good and paying freelancers subpoverty wages is unethical but they have no choice because they are large RPG businesses so its unavoidable.

?

but you certainly are cherry-picking.

Then, if you can, please restate which of your points is not addressed by the summary "These companies are bigger than LotFP therefore have to adopt these practices you don't like". Because I honestly in good faith cannot find them.

If you do then I'd be happy to address those concerns.

LotFP is obviously an outlier. People have done well for their customers and creative people copying that outlier's model. So: do that.

If you can't: do something else, like crowdfund and self-publish.

But don't do the thing where you pay people 3-5 cents a word and make more money than they do. Anything but that.

Steve Conan Trustrum · Feb 14, 2018

Zak S said:
Well which argument are you making here:

-These companies that don't put much money into their books but make lots of money somehow miraculously manage to make good books anyway. And publishers making living wages while paying freelancers subpoverty wages is ethical.

-Ok, fine, they don't manage to make books that are that good and paying freelancers subpoverty wages is unethical but they have no choice because they are large RPG businesses so its unavoidable.

Remember when I said you were stuck in a realm of binaries because your examples of business operations only present two possiblities?

Then, if you can, please restate which of your points is not addressed by the summary "These companies are bigger than LotFP therefore have to adopt these practices you don't like". Because I honestly in good faith cannot find them.

My point is that businesses of different scales of operations have different realties governing how they run. These logistical and financial facts are the things you attribute to ethics, waste, hoarding, etc.

See my previous post about a company that is stuck between two sets of goalposts, for example.

But don't do the thing where you pay people 3-5 cents a word and make more money than they do. Anything but that

First off, the idea that publishers can't earn more than their freelancers without being unethical is a false narrative. If I, as a publisher, pay a fantastic flat fee but don't end up making much (as in I don't pull in as much as if I had paid myself as a writer at my offered writer rates) I'm an ethical publisher, but if I pay that same fantastic flat fee but the product ends up taking off to the point that I make triple what my fantastic flat fee was, I'm now unethical?

My point would be to pay as much as you can while still keeping the business sustainable. If your pay rate to freelancers is such that it begins to cause the publisher to treat itself unfairly (e.g., it has to pass on opportunities), that is itself a problem. But your stance hasn't addressed that, and when I've brought it up you've not responded to it beyond saying that reaching for those opportunities or maintaining sustainability, at a cost to the freelancer that typically also comes at a cost and a risk to the publisher, is therefore unethical or mismanagement.

JimLotFP · Feb 14, 2018

Owner of LotFP here. To clear up some things that have been brought up:

Yes, I work out of my apartment and warehouse my books here. I have an extra room solely for that storage, and there are around 10,000 books and a few hundred t-shirts in there. I could have gotten a smaller apartment and then rented offsite space for the inventory, absolutely, but what a pain in the ass that would be for various reasons. It's here because it is easier. I write off all that square meterage as part of my home office deduction. (Similarly, a large number of books are warehoused in the US for distribution, because due my not being on the same continent as my distribution partners, it doesn't make sense to have my own space in the US, and it's much cheaper sending lots of books all at once across the ocean than on demand.)

It's conceivable that I'll need offsite warehousing here. Maybe even this year if certain projects get completed and released. Maybe someday I'll even need to get a proper office and actual employees that need to go there to work.

But the thing is, those things will be made necessary by the increased business activity of more releases and more sales. They'd have to pay for themselves. Or else it would be absolute insanity to take those steps and have that new business infrastructure.

I can't see how I could ever tell someone "Oh, our business has grown and we've got all these expenses to deal with, so you people who make the stuff that make the growth possible have to get paid less."

There are 33 projects in various stages of production over here at LotFP. Some of the people writing them got advances. Most didn't. If they start getting delivered in clusters, that may create a bottleneck as I'd have to pay for a bunch of art and layout etc at once (mostly those are negotiated one-time fees, as I consider the author to be the "creator" and everyone else involved is working from their creation). That's going to happen hopefully this summer as several projects are waiting on a particular rules supplement to be finished and tested because they need to reference those rules. Maybe books will have to be prioritized, but that just means books will need to be released in succession rathan than a pile all at once.

But the idea that I need a bunch of money to start projects just isn't true once I established that the royalty model I use tends to pay out multiple times what freelancers get from the big companies.

And I see it as a total point of pride when people who make stuff for me make two or three times (or more!) what they've made working with companies like Wizards of the Coast. When they pass the point of what they would have made with a flat-fee payment, I am happy. Happy the system is working for all of us. Happy I can tell creators that LotFP is a place you can come to make money. (And win awards, as it turns out.) Happy that I get to make a living facilitating the release of all this cool stuff.

If they don't make more with me than they would have elsewhere, then I have failed them. Their jobs aren't to make money for me. It's my job to make money for them. Or else why would they do anything for me instead of for someone else, or on their own?

And as time has passed, more and more projects are produced using the royalty model and I don't think it's a coincidence that the business has also grown, in terms of both units sold and money earned, every year.

(The only projects that haven't pulled a nice profit have been those crowdfunded books that were budgeted and commissioned at specific wordcounts... and the author totally blew the wordcount, sometimes two or three times more than what they were commissioned for. And I just went with it, even though at that point hundreds of people had already paid for what was supposed to be a lot smaller book. But I couldn't pay the authors any more than promised, so on those projects the per-word rate is quite low, although I do give them a cut of the PDF sales.)

I don't know a thing about the business workings at places like Evil Hat and Green Ronin. But I do know if they are larger and more successful companies than LotFP, the people who make their stuff should get paid more than the people who make LotFP stuff. (And I hope, if we could start comparing like to like, such as the definition of "creator", that they are.) What else is even the point of being a larger company?

Steve Conan Trustrum · Feb 14, 2018

JimLotFP said:
It's conceivable that I'll need offsite warehousing here. Maybe even this year if certain projects get completed and released. Maybe someday I'll even need to get a proper office and actual employees that need to go there to work.

And you understand those costs come out of somewhere, yes?

As in you either need to ramp up sales to absorb the expenses in your margin, you need to cut back on what you're paying, or you need to put less into the business.

You factually cannot increase layout without that money coming from somewhere. Which is my point.

But the thing is, those things will be made necessary by the increased business activity of more releases and more sales. They'd have to pay for themselves. Or else it would be absolute insanity to take those steps and have that new business infrastructure.

But again we're not talking binaries here.

One of your projects worked out to $0.21/word after royalties, yes?

Well, if it works out to $0.19/word, or $0.15/word, or $0.05/word due to an increase in expenses, it's still "paying for itself." "Paying for itself" is any point where people are actually putting money in their pockets beyond expenses.

I can't see how I could ever tell someone "Oh, our business has grown and we've got all these expenses to deal with, so you people who make the stuff that make the growth possible have to get paid less."

And where will the money be coming from? Because if you think you'll deal with more expenses while maintaining current rates etc., that money has to come from somewhere. If you think the answer is as simple as "sales," then what happens when you reach the point I mentioned upthread?: business growth plateaus between sustainability and further expansion. This is a point where your business either needs external infusions of cash or you need to cut expenses to keep growing because you can't reach further market growth at your current output levels, and you can't increase output levels without paying more using money that comes from ... somewhere.

There are 33 projects in various stages of production over here at LotFP. Some of the people writing them got advances. Most didn't. If they start getting delivered in clusters, that may create a bottleneck as I'd have to pay for a bunch of art and layout etc at once (mostly those are negotiated one-time fees, as I consider the author to be the "creator" and everyone else involved is working from their creation). That's going to happen hopefully this summer as several projects are waiting on a particular rules supplement to be finished and tested because they need to reference those rules. Maybe books will have to be prioritized, but that just means books will need to be released in succession rathan than a pile all at once.

Which is a model you're able to accomodate. But understand, as I've previously pointed out, you're describing how your payment structure influences your output in ways that are detrimental to larger companies. What you describe is not something businesses with salaried positions, set monthly expenses (e.g., warehousing) can easily afford to tango with.

But the idea that I need a bunch of money to start projects just isn't true once I established that the royalty model I use tends to pay out multiple times what freelancers get from the big companies.

Which works great for you.

Honestly, do you consider it an industry-wide model for sustainability, especially for companies with set expenses? Because you've been able to keep at it now because this same model keeps your business low risk. What happens when your operations scale up to the point where you have more risk but this part of it means less certainty?

And I see it as a total point of pride when people who make stuff for me make two or three times (or more!) what they've made working with companies like Wizards of the Coast. When they pass the point of what they would have made with a flat-fee payment, I am happy. Happy the system is working for all of us. Happy I can tell creators that LotFP is a place you can come to make money. (And win awards, as it turns out.) Happy that I get to make a living facilitating the release of all this cool stuff.

Which is great. No one is disputing that it works for you or that it benefits the freelancers working with you.

The point at hand is that not everyone who doesn't pay what you do does so because they are "unethical" or "hoarding" their money rather than paying freelancers more. The point is also that not all businesses can operate under your model.

If they don't make more with me than they would have elsewhere, then I have failed them. Their jobs aren't to make money for me. It's my job to make money for them. Or else why would they do anything for me instead of for someone else, or on their own?

Which is a great mentality to have, but let's be honest: it's the sort of approach to business you can afford before you stretch your wings into the world of larger operations and greater risk. It's easy to say your business is not your primary concern when you're mostly piggybacking it off personal resources. Don't take that as a dig at what you're doing, but it's a fact of what your business is and how it accomodates your philosophy versus a company that also adds in "oh, and paying all those logistical bills also need to be taken care of."

And as time has passed, more and more projects are produced using the royalty model and I don't think it's a coincidence that the business has also grown, in terms of both units sold and money earned, every year.

Sure, but as you state yourself you're still absorbing many costs with personal resources (e.g., you home) and the good will of the people working with you. Because that's what any royalty-based system relies upon: the providers trust and faith in your ability to deliver. A flat rate is what it is and people can walk away knowing what they get. So far you've a good record with delivering, but it is possible for you to reach a point where you can't deliver on those expctations and that damages that faith.

I don't know a thing about the business workings at places like Evil Hat and Green Ronin. But I do know if they are larger and more successful companies than LotFP, the people who make their stuff should get paid more than the people who make LotFP stuff. (And I hope, if we could start comparing like to like, such as the definition of "creator", that they are.) What else is even the point of being a larger company?

See my previous post about larger business =/= more money to spread around. It is very easy to have a "big" small business and actually have less net worth than one guy publishing out of his apartment.

Zak S · Feb 14, 2018

Steve Conan Trustrum said:
Remember when I said you were stuck in a realm of binaries because your examples of business operations only present two possiblities?

Pointing out that you've moved goalposts from argument A to argument B isn't being "stuck in a realm of binaries"

Pointing out that companies like Evil Hat and Green Ronin and those who pay 3-5 cents per word has made decisions that are worse for creators and audiences than LotFP and companies that find ways to pay people more isn't being "stuck in a realm of binaries". It's contrasting 2 different ways of doing business, of which one is better.

My point is that businesses of different scales of operations have different realties governing how they run. These logistical and financial facts are the things you attribute to ethics, waste, hoarding, etc.

That is just a way of rewording what I already said:

"These companies are bigger than LotFP therefore have to adopt these practices you don't like".

First off, the idea that publishers can't earn more than their freelancers without being unethical is a false narrative. If I, as a publisher, pay a fantastic flat fee but don't end up making much (as in I don't pull in as much as if I had paid myself as a writer at my offered writer rates) I'm an ethical publisher, but if I pay that same fantastic flat fee but the product ends up taking off to the point that I make triple what my fantastic flat fee was, I'm now unethical?

Let's start with an important fact:

We are not discussing companies that pay a "fantastic" flat fee.

We are discussing companies (Evil Hat, Green Ronin, their ilk) that pay a subpoverty level flat fee.

And "triple" doesn't describe the difference between the subpoverty wages they're paying and the amount these people are keeping.

So, rewording:

"If I, as a publisher, pay a terrible flat fee but don't end up making much (as in I don't pull in as much as if I had paid myself as a writer at my offered writer rates) I'm an ethical publisher, but if I pay that same terrible flat fee but the product ends up taking off to the point that I make (probably way more than triple because even triple would be barely minimum wage and the publishers are making way more than that) what my terrible fee was, I'm now unethical?"

Bingo.

The creator should benefit from their creation.

If DC has some product (say: Superman) that Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster have done the creative work on then but DC's benefitting from this arrangement more than Jerry and Joe because the product did better than they expected and Jerry and Joe took a bad split because they wanted to eat, then when the business takes off, the ethical thing for DC to do is to ignore how the law says it can technically benefit wildly from Jerry and Joe's desperate situation and cut them in on the deal.

And the end result of that would be that Jerry and Joe stick around and happily do more good work for DC's fanbase.

If Jerry and Joe are at a ripe age sitting over a desk making Junior Woodchuck comics until their fingers are falling off while DC is rolling in dough from Superman, this situation is unethical.

My point would be to pay as much as you can while still keeping the business sustainable.

If the business is only sustainable by paying creators subpoverty wages and making bad product for customers that business does not need to be kept "sustainable". It should stop existing.

Steve Conan Trustrum · Feb 14, 2018

Zak S said:
Pointing out that you've moved goalposts from argument A to argument B isn't being "stuck ina realm of binaries"

I haven't moved goal posts. I've actually conceeded where you've made points.

Your continuing inability to understand what I'm talking about, or refusal to see it as possible, does not a moved goalpost make.

You are LITERALLY posting, time and again, just TWO options when you present examples.

TWO.

As in "either / or" ... "this or that" ... "a or b" ... "1 or 0"

You know ... BINARY options.

Pointing out that company Evil Hat and Green Ronin and those who pay 3-5 cents per word has made decisions that are worse for creators and audiences than LotFP and companies that find ways to pay people more isn't being "stuck in a realm of binaries". It's contrasting 2 different ways of doing business, of which one is better.

So, just so I'm clear on this again ...

When you say "it's contrasting 2 different ways of doing business," which you've presented as the only possible options ...

You're saying you AREN'T stuck on presenting binaries?

That is just a way of rewording what I already said:

"These companies are bigger than LotFP therefore have to adopt these practices you don't like".

No, it's not just "rewording it". It's an entirely different context and tone.

Because when you talk about it, you qualify what you "don't like" as therefore being "unethical," "pocketing" money, "extra" (i.e., above and beyond) money, "hoarding", etc.

There is absolutely a distinct difference in what we're saying even if our points cross paths at times and agree on some founding facts.

Bingo.

The creator should benefit from their creation.

You benefit when you get paid any amount of money you didn't previously have. If merely benefiting is your benchmark, it's pretty low. I get what you're aiming for, but you're presenting it in a rather narrow, unrealistic manner.

And let's just get really practical here for a second: the way you're intending to present "benefit" goes in a direction where one must therefore conclude all salaried creators are victims of unethical business practices because their pay isn't scaled to the success of their creations. While this CAN be true, based on how much they are paid, it isn't true by default.

So, now let's look at where you're point is failing on another level. When I write for someone in a commercial capacity, yes I'm a creator, but I'm doing so in someone else's sandbox and under their terms, which I can choose to agree to or not. I can say if their terms are fair or not. But I accept I'm working for someone else. What I produce becomes theirs unless I work out something re: IP retention. If I work in construction and "create" a house, I shouldn't have any expectation to earn a share of any rent paid to the property's owner once I'm done at the build site. Do the people who made the clothes you are wearing right now get additional money every time you put them on or is it their responsibility to negotiate a good wage they can accept before they created your clothes?

If the business is only sustainable by paying creators poverty wages and making bad product for customers that business does not need to be "sustainable". It should stop existing.

News flash:

99% of the RPG industry isn't sustainable in pure business terms if everyone expects a living wage from it.

Few people who work in it make above a living wage. That's why the norm is for just about every person creating RPGs to have another job. And that includes most people who own most of the RPG companies. And that isn't necessarily because they are bad business people or crookedly mistreating freelancers. That's the nature of the market's relationship with its creators. So, knowing most publishers are working second jobs to keep outputting products, it seems entirely unrealistic to say that freelancers (and I'm saying this as someone who also still freelances) should be the ones everyone else should break their backs over or "stop existing."

If people acted on your view of what this hobby-driven industry came to pass, 99% of publishers would shutter up.

And, clearly, removing 99% of the job opportunities available in the market is TOTALLY to the benefit of those freelancers, right?

Simple fact: if you're making a living wage in the RPG industry, you're one of the blessed few that have worked through the industry's cracks to become positive outliers. But if you come into the RPG industry EXPECTING to make a living wage, well ... that's just crazy talk.

Zak S · Feb 14, 2018

Steve Conan Trustrum said:
When you say "it's contrasting 2 different ways of doing business," which you've presented as the only possible options ...

I am saying the model Evil Hat and Green Ronin and their ilk have a is worse for customers and creators than LotFP's.

I never said it was the only model.

Since typing more than that clearly has confused things, I am going to wait and see if you acknowledge that before moving on to addressing anything else you've said.

Do you understand that my argument here is "Evil Hat and Green Ronin and their ilk have a model and it's worse for customers and creators than LotFP's model. There are other models"

?

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's a Freelance RPG Writer Worth?

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