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Tuesday, May 13, 2014

RidiculAds: Low pay, high volume and fast turnaround, and low pay

No, it wasn’t a typo. I meant to say “low pay” twice... at the very least. Recently, a colleague found these RidiculAds on a jobs board she subscribes to, and according to her, the only reasonable response by a self-respecting writer or editor would have to be "Are you kidding me?" 

RidiculAd #1. Experienced scientific / medical writers to research/write articles (1000-3000 words) for a scientific encyclopedia. Rate: $0.05 (5 cents) a word plus a credit in the publication. Conclusion:  $150 for a 3000-word article.

RidiculAd # 2. Contract editors to work with authors who are non-native speakers of English. Research experience (studies conducted, papers written/published, papers reviewed, etc.) plus at least 10 years of copyediting and substantive editing experience in academic publishing required. Must commit to editing at least 60,000 words per month on short turnaround times. Rate: $10,000 to $12,000 per year. Conclusion:  60,000 words per month adds up to 720,000 words per year, which at $12,000 per year works out at ~1.6 cents per word.

RidiculAd # 3. Editors for 1-page PDF handouts on health and wellness topics. Rate: $3 per page. A quick review by a colleague of a few sample handouts the client supplied, revealed a sloppy writing and/or editing of these pieces. Conclusion: You get what you pay for.

RidiculAd # 4. Experienced writers wanted to produce health, diet, and cookbooks. A typical project takes 80-120 hours to complete and pays $3,000-$3,500. Fast turnaround expected (~35,000 words in no more than 3 weeks). Conclusion: If one gets paid $3,500 for 120 hours of work, that would equal to $29 per hour.

These jobs offers diminish the highly skilled craft of writing and editing, but unfortunately they exist.  Writing requires thinking and creativity, and not simply churning out a high volume of words in a short time. Unfortunately there are jobs out there that pay even worse than these do. What’s even more unfortunate, is that there are the writers willing to accept these rates for their work. As long as these writers, who don’t seem to value their craft, are willing to accept such job offers, these offers will continue to exist and chisel away at the integrity of our profession. It’s time to say “no, thanks!”, and walk...no run, the other way.


Credit: Thanks to Eleanor Mayfield for drawing my attention to these bad job offers