Why do authors tend to give away their writing?
“They’ve chosen a few pages of my latest book to use in a standardized test that will be given to 70,000 students this spring,” one of my most successful writing coach clients emailed me yesterday. “Crazy!!!!”
“Any money attached?” I asked.
“Not sure. The agreement has a place for compensation. I don’t think I’ll ask for it.”
That didn’t sound right. I’m all for offering book excerpts for free if absolutely necessary and if the exposure warrants it, but I was pretty dubious that any of those 70,000 students would feel compelled to seek out a book based on a passage in a test they had to take. Besides, I guessed that standardized testing had to be big business.
Bingo. A quick Google search revealed that in 2015, standardized testing was a $1.7 billion-a-year industry. It was probably even larger now. Naturally, I shared what I had found with my client, suggesting that she might not want to just give away her writing.
She answered this morning with an email titled YOU Are a STAR. “Hi!” it read. “We all have the tendency to undervalue ourselves. Thank you for googling about the standard test biz. I asked for a fee, and they said they normally pay $500-1500 per excerpt. So … I asked for $1,500. I never would have asked if you hadn’t told me that!”
Yay! Chalk up one for the good guys!
As writers, we sometimes forget that our work is a product that we’ve produced. It may not be tangible, but it has as much (if not more) value as anything else people create and sell.
So, the next time someone wants to feature a chunk of your writing, at least ask about compensation. You can always decide to give away your writing if the cause or the exposure warrant it. On the other hand, you may just wind up with a little extra cash. And that never hurts.
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