> If you have to ask, it's not enough. You don't do this sort of thing for
the
> money; you do it for love of the game.
Boy would I have to disagree.
D20 materials sell well enough to compensate their creators better than most
small press games. I'd like to see the best professional writers competing
to get their text in print at top publishers, and publishers competing to
attract those writers with decent pay. Thus should competition serve "the
love of the game" by resulting in ever better offerings on the local store's
shelves. I would suggest 4 cents per word as a reasonable baseline rate to
offer a professional writer for D20 material. In the old days as a
freelancer for TSR (early 90s), I was making 10 cents per word and up
writing D&D material. Sure, I loved the game, but I also was paying my way
through college with it.
This baseline rate may change depending on future sales in the D20 area.
Obviously, if crowding in the market means sales of the typical product drop
by half or more from what they are now, it may be hard for publishers to
afford the 4 cent rate. (However, if it's hard to afford that rate, the
publishers are also probably better off publishing their own individual
games/systems, same as they did before.) The rate may also be subject to
adjustment based on factors like how experienced the writer is, how much
editorial work has to go into the manuscript before publication, the size of
the book (the word rate may be lower on a longer manuscript, since the
publisher doesn't set cover price in direct proportion to word count), etc.
Publishers are probably lowballing their pay scale right now, due to
skepticism about the future of the D20 market, an apparently overflowing
supply of fans desperate to see their names and work in print, and our
reflexive stinginess. Plus it's always easier to raise rates in the future
than to lower them. I seem to recall WW offering 3 cents per word on Relics
& Rituals, which struck me as quite low. Given the success of the Creature
Collection, they probably could still rake in the bucks while paying
contributors three times that. For Touched by the Gods, our first
hardcover, we have contracted the writers at 4 cents per word; likewise the
upcoming bestiary (which is presently in limbo while I try to figure out how
many D20 monster books are really going to appear this year). In
comparison, our other (non-D20) product lines typically pay 2-3 cents per
word. We're also paying more to Penumbra artists than for our other lines.
> For whole books smaller companies (ie those with small cashflows)
> tend to pay just on royalties rather than for the whole project.
I encourage companies and writers to deal on a cash basis. We do royalties
with a handful of people and projects, but experienced game industry writers
will generally tell you that you will come out ahead taking cash.
(Typically you'll make more in interest on your cash in the bank than you
would in continuing royalties.) And the company saves a bundle in future
bookkeeping averted. As a writer, consider too that cash up front is worth
more than cash upon publication (especially if you have no clear idea of
when publication might occur.)
> Consider
> how many words might be in a 32 page module, something in the 8000 range.
That seems quite small for 32 pages. A Penumbra adventure in the 32 page
format is more like 12,000 at a minimum, and 15,000 is our target. (Maps
and whatnot cause a lot of variation from one project to another.)
> Obviously established writers or people with exceptional ideas can demand
> better cent/word rates, or higher percentage royalties, or even a mixture.
> Of course they get away with it because in theory their names guarantees
> more sales...
Maybe. I'm not particularly interested in buying name recognition (which
doesn't go far in the game industry, as far as I can tell); I'm interested
in buying quality writing. I will offer more for a manuscript that requires
less editorial time (and thus saves us money), whether it's written by a
relative newbie or an established pro. I may offer more money to an
established professional who has proven *by working with me* that s/he
provides clean copy that requires minimal editing. Reputation and books
published by someone else are not enough. (As Steve Jackson has often
observed, one often hires a writer and discovers one wanted to hire that
writer's former editor instead.)
If anyone out there has written a professional quality D20 System
manuscript, please consider submitting it to Atlas Games. (Send us a query
letter before you send the manuscript; include our release form with the
query letter, and your e-mail address so that we can request an electronic
copy of the manuscript if it seems like something we could be interested
in.) If it doesn't suit our needs, you can always submit it somewhere
else -- that's the beauty of freelancing in the day of D20, though I'm not
sure how many writers out there are taking advantage of it yet. If it
*does* suit our needs, we'll make you an offer. If that offer isn't high
enough, you can always decline it and shop your work elsewhere.
------------------------------------------------------
John Nephew voice (651) 638-0077 fax (651) 638-0084
President, Atlas Games www.atlas-games.com
