What does legit write-for-hire look like?

[Bramblethorn]

I'm assuming the mods deleted the sketchy contest thread, but it might be good to talk about what a legitimate "write-for-hire" offer looks like (commissions etc.)

I don't do commissioned fiction, but some basics:

• If a stranger wants you to write for their business, and they're legit, they should be paying you. In money.
  • If at any stage they ask you to pay money so that later they can pay you, RUN AWAY. This is called "advance fee fraud".
  • "Exposure" is a cause of death, not a form of payment.
• "Contests" where only the winners get paid = asking everybody else to work for free.
  • If a business wants to check out your writing before hiring you, the ethical way to do that is to look at your portfolio - what you've already written - rather than asking you to write something new with no guarantee of payment.
• "We don't have money to pay you yet, but this is guaranteed to be a success and we'll pay you once the money comes in" = asking you to work for free. You can bet they had to pay for their website/etc. up front.
• Even if it's not big enough to be worth getting a lawyer involved, you should have a written agreement including the following:
  • Specific requirements for the work.
  • Payment rates, method, and schedule (e.g. my freelance contracts typically have payment within 30 days of invoice)
  • Whether they get to ask for revisions; if so when and how much.
  • Copyright ownership of work done. (Do they get all rights to it? Do you retain the right to publish it, maybe with an exclusivity period? Do they have the right to publish it and make money off it?) Factor this into what you charge.

Folk who do commissions: what else do you look for? What are reasonable rates?

 

[Blind_Justice]

When doing freelance work for a business:

First of all, I'd try to find my employer online. If they (want to) do business, they should have an online footprint of some kind. Web site, socials, a fucking phone number at least. It's nice to have other means of contact should the e-mail address suddenly stop working. Seems to happen much too often.

Also, I can try and gauge their track record and prior work.

 

[alohadave]

If they are a legit company, there should be a business listing for them with your government office that handles that. In the US, the state should have listings of all registered businesses. I'd imagine that it's similar for other countries.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

This is called "advance fee fraud".

Yog's law: Money should flow toward the author.

If a business wants to check out your writing before hiring you, the ethical way to do that is to look at your portfolio - what you've already written - rather than asking you to write something new with no guarantee of payment.

Alternatively, they can commission a sample piece to their specifications.

This is becoming an increasing problem in some industries. People ask for a work sample, with the intention up front of rejecting the candidate and then using the work sample.

 

[MrPixel]

This is becoming an increasing problem in some industries. People ask for a work sample, with the intention up front of rejecting the candidate and then using the work sample.

Oh gawd. This is nothing new. 35 years ago the medium-sized company I worked for was solicited under an RFP (request for proposal) from a big company (an AT&T component IIRC) for a process in our line of work. I recall spending about a week on the proposal. Turned it in on the deadline, waited about a month for the decision, at which point I tasked our sales rep to find out what was going on. The answer was "Oh, we decided to do it ourselves."

Later intel revealed that my proposal had designed their system for them, for free.

I subsequently confirmed that big companies (Coca-Cola being another firsthand example) do this all the time, use their size to dangle the prospect of doing business with them. Sometimes it would net you temporary work when the task was essentially cleaning up a previous vendor's disaster, and once you fixed it, it was "thank you" and out the door you went.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Yog's law: Money should flow toward the author.

Mostly yes, though there are some exceptions in self-pub. When a publisher arranges services like cover art or hiring an editor, then it's appropriate for money to flow from the publisher to the artist and the editor, and that still applies when the author is the publisher.

Alternatively, they can commission a sample piece to their specifications.

This is becoming an increasing problem in some industries. People ask for a work sample, with the intention up front of rejecting the candidate and then using the work sample.

Yep - and even the ones who "win" design contests like that, and get paid something, are often getting a pittance compared to what the contest-runner is going to make off that work. I was reading an account recently where the contest winner got two movie tickets for designing a T-shirt, and the business that ran the contest sold tens of thousands of shirts from her design.

 

[Killimandjaro]

Hi, i am the author of what you describe by the "sketchy" contest. I thought you guys do contests in here all the time, we even threw some extra money on it to make it more appealing. We are not a big corp or a big studio, just a bunch of freelancers that work on a popular VN. Nothing more, nothing less, we are not offering a full time job just a way to make some extra money. That's why we thought we didn't need a contract, And we are not forcing anyone to work for free, We just wanna make sure we hire the right person for the job. That's what contests are made for no ? The story we gave on the contest is already written and has already been published, we gave this story because it was difficult for us to write it. So we thought it is a good benchmark to judge the abilities of the future writer .

As for the name of the game, we decided to keep this private to avoid unwanted press, the writers who will join our crew will get all the details he needs and all the agreed amount (even in advance). We are not scammers or whatever you call them. I certainly don't have the time or the mindset to do these kind of things. And neither the owner.

But since the mods deleted the thread i guess we should say problem solved.

Good luck with your writing

 

[MrPixel]

We are not a big corp or a big studio, just a bunch of freelancers that work on a popular VN.

Then you should have known the perils that freelancers face especially in non-mainstream genres. For every Apple or Meta that started with a bunch of guys around a kitchen table with ideas they thought were good, there are thousands of failed ventures with people feeling cheated, whether they were or not.

Just your solicitation demonstrated you have a plot and definitely have writing skills, though you might want to tone down the superlatives. If you want to grow your creative alliance, you might want to do it organically within the group, a friends-of-friends sort of thing. "Cattle calls" rarely work in creative fields unless sponsored by an established and known entity.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

That's why we thought we didn't need a contract, And we are not forcing anyone to work for free, We just wanna make sure we hire the right person for the job. That's what contests are made for no ?

No, that's what job interviews are for.

At best your proposition is a cattle call.

 

[BreakTheBar]

That's why we thought we didn't need a contract, And we are not forcing anyone to work for free, We just wanna make sure we hire the right person for the job. That's what contests are made for no ?

You don't need a contest to find someone to do freelance, work-for-hire erotica writing. I said it in the previous thread, but the Erotica industry is a thriving buyer's market. There are TONS of people who want to make some extra money on the side by writing some smut. Fiverr, Reddit and other sites host the ability to connect freelancers with clients.

If your worry is finding people with a specific level of quality, or style, to their writing then what you are asking for is (often) a higher level of professionalism. And with that professionalism comes a greater need for you to present the same.

Look at it this way - if someone had come into your forum/discord/patreon/wherever your fanbase congregates, had a brand new account, and started offering a cash prize for the best fanfiction one of your fans writes of your story, would you be OK with that? Or if someone approached your artists saying 'We have another project you could work on. Take some time to make up a picture based on this prompt and you might win some money and the chance to work for us on this unnamed project.' Would that sound like a good opportunity?

You very well could be representing a legitimate collective who are creating a visual novel that represents the latest, greatest thing... but if you can't say the name and connect yourself to it legitimately, no one will take an anonymous account seriously. Especially if you can't even provide details like a pay rate.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Hi, i am the author of what you describe by the "sketchy" contest. I thought you guys do contests in here all the time, we even threw some extra money on it to make it more appealing. We are not a big corp or a big studio, just a bunch of freelancers that work on a popular VN. Nothing more, nothing less, we are not offering a full time job just a way to make some extra money. That's why we thought we didn't need a contract,

My freelancing isn't full time either, but there's still a contract with every job I get. That's how we make sure we all agree on what my job is, what it isn't, and when/how much I get paid.

I obviously can't check the original post, but my recollection is that you promised a "contract" as part of the first prize, and then walked it back. That sort of stuff suggests that you haven't thought through the business side of things as much as you ought to before advertising.

And we are not forcing anyone to work for free, We just wanna make sure we hire the right person for the job.

The way you're doing that requires candidates to do work (writing a story is work) and if you get more than three candidates, they're not all getting paid. That's where it becomes unpaid work.

That's what contests are made for no ?

Here? No. The contests Literotica runs are not for the purpose of hiring people.

As for the name of the game, we decided to keep this private to avoid unwanted press, the writers who will join our crew will get all the details he needs and all the agreed amount (even in advance). We are not scammers or whatever you call them. I certainly don't have the time or the mindset to do these kind of things. And neither the owner.

But for the person on the other end of the arrangement, the difference between "scammer" and "well-meaning people who haven't planned out the business side of things" is often not much.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

That's why we thought we didn't need a contract

O.O
I missed this part. What does that even mean, to think you don't need a contract? You were going to give people your email address and hope you got some writing back? And hope they'd trust you to pay them something? eventually? somehow?

Are you just saying you were going to discuss terms over email and let that correspondence serve as your agreement? Instead of, e.g., doing the whole rigamarole with docusign or a notary or something?

 

[lovecraft68]

FWIW, I always give some credit to people who come here and solicit rather than run around the site stealing stories and publishing on their sites-or under their name-like so many others do.

I also can't help but see the irony in a group of people who have give work away for free here for years, suddenly acting like any offer of a few dollars is some type of awful scam.

Unless you win a contest, all we do here is make Laurel money. She put up the platform so people can see and enjoy our work and we have a place to post stories and a little community on the boards, but whether you have one story or a hundred, one follower or a thousand, we're all paid the same which is zero. But we understand that, there's no scam here, our payment is in the eyes on our story, and everyone here is obviously fine with that. We also know that our work is constantly being lifted and shoved on other sites, so its a risk we all accept.

So, why is the idea you might send something to someone and not make any money off it, but people will read it so terrible? No one is making anyone do anything, its an offer.

 

[alohadave]

As for the name of the game, we decided to keep this private to avoid unwanted press

I don't understand the secrecy. You need as many people to want to know about this as possible.

You basically did everything possible to make this sound like a scam.

FWIW, I always give some credit to people who come here and solicit rather than run around the site stealing stories and publishing on their sites-or under their name-like so many others do.

I also can't help but see the irony in a group of people who have give work away for free here for years, suddenly acting like any offer of a few dollars is some type of awful scam.

Unless you win a contest, all we do here is make Laurel money. She put up the platform so people can see and enjoy our work and we have a place to post stories and a little community on the boards, but whether you have one story or a hundred, one follower or a thousand, we're all paid the same which is zero. But we understand that, there's no scam here, our payment is in the eyes on our story, and everyone here is obviously fine with that. We also know that our work is constantly being lifted and shoved on other sites, so its a risk we all accept.

So, why is the idea you might send something to someone and not make any money off it, but people will read it so terrible? No one is making anyone do anything, its an offer.

The difference is that the conditions and expectations are laid out here, and you can read them beforehand.

Sure, we do this 'for free' here, but in return we get an audience. The solicitation couldn't even get their story straight about what they wanted and what they were offering.

If they had a website and clearly expressed what they were looking for and what the conditions were, they might have had a better response. I still don't know if it's an actual company because the person was so cagey about it.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Unless you win a contest, all we do here is make Laurel money. She put up the platform so people can see and enjoy our work and we have a place to post stories and a little community on the boards, but whether you have one story or a hundred, one follower or a thousand, we're all paid the same which is zero. But we understand that, there's no scam here, our payment is in the eyes on our story, and everyone here is obviously fine with that. We also know that our work is constantly being lifted and shoved on other sites, so its a risk we all accept.

So, why is the idea you might send something to someone and not make any money off it, but people will read it so terrible? No one is making anyone do anything, its an offer.

Point taken, but for me there's a difference between "hobby where you might very occasionally win a prize" and "business proposition that pays like a hobby".

My partner and I used to paint gaming miniatures; she entered a competition at a con and won something like $25 for "best beginner", for a figure that she might've spent five hours painting. She was happy about that, because it was money and a good feeling for something she would've done anyway for the fun of it. But it somebody offered her a deal of "you paint my mini for $5 an hour" she'd have laughed in their face.

 

[AchtungNight]

A decision will be given following a brief but thorough interview with me and my mental council of alternative perspectives, many of whom are experts in writing, accounting, legal advice, medical advice, psychology, philosophy, acting, and other disciplines. All are experts at trickery and verbal judo. You must be willing to treat me as a potential Stephen King pre-Carrie regardless of your opinion of my writing skills. Remember I’m a customer and so are you. We’re both always right per the old wisdom and always assholes per Mallrats. We’re all equal and have certain insecurities, interests, and inalienable rights. I accept that you think the contract is worth while but do not necessarily agree. I will need a way to break the contract before I sign it. It better be ready to alter terms if necessary. Said Lando to Vader.

Are you ready?