The World of the Women’s Mags (and why I’m done with them)
December ’08: Send editor a timely story idea based on recession.
April ’09:
Mridu, I love your idea! So timely! Let me talk to my boss and we’ll get this in motion.
June ’09:
Here’s your contract, M. Deadline’s end of July. Can’t wait to read it!
August ’09:
We’ve slated this for our November issue. Just have a few quick questions for you and we’ll send across your payment.
November ’09:
Ah, thanks for following up, M. We’ve pushed it a bit further now. It’ll run in the Feb issue. Once I have a confirmation on that, I’ll send across your check. Thanks for your patience!
February ’10:
Almost there, M. It’s been over six months since you wrote this– could you please update with new quotes, new numbers, and new stats? Also, if you could interview two more people, that would be great. It’s not a rewrite as much as an update. Once we have this, I’ll send across your check. Thanks!
April ’10:
Bad news, M. We’re going to have to kill this piece. It’s just not timely.
P.S. Please do send me more ideas. You seem to have a very good understanding of what we need.
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Who Am I?
I'm an award-winning freelance journalist based in New Delhi, India. I've written for Time, the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, Global Post, Ms. magazine, the Christian Science Monitor and many others. I'm a contributing editor at Elle, India and I've also contributed to the books Chicken Soup for the PreTeen Soul II and Voices of Alcoholism. In November 2010, I was named Development Journalist of the Year at the Developing Asia Journalism Awards Forum in Tokyo.
www.mridukhullar.com
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Wow. That’s really not a fun experience. That’s one year of running around. Hope you had some sort of kill fee arrangement with them.
Kill fee? Heck, no. I asked for and received the full fee.
Heh. That softens the blow a great deal.
No, I don’t think it does. I kept up my end of the deal, so the idea of kill fee in this situation is moot. A kill fee is applicable only when a writer hasn’t met their end of the deal, not when a publication continuously changes its mind.
However, it doesn’t pay for the year I spent waiting, it doesn’t pay for the extra time I spent re-reporting and rewriting. It doesn’t pay for the several times I could have resold this story as a reprint. The story was so good that I sold it to two different publications within three days of it being killed by this one. Of course, since it’s no longer “timely” I’ve lost out on selling (or reselling) it to some of my biggest clients. So where I could have made a few thousand dollars, I’ve made a few hundred.
The point of sharing this story here is that there’s more on the line than just an initial paycheck when a story that should have taken no more than three days to write, finalize, edit, and print takes over a year and a half. You lose time, money (both directly and indirectly), and of course having good and timely stories go into print and your portfolio.
[...] wrote about my experiences with a certain women’s magazine (in the US) on the blog last week, and a friend commented that he hoped I’d received a kill [...]
Yeah, my original post about kill fee was that something is preferable to nothing, so (geek alert) — ” full fees > kill fees > nothing ” was the equation I was thinking about, where > signifies better than. But, when you factor in all the stuff that you’ve mentioned, the equation doesn’t hold true.
Maybe the solution is to have some sort of clause in the contract saying that if there’s an inordinate delay from the client, then they’ll have to pay the full amount. I have tried this clause with one or two clients but they’ve balked but I know, having read other people, that they have put this kind of clause in. I’m talking about corporate work, but I don’t see why it can’t be translated to magazine publishing work. Of course, this assumes that you’re working with contracts, etc. when in certain situations it’s just an informal agreement over email.
I’ve been advised to put that clause into my contracts, actually, and it’s great advice. But I haven’t had the guts to do it so far (there are usually so many other things I want to negotiate). Think I’m going to try it though, for clients that are known to take their time.
Thanks for the input, Percy!
Yeah, definitely worth a shot, especially with difficult clients. If you feel anxious about putting the clause in, try it with a client that you wouldn’t mind losing (if you have this luxury) and maybe go from there. I think that you’ve done enough good work and have enough experience to get this clause in your contracts at least some of the time.