Working for free at any stage of your career has value, says food writer Julie Van Rosendaal.
A guest post by Julie Van Rosendaal
I’m not being paid to write this. It’s a guest post, a format whose popularity has slipped in recent years as the concept of writing for exposure began to lose its luster. It seemed more popular back when no one was making any money at this blogging thing.
So why am I writing it, if I’m not being paid? Because I like and admire Dianne, I read her blog and want to give back for all the knowledge she’s shared with me, and because I’m part of this online community and find it an interesting conversation. Because I do what I do for plenty of reasons, and only one of them is monetary.
Derek Thompson made a good point in The Atlantic, that most of us write for free all the time anyway. We share our thoughts and ideas –often at length – on Twitter and Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr, in the comments section of other websites and on our own blogs. If all those words were arranged and paid for by someone, the Internet would be a far quieter place.
Yet it’s a common war cry among writers and bloggers: Don’t write for free! Your time is valuable! Writing for free undervalues us all! And I get that they won’t buy the cow if you’re giving the milk away. Or they won’t pay you, as a well-established and talented cow, for your high quality cream if half the herd is offering up free access to their udders.
But that way of thinking also levels the playing field. Writing is a skill, and the words and voices of some writers are more valuable, something many editors recognize. We can’t all participate at the same level. Add influence and reach into the equation, and it can be difficult to gauge compensation.
When you’re trying to make a living at writing, as Seth Godin mentioned, it also depends on what you mean by “work” and “free.” I’ve done lots of work for free to establish myself in the food writing and blogging community. There are advantages to providing your time, energy, creativity, resources, food – and yes, words – even if the benefits don’t pay the bills. There is value to building relationships, supporting your community, or doing things that may lead to paying gigs down the road.
I broke into food writing back in the 1990s, before blogs existed and the Internet was much of a thing. I offered free food columns to small town rural newspapers just to get my foot in the door of an industry there was no clear path to besides news-focused journalism school. I saw it as a hobby. It was fun to answer reader letters, and didn’t cost me anything. Soon a few free cooking spots on CBC Radio One led to an initially unpaid column, which led to a paid weekly column and an invaluable position with Canada’s most iconic media brand, the part of my job I value most.
I’ve also written cookbooks, and they don’t always make economic sense. Lots of people work hard to land a deal and then spend their entire advances on ingredients, food styling and photography. They don’t earn out. And although writing a cookbook can be a crazy amount of work for next to no pay, to others it’s seen as the ultimate accomplishment. When I self-published my first cookbook I lost money, but it got the attention of a major book publisher and it opened plenty of doors.
Regarding food blogging and sponsored posts, I say if it’s worth it to you to photograph and post about your dinner in exchange for a $100 prime rib roast to feed your family, go for it. If you feel like you’re being taken advantage of, don’t. It’s true that everyone’s time is valuable, that it can take hours to shop, prep, photograph, edit and write, but remember that the client is interested in your reach, not your time.
So if working for free helps you to:
- Connect or build a relationship with someone you admire
- Gain valuable insight or experience
- Position yourself as more of an expert or authority in your field
- Get a paid gig
- Market your books or services or products
- Or move forward somehow…
… just do it. I found the experiences and opportunities that came along invaluable.
* * *
Julie Van Rosendaal is the author of six best-selling cookbooks. Her seventh, Gatherings, has just been released, and an eighth is due in fall 2015. She’s a food columnist on CBC Radio One, food editor of Parents Canada magazine, a contributing editor for Western Living magazine, a food columnist for publications across Canada and the voice behind her award-winning blog, Dinner with Julie.
I heard her speak at the Food Bloggers of Canada conference about working for free and asked her to write about it. (Disclosure: I was compensated to attend the conference, as was Julie.)
Wow – this is great Julie!! Your post is exactly what I need right now =)) Thank you Dianne for sharing!
That’s great to hear Dana! Glad you got some good out of it!
Nice post Julie!
Thoughtful, nuanced, smart. What a great read!
On occasion I, too, work for free, for a variety of reasons, including some of those mentioned. Unfortunately, the hard truth is that there is just too little paying work and too many people hungry for it in today’s food writing biz. So, many of us are often willing to work for free in hopes of getting future paid gigs. Most people don’t have to wrestle with the issue: Chefs, caterers, food stylists, even dish washers generally aren’t expected to donate their services–except perhaps to charities. My point: We are in a fairly unique and unfortunate situation, and need to own up to the fact that at least to some extent we have brought it on ourselves.
I think you’re right Nancy – we are living in unique times, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a case of bringing it onto ourselves – the internet has leveled the playing field, and it’s not the same game of a small group of professsional writers writing for a handful of print publications. There are certainly people in other professions who do things for free in order to make connections or align themselves with companies and brands they want to build relationships with; I think writing is unique in that (unlike most services) most of us are able to do it at home, in our free time or whatever time frame works for us (unlike chefs and caterers) with little or no overhead.
Thank you, Julie, for this great post.
This line stood out the most for me, and is truly the key to saying yes or no. “If you feel like you’re being taken advantage of, don’t.”
My comments aren’t about the author of this power but it brought up something I think about often. I’d be curious to know how people would feel if others decided that they would do the job of those people for free. For instance, I’d like to work as a secretary and not get paid. Your boss thinks that sounds great so you are out of a job! I’d like to be a chef and and do it for nothing…I realize the author writes cookbooks so is a pro but many others say the same thing about writing but would never say it about other professions. Yes, the Internet has changed everything for writers. At one point I made my entire living writing online. While I don’t disagree that one can garner contacts and exposure by working for free, there are many people who make their entire living from writing and when others offer to write for free, they make that much more difficult for the professionals to pay their bills. I understand this has changed forever. And contributed to poor grammar and spelling were see all over the online world. I do believe that blogging and guest posts are examples of a way to gain exposure/or give back to other bloggers. And don’t mean to suggest that one can’t write well or contribute by writing even if one isn’t a pro. Just some thoughts.
I agree Beth, and thanks for sharing your thoughts! While this seems to be a bigger issue with writers, I do know people in other professions who often do events and other things for free – caterers and chefs, to name a couple. I love the example of Nash the Slash, a Canadian musician (now deceased) who agreed to open up for the Who in Toronto when they couldn’t find any other local bands to do it for very little pay. He was like hey, I’ll do it for free! He said playing for the crowd was one of the best moments of his life – and it kickstarted his career.
While I agree that writing for free does offer more exposure and sometimes leads to bigger and better things, I think the issue is that many sites lure writers in to writing substantial content for free with the promise of so-called exposure. In the end, they get a lot of free content, make money from it, and offer the writers nothing, or very little, in return. The solution is to be judicious about who you give free content to. The problem with this is that it can be murky territory. I’ve written plenty of free content and, frankly, it hasn’t helped me at all. So now my free content is for my own blog, but if an opportunity comes along to write for something that I feel is worth my time, sure, I’ll do it.
I totally agree Roberta! And so many people think it’s worth it for “exposure” via a link in the byline – in my experience, even posts on major websites don’t drive any traffic to my own. No one really reads bylines, let alone clicks on them…
Hi Julie, Thanks for the great post and interesting viewpoints on the subject of writing for free. There are a lot of positives that can come out of writing for free and like you said if they dont want to do it, or feel taken advantage of, they don’t have to do it.
Agreed Susan!
Good food for thought. I write for blogs for free and I’m comfortable with doing that. I haven’t written print for free and I hope I never have to, but as you say, the monetary aspect is just one part of the equation. And yes, it is a very different playing field out there than even two years ago. Writers need to adapt if they want to stay connected.
Agreed Susan!
Sorry Jody.. comments are being wonky for me! It’s true that it’s a totally different playing field. And to be honest, I think the new practice of being paid $25-50 for a story is akin to not being paid at all..
Great thoughts everyone! You’re totally right Roberta, many sites (and brands) offer the “opportunity” to write for free for “exposure”, and it’s not always a good deal for the writer. (I find it so funny that even paid jobs are called “opportunities” when offered to bloggers!)
Thank you for this post, your thoughts and this discussion, Julie, and thanks, Dianne, for posting it. I have had this discussion with Dianne, my husband, a lot of people in the business and I have always been of the mind that one should be paid for every piece of writing but that payment isn’t always or necessarily monetary. One can indeed be paid in any one of the things you listed and I have been. It is a personal decision, a decision that I weigh out and make each time I am asked to write or decide to write for a platform or publication, whether it be for money, exposure, a personal desire to work with someone or see my writing somewhere. I cannot and should not make that decision for someone else, nor should someone make that decision for me. Sometimes the exposure I have gotten for being published somewhere was priceless!
People ask why we as writers should work for free when no one would imagine asking, say, a doctor to work for free but doctor’s do… they volunteer, they offer medical advice and assistance to friends and loved ones; we are guided by our own conscience, our own needs and desires. But then I think, well, one writer might be happy to write for $100 while another, although offered payment in money, would refuse that amount. I have been paid the same amount of money for two different pieces, for two different publications; one was worth it, one wasn’t. So even talking about monetary payment for writing is not cut and dried.
I SO agree with all your points Jamie! Well put! It’s not cut and dried.. we all do things for different reasons, and you’re right – I get paid a range of fees for similar work from different publications! And other people do things for free as well – we all have to make these decisions for ourselves.
I, too, think it can often be worth it to write for “free” — or rather, not for immediate payment in cash. In fact, I’m an academic, so all of my writing (which takes an enormous amount of research and polishing to put together) gets published for free. But it tends to be worth it because I’ve gotten jobs and fellowships based on my publications, and the price per article winds up being very high if you look at it that way.
That said, I do think there are issues with it too. One has been mentioned by others — undercutting. The cream doesn’t always rise to the top, sometimes jobs just go to the lowest bidder. (And I have seen some truly atrocious and illiterate food “reporting” as a result of this.)
The other issue is privilege, a word I’ve grown to hate, but one that has its place. The worlds of art and writing are heavily biased towards people who can work for free, whether it’s the New York internship that doesn’t pay or just producing free content. This tends to mean that the people with financial support (rich parents, partner who earns well) are the ones who are more likely to be able to climb their way up. It’s not true 100% of the time, but it’s true enough of the time that it’s a disturbing reality. I’d really rather see a world where artists, writers, musicians are paid for their work.
Great points Irina. I think undercutting happens in many professions – and while some jobs will always go to the lowest bidder, that affects the finished product. I would much rather pay a skilled designer than get someone to do my website for free. Ditto my kitchen renos! I’d rather pay for an accountant with experience than get someone who does it on the side, as a hobby. And for the most part I don’t read publications that go for quantity over quality, with poor images and atrocious writing.
You make a great point about privilege. I often envy food bloggers who had the luxury to focus on building their own websites (essentially unpaid work) while their spouses supported the family, and now have enormously lucrative blogs, when mine was backburnered for years in lieu of paid writing work. (So in those cases, working for free paid off huge, and the disadvantage was not being able to do it!) But the same could be said for people with industry connections, born into privileged families, etc.
I’d also rather see a world where artists, writers and musicians are paid for their work! Of course, not all writing is art (copywriting, for example). I suppose what it boils down to is not worrying what other people do and how it affects our work – easier said than done I suppose, but it’s the only factor we have control over.