Short or Long - Investing in the Periodical Market

Short and long are stock market investment terms, but they also describe a different type of investment for a writer: time. If you work in the periodical area, you can take on short work - front of book (FOB), charts, and other pieces that are often in the 150 to 500 word range - or longer work like features or department pieces that could run 750 to 3,000 or more words.

Most writers understand that getting a check for $1,200 to $3,000 or even a lot more is nice. But shorts are worth far less, so are they worth the investment in your time? It actually depends on two factors. One is the hourly rate. Remember that you need to calculate how much you must make an hour to keep yourself in business. (See the business planning article in the writer resources area of this blog.) A short that runs, say, 500 words, that pays $1/word, and that you can finish in three hours, comes out to almost $167 dollars an hour.

That is a nice rate, but you have to really watch your time. Add up all the time - all interviews, all writing of all drafts, answering questions from the editor, and so on. When I hear writers estimate the time it takes to do something, I know that most significantly underestimate the time they actually spent, because people do in general. When I run my business planning class and have people closely monitor where their time goes, they are almost always shocked, if they've never checked it before.

But say that you are accurately monitoring your time. Why not then do a lot of shorts to make your income? Because there's another consideration - the time for marketing, billing, and overhead. If you make $500 for a short, then four of them pay as much as one 2000 word article paying $1/word. The amount of writing time might even be comparable. However, figure that a 500 word piece really needs two to three sources to come across as sold. You're now booking 8 to 12 interviews, versus the 6 or 7 that might be all you need for the longer piece. That means more time interviewing and scheduling your time.

You're also going to spend about as much time writing a query for a short as you would for a longer piece, plus you have to generate the ideas and pitch editors. So your marketing and sales time has just quadrupled. If you make a lot of your income from shorts, then you're probably spending many more of your hours marketing, interviewing, managing your time, and billing (and collecting). Now you see the real drawback - not the hourly rate, but the time you must invest to do enough shorts to make a living.

I'm not knocking shorts, and still do them sometimes myself if I think it makes sense. However, recognize that your time is valuable - because once its gone, you can't get it back. Maybe you could use a few more hours of sleep, or exercise, or reading, playing with the kids, writing a novel or play - you get the idea. Don't base your business planning only on hourly rates. Keep in mind the overhead and support you need to provide per piece and factor in how long a week you need to sustain the income you want.

Time for Online?

When trying to understand publishers and where they're going, it always makes sense to watch the usual business leaders - like Time Inc. It's not necessarily the most cutting-edge or experimental, but the organization is one of the most prestigious in the industry, and others look when it moves.

So it's interesting to see a couple of items about the company's commitment to online publishing. About a week ago, Gawker reported that Time Magazine was "shoving its reluctant writers online." As managing editor Rick Stengel wrote in a memo:

I suspect that some of you regard writing for TIME.com as an obligation, and not what you came to TIME to do. But times have changed, and we have to change with them. If you care about what you do - and I know you do - then you need to display your talent, your expertise, and your dedication online as well as in the magazine. That goes for editors as well as writers. Everyone should now have beats and areas of responsibility (Ratu has the list), and you should talk to Josh as well as your editors about what your contribution to TIME.com should be.

And now Advertising Age has an article about how 1.2 million subscribers to the company's publications are getting emails pointing them to People's first digi-mag - a 30 page magazine/website hybrid found only online with an animated cover. The print version of People (notice how we adjust our language almost unconsciously to address the changing circumstances) will also promote the site.

The online world is already business as usual, but emphasis will continuously shift there. Now is not the time to bemoan print magazines folding or how the world is changing. Yes, it is - and it always does. Now is the time to position yourself to become an expert at online work. If you asked most writers now, I'd wager that they'd say it's just a matter of writing.

That will change. You'll see a growing push for additional skills that make the lives of the publishers easier. At least some degree of HTML coding. Knowledge of popular web software. These and others will become what business calls barriers to entry. Then there will be the additional skills - multimedia, use of specialty programming languages, comfort with databases - that will be the additional value making some people worth paying more than others.

So how are your skills?