# A Guide to RPG Freelance Rates: Part 1 (Writing and Editing)



## Reynard (Apr 5, 2019)

Very interesting article. Thanks! The most I have made is $.07/word ffrom one of the big companies, and am currently receiving royalties from a smaller company that hopefully will amount to about $.04 -- the rate I made when I started 20 years ago.


----------



## jasper (Apr 5, 2019)

The Mad Genius club talks a lot about publishing, self-publishing, choosing covers, etc. They are more geared to scific and fantasy, or I only pay attention to those articles.
https://madgeniusclub.com/
But after decades of listening to writers/creators. Here are the three rules
1. Don't work for free. (Charity stuff you building your audience).
2. Read the freaking contract and do your best to keep all the rights to your original work. (the op is more about writing on spec/piecework).
3. Write. Even if would  the result would fertilizer, Jasper's north forty. 
PS.
If you got paid for the work, screw the reviewers.


----------



## Dioltach (Apr 5, 2019)

As a professional editor and translator, I charge EUR 0.04 plus VAT for copy editing, which generally works out at about EUR 60/hour. Most other professionals I know charge in the region of EUR 80-100/hour.

My clients are generally in the professional services, though: law firms, banks, investment companies and the like.


----------



## Inchoroi (Apr 5, 2019)

For the book I'm working on, I will be absolutely thrilled to get even 1 cent a word. Its a huge book, though.


----------



## jagerfury (Apr 5, 2019)

Fight for higher rates, your worth it! Game writers should be collectively stand for .15 minimum with .25 for proven writers.

We should start with Game-writers Union (GU). I'll begin. Vanishing Tower Press, as a matter of policy, pays writers .15 minimum with .25 for proven artists. Unless it is my own product, I won't work for less than .15 word rate. (Not that anyone is hiring me)


----------



## 77IM (Apr 5, 2019)

If I'm doing the math right,

2,000 words per day * 1 day per 8 hours * $.03 per word= $7.50 per hour​
So, at the introductory rate (3¢/word), that's a minimum wage job, and I'm guessing it doesn't pay benefits. After a cursory Internet search, it looks like the average cost of living for single person in the US is about $15,000/year before taxes, so you could get by on this rate. (But it's cutting it close, and the "cost of living" varies wildly depending on how you define it.)

At the other end, if you manage to get 20¢/word, that looks like about $50/hour (or $100,000/year if you work 50 five-day weeks). That's pretty good, especially if you're doing something you love and being your own boss and working from home and so forth.

The average cost of living for a family of four is about $48,000/year. Let's say you're in a 25% tax bracket so before taxes this family would need to make $64,000/year. (Taxes are complicated but 25% should be "close enough" for this sort of estimate.) So if you are a writer and the sole provider of a family, you would want to make around 12.8¢/word. OTOH if another member of the family is taking half the burden, you only need to make 6.4¢/word, which is the "professional" rate, and smack dab in the middle of M. T. Black's 3-to-10¢/word guideline. That's not too bad, especially if you love your job etc.


----------



## lewpuls (Apr 5, 2019)

An interesting calculation: according to what I've read, pulp writers (who wrote in VOLUME) in the thirties made 1 to 2 cents a word. But with inflation of 2453.3% since 1935, 1.5 cents a word becomes 25.5 cents. (Inflation Calculator).

Yet several years ago, freelancers I talked with said 5 cents a word was very good, 2 cents a word typical for starters. It seems the rates are going up. Of course, that's often work for hire. Most mainstream authors won't do work for hire; I quit writing for White Dwarf and Dragon back in the 80s when they started requiring all rights (work for hire).


----------



## Ath-kethin (Apr 5, 2019)

I am a nobody. The most I've been paid per word is 4 cents, but the figures get murky in some cases. For example, I worked on editing/conversion projects where I was paid 1.5 cents per word, but because of the product's length I ended up making more like $12-13 per hour on it.

I'm not gonna quit my day job in that, but it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.


----------



## Ath-kethin (Apr 5, 2019)

The real tricky part for freelancing in my (admittedly limited) experience is consistency. Getting 7 cents a word is awesome, but if you get one 10,000 word project per month or two it doesn't do a whole lot for you.

And it's easy to load up with a whole bunch of low-paying work. That's great for experience (which is necessary!) but is quite dispiriting overall once the novelty wears off.


----------



## Dioltach (Apr 5, 2019)

77IM said:


> At the other end, if you manage to get 20¢/word, that looks like about $50/hour (or $100,000/year if you work 50 five-day weeks). That's pretty good, especially if you're doing something you love and being your own boss and working from home and so forth.
> 
> The average cost of living for a family of four is about $48,000/year. Let's say you're in a 25% tax bracket so before taxes this family would need to make $64,000/year. (Taxes are complicated but 25% should be "close enough" for this sort of estimate.) So if you are a writer and the sole provider of a family, you would want to make around 12.8¢/word. OTOH if another member of the family is taking half the burden, you only need to make 6.4¢/word, which is the "professional" rate, and smack dab in the middle of M. T. Black's 3-to-10¢/word guideline. That's not too bad, especially if you love your job etc.




That's assuming that you have enough paying work to fill 50 five-day working weeks every year. Part of the reason why freelancers earn (or at least *should* earn) a higher per-hour wage than salaried employees is to compensate for all the times when you're not earning any money. That includes days when you don't have any paying projects, but also the time you spend on admin and networking, holidays and days when you're unable to work for whatever reason (family, health, power cuts, or your pillow makes a more compelling case than your computer screen).


----------



## Mike Myler (Apr 5, 2019)

As the editor for EN5ider I should mention that we pay 3 cents a word plus rights reversion after a year (and I loooove me that rights reversion <3). Message me or email me (mike.myler.adventures|at|gmail.com) to get onto the call list!


----------



## M.T. Black (Apr 5, 2019)

Mike Myler said:


> As the editor for EN5ider I should mention that we pay 3 cents a word plus rights reversion after a year (and I loooove me that rights reversion <3).



Yes, rights is a big thing to take into account. Virtually all of the work I've seen is "work for hire". However, if you can get the rights back and there is a market for what you've written, you can take "two bites of the cherry" and self-publish, and you need to take that into account. 
 [MENTION=7507]mike[/MENTION], how does your rights reversion work when someone has worked on an EN World property? I'm think specifically about your ZEITGEIST campaign setting?


----------



## Mike Myler (Apr 5, 2019)

M.T. Black said:


> Yes, rights is a big thing to take into account. Virtually all of the work I've seen is "work for hire". However, if you can get the rights back and there is a market for what you've written, you can take "two bites of the cherry" and self-publish, and you need to take that into account.
> @_*mike*_, how does your rights reversion work when someone has worked on an EN World property? I'm think specifically about your ZEITGEIST campaign setting?




I can only speak from my experience (_N.O.W._, _Tip of the Tongue_, _To Stake A Vampire_) but my pre-EN5ider work was all work for hire--they (and I suspect the whole of _ZEITGEIST_, which is something gradually getting converted over to 5E over on the Patreon) are EN Publishing's intellectual property.

To be clear _ZEITGEIST_ is not one of my campaign settings, and I didn't actually write any of the original content (I think that's mostly Ryan Nock and Thursty Hillman)


----------



## M.T. Black (Apr 6, 2019)

Hi Mike, 

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I know you that _ZEITGEIST _is EN World IP. What I'm asking is this - say I was to write a ZEITGEIST adventure for EN5ider, what would happen to the right to that adventure after a year, given it includes EN World IP?


----------



## Mike Myler (Apr 6, 2019)

M.T. Black said:


> Hi Mike,
> 
> Sorry if I wasn't clear. I know you that _ZEITGEIST _is EN World IP. What I'm asking is this - say I was to write a ZEITGEIST adventure for EN5ider, what would happen to the right to that adventure after a year, given it includes EN World IP?




Oh golly I'm not sure. You'd have to check with Morrus but I think that all stays in-house, so to speak. At this point _ZEITGEIST_ is in three different editions though so it's probably not going anywhere (any part of it, new additions or old bits). Maybe though! It's not my place to say.


----------



## M.T. Black (Apr 6, 2019)

All good, I was just curious. I guessed that was an exception. But stuff like archetypes etc., you revert all rights after a year?


----------



## Morrus (Apr 6, 2019)

M.T. Black said:


> Hi Mike,
> 
> Sorry if I wasn't clear. I know you that _ZEITGEIST _is EN World IP. What I'm asking is this - say I was to write a ZEITGEIST adventure for EN5ider, what would happen to the right to that adventure after a year, given it includes EN World IP?




A ZEITGEIST adventure is like writing a Forgotten Realms adventure for WotC, or a Star Wars novel -- obviously, we're not going to give you the setting IP (but then we're not commissioning new ZEITGEIST material from freelancers - there's just the core AP which we produced in-house). But a non-ZEITGEIST adventure for something like EN5ider, you retain the rights. It's not even a reversion really - you keep them from the start, but in exchange for being paid, you license us to have a year to make our money back. Then you can do what you want with it.


----------



## Mike Myler (Apr 6, 2019)

Also _EN5ider_ juuuuuuuuuust recently started doing new adventure content again in addition to the monthly _ZEITGEIST_ piece, albeit smaller in scope


----------



## M.T. Black (Apr 6, 2019)

Makes perfect sense - thanks [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION]!


----------



## Von Ether (Apr 6, 2019)

77IM said:


> ... OTOH if another member of the family is taking half the burden, you only need to make 6.4¢/word, which is the "professional" rate, and smack dab in the middle of M. T. Black's 3-to-10¢/word guideline. That's not too bad, especially if you love your job etc.




Which is why most long-term writers of any kind after the late nineties come packaged with a loving spouse.


----------



## Zardnaar (Apr 6, 2019)

Mike Myler said:


> Also _EN5ider_ juuuuuuuuuust recently started doing new adventure content again in addition to the monthly _ZEITGEIST_ piece, albeit smaller in scope




Yay I liked the early adventures and ran a couple but not running Zeitgeist so the extra money/content has been wasted. Bit behind on EN5ider and have not downloaded the last 20 or 30 of them.


----------



## Dr. Bull (Apr 6, 2019)

Can I make a request of all of the freelance writers out there?  Can you please make sure that you have studied how to write BEFORE you publish?  Take a few composition classes at the local community college, for goodness sake!

Grammar is important.  Clarity is important.

I've seen some amazing work from new writers (especially on GM's Guild), but I have also seen some terrible writing.  Many products need a professional editor.  I've also seen products that are ridiculously repetitive or overly verbose.  Some writers use 2-3 pages of disorganized text to describe something that could be summarized by a single, well-written paragraph.

I haven't purchased anything from the DM's Guild for a long time because the quality is inconsistent. 

- Dr. Bull


----------



## Morrus (Apr 6, 2019)

Dr. Bull said:


> Can I make a request of all of the freelance writers out there?  Can you please make sure that you have studied how to write BEFORE you publish?  Take a few composition classes at the local community college, for goodness sake!
> 
> Grammar is important.  Clarity is important.
> 
> ...




You’re talking about self-publishers, not freelance writers. The latter write under a contract for a company and their manuscript is commissioned, edited, and published by that company. Self-publishers doesn’t get paid a word rate .


----------



## Dr. Bull (Apr 6, 2019)

jagerfury said:


> Fight for higher rates, your worth it! Game writers should be collectively stand for .15 minimum with .25 for proven writers.
> 
> We should start with Game-writers Union (GU). I'll begin. Vanishing Tower Press, as a matter of policy, pays writers .15 minimum with .25 for proven artists. Unless it is my own product, I won't work for less than .15 word rate. (Not that anyone is hiring me)




"Your worth it. "

...  Seriously? 

"You're worth it."

I apologize for the snark.  I'm a jerk.  It won't happen again.


----------



## Dr. Bull (Apr 6, 2019)

Morrus said:


> You’re talking about self-publishers, not freelance writers. The latter write under a contract for a company and their manuscript is commissioned, edited, and published by that company. Self-publishers doesn’t get paid a word rate .




Yup.  You're correct.  I used to edit for Troll Lord Games, but I could not keep up with all the freelance writers who didn't know how to write. DM's Guild is a different venue.

I'm honored to have received a directly reply from you.  I've really enjoyed reading WOIN!


----------



## Morrus (Apr 6, 2019)

Dr. Bull said:


> I've really enjoyed reading WOIN!




Thank you. That’s very kind.


----------



## ParanoydStyle (Apr 8, 2019)

This article is pretty legit. 




> At 3 cents you are probably only going to hire a talented beginner, whereas at 10 cents you can hire a seasoned writer with a strong reputation and many credits to their name.




Note that if you go from "talented beginner" to "seasoned writer" while working mainly for the same company, they are VERY unlikely to improve your rate above 0.03 per word (and absolutely guaranteed not to if you don't ask, preferably repeatedly, after you've been writing for them for a few years) unless that "strong reputation" is so strong you probably don't need to work for them anymore at all. It is also very possible that if you are part of a "Freelancer" "Pool" that you are going to get paid the same as everyone else in that pool for the sake of fairness (really equitability but whatever) regardless of differences experience. If xyz is what a company pays, then xyz is what a company pays.




> 2,000 words per day * 1 day per 8 hours * $.03 per word= $7.50 per hour





Most of us (or maybe I shouldn't speak for other RPG Industry writers? *I* can) jack it up to 10,000 or even close to 20,000 words in a day if a deadline is suddenly right around the corner. When I'm really into a project, it's not unusual for me to pump out 5,000 to 8,000 words of 1st draft material in five or six hours, although of course I have days where writing even 2,000 words seems like an impossibility. But yes, 2,000 words a day is a good benchmark for how much aspiring professional writers should be writing every day to stay in practice (source--Stephen King, _On Writing_).


----------



## M.T. Black (Apr 8, 2019)

> When I'm really into a project, it's not unusual for me to pump out 5,000 to 8,000 words of 1st draft material




Multiple draftings (which I assume most people do) certainly complicate the "average words per day" scenario. 

I'm curious about your experience, if you don't mind sharing. Let's say you wrote 6,000 words of "first draft" quality material. How many more hours, on average, would you spend on it to get it to "submission quality".


----------



## ParanoydStyle (Apr 8, 2019)

Well since you asked, I'd say it takes me probably around two hours, tops, to get 10,000 words of a first draft to submission quality. But I think my process is very atypical and I would certainly not recommend any writer use it as the base for any kind of organizational routine or a guideline to...anything. Back in grade school I was that kid who would ignore a project that was assigned months ago and then try to finish it _on the day it was due_ by cutting other classes before that one and using my free periods. My success rate wasn't awesome (neither were my grades), but I managed to graduate both high school and college. I think that kind of stuck with me, that "the last minute is the _best_ minute!" approach. When I first started getting paid for writing though, I tried (as I do now) to always send in ms well before deadline and generally trying to do everything I would want a writer working for me to do if I was the editor. I think in my five years with CGL I only missed one deadline.  

With the exception of typos and sentences I apparently got too excited to remember to finish, my first drafts are generally _very_ _close_ to my first submission. I spend maybe 75% of my time on the first draft and 25% on revisions, and if the proportions are different, it's even more time spent on first draft and even less on revisions: I've never done a survey but my gut tells me that is not the case for most writers. Over the years, I have heard several say their ratios are closer to 20% first draft, 80% revisions.

Of course then you get corrections back and know what further changes (if any) you need to make from your editor, and then post-sub revision is usually much more straightforward for anyone. This is probably a good argument for _not_ putting as much effort into your first drafts as I do.


----------



## M.T. Black (Apr 8, 2019)

I think a lot of folk work like you do, with a day or two of downtime leading up to a huge writing burst. For myself, I tend to be a bit more slow and steady, even though I am a fairly fast typist.


----------



## Lwaxy (Apr 8, 2019)

With self publishing I do not care as much if there are errors. But then, I don't usually buy anything anymore unless I have seen it somewhere, not counting big publishers. Which is why I love the "pay what you want" options. If I'm going to use it for anything, I can pay what I think it's worth. 

That said, there are so many errors in books even from larger publishers, I wonder if they ever had someone check. Castles and Crusades Free City of Eskadia for example, some of my players still make fun of the errors we found in there. It didn't really matter to us, the book was still great, but yeah... I just expect a lot less nowadays. 

I'm too slow to edit anymore,but I used to do an hour or two work and then as much of a break to stop me from getting headaches or overlook stuff. For me, the longer I work on something, the more the routine makes me screw up.


----------



## Reynard (Apr 8, 2019)

M.T. Black said:


> Multiple draftings (which I assume most people do) certainly complicate the "average words per day" scenario.
> 
> I'm curious about your experience, if you don't mind sharing. Let's say you wrote 6,000 words of "first draft" quality material. How many more hours, on average, would you spend on it to get it to "submission quality".




I don't know too many game writers that go through multiple full drafts. In my experience there is a lot of prep and planning, plus in brain percolation, such that the first real draft is a mostly there draft. There's editing and revisions to be done for sure, but it's rare to see people completely write through on this kind of work. Especially when you are making 3 cents a word.


----------



## Mike Myler (Apr 8, 2019)

Just gonna chime in here to say that Paizo's in-house quotas are about 3,000 words per day so if you're freelancing as a full-time thing you have to _at least_ hit that for a good day, and hopefully push further than that. It helps immensely if you work weekends and longer than 8 hours a day because unfortunately not every day is great, and also you're probably doing promotion of your work and trying to negotiate a social media presence, and you are likely doing more than just writing/design/editing too so forget free time. I managed to squeeze in two longer D&D sessions yesterday and feel like a god.


----------



## Cergorach (Apr 8, 2019)

> For example, Daniel Fox’s first RPG, Zweihander, was 275,200 words in length and he made 18 cents per word after all costs.



Well... Do you have a source for that information? Because:

Kickstarter raised $61,743
275,000 words at $0.18/word is $49,500, that leaves $12,243
KS fees and payment fees between 8% and 10% of KS fees, is between $5000-$6000
5 steel two handed swords as backer rewards
1020+ printed physical books @674 pages each, shipped to US/UK/EU backers for free.
Editor
Artists for a ton of illustrations
Layout

Either those books were printed on recycled toilet-paper or someone is forgetting some costs...
OR some income from outside of the Kickstarter itself (sales through DTRPG for example, the KS is almost three years old).


----------



## M.T. Black (Apr 10, 2019)

I got those figures from Daniel himself. I suspect he must be including dtrpg sales as well - ZWEIHÄNDER is an adamantine best-seller, which means it has sold at least 5,000 copies. 

Daniel might be willing to clarify further, but that is up to him.


----------



## Morrus (Apr 10, 2019)

M.T. Black said:


> I got those figures from Daniel himself. I suspect he must be including dtrpg sales as well - ZWEIHÄNDER is an adamantine best-seller, which means it has sold at least 5,000 copies.
> 
> Daniel might be willing to clarify further, but that is up to him.




Has he factored in the time he spends doing things other than writing? He does a lot of promotion, and presumably other tasks (I don’t know how involved he is on layout, art direction, editing, dealing with printers, al that stuff). Those come out of the profits too, not just the writing part of his job.

I dare say for my own books, I’ve spent more hours doing adjacent work than actual writing.


----------



## jasper (Apr 10, 2019)

Remember the 3 m's as a writer. Mumbling, Marketing, Maintenance.
Mumbling this the mumbles you put on paper, the research you do for the mumbles, the editing of mumbles.
Marketing. This include promotion, social media posts, and cons.
Maintenance. Downtime. Taxes. Fixing broken stuff.


----------



## Morrus (Apr 10, 2019)

jasper said:


> Remember the 3 m's as a writer. Mumbling, Marketing, Maintenance.
> Mumbling this the mumbles you put on paper, the research you do for the mumbles, the editing of mumbles.
> Marketing. This include promotion, social media posts, and cons.
> Maintenance. Downtime. Taxes. Fixing broken stuff.




Those are the things you do as a publisher, not a writer. They’re two very different things. 

Being a self-publisher can involve doing two or more peoples’ jobs, but publishing is a very different job to writing.


----------



## M.T. Black (Apr 11, 2019)

Cergorach said:


> Either those books were printed on recycled toilet-paper or someone is forgetting some costs...
> OR some income from outside of the Kickstarter itself (sales through DTRPG for example, the KS is almost three years old).




Ok, I spoke to Daniel, and he gave me the following information and permission to share it here:



> Those are rates coming out of Kickstarter + Backerkit + retail sales up front. Are you looking for clarity across the lifetime of Zweihander? Those numbers are dramatically higher than .18 based on sales. As an example, there have been 39k physical sales and 65,400 digital sales. These are sales generated on my own prior to my relationship with my new publisher Andrews McMeel, which is now at scale.




However you slice it, he has done incredibly well.


----------



## Von Ether (Apr 14, 2019)

Dr. Bull said:


> Can I make a request of all of the freelance writers out there?  Can you please make sure that you have studied how to write BEFORE you publish?  Take a few composition classes at the local community college, for goodness sake!
> 
> Grammar is important.  Clarity is important.
> 
> ...




Hence why the Adept program was born.


----------



## M.T. Black (Jun 13, 2019)

As a postscript, I should mention that Matt Colville recently shook up the industry by advertising for a freelance RPG writer and offering 25 cents per word! 

He also specified the expected output from that writer - 6,000 words per week. That translates to a nominal income of about $75,000 per year.


----------

