I’ve spent the last two days redoing my bibliography on my website, as Tuesday is the official release of 50 Shades of Neigh, and in doing so it’s let me reflect on how, and why, I’ve signed my stories to certain publishing houses.
There’s a word passed about among the writing community, and that is Exposure.
When a writer, author, or producer says they got paid in exposure, it generally means that the writer has given their work away for free to a house or publisher in the hopes that their work will reach more people, a broader audience, and help make the writer more well-known. It kind of feels like an instagram ‘influencer’ asking for free meals, or even more arrogantly, asking the restaurant to pay them to eat there, for a few posts on social media.
Have I written for exposure? Yes, I have. I actually have a rule about how I operate. I will write for exposure for a house that picks up one of my larger works. If a house picks up a novel or novelette and pays me for them, I’ll write a short for their magazine or an anthology. If a house picks up a short from me, I owe them a flash or a few. This lets me reach out to their core audience and community, and lets them, the readers, see my style and name. It EXPOSES me to the clients and fans that look forward to seeing new work.
Has it worked for me? I’d like to think so. I can actually see on a chart, how my sales and amazon ranking have been slowly increasing over the years.
Is it a tactic I will continue to employ often? Maybe; my writing time over the years has been affected by my personal life, and while I would love to have the luxury of just writing for free, I don’t. The royalties and token payments I get go towards paying my website or picking up copies of books that I can sell to help cover my overheads.
Is it something for you to try? That is up to you. Writing for exposure can be a tricky business. After all, you could spend hours or days or weeks on a piece, only to see it rejected from the magazine or anthology. It could also get lost in publication, you could lose the story forever, or it could end up in a panned collection. It’s a gamble, but played right, it could garner you new fans, and even, new sales.
What I’m trying to say is, be wary and cautious, and it’s entirely up to you in the end. Go in with your eyes open and you mind aware. No one will scoff you if you decide that you can’t write for free, but if you do, make sure you are comfortable doing so.