A Word From the Writers

I’m writing in response to the March 31 piece on California Business magazine. Publisher Karl Fleming and Editor Bill Blaylock say that they have doubled the rates that they will pay writers for stories--to roughly 50 cents a word from roughly 25 cents--in hopes of attracting more-accomplished reporters.

Perhaps I should allow Fleming and Blaylock the charitable interpretation that this means that one day in the future they plan to pay such rates. Instead, I take the more common-sense understanding, which is that they claim to now actually pay about 50 cents a word and that in the past they have paid about 25 cents a word.

Our organization, representing more than 275 self-employed Southern California writers, has just conducted a rate survey; the results have not yet been tabulated.

However, an informal poll of members of Independent Writers of Southern California who have until recently been regular contributors to California Business (and who are individually considered among the region’s most accomplished independent business writers) indicates that before Fleming and Blaylock, the California Business word rate was around 30 cents a word, based on articles of 2,500 to 3,500 words for which writers were paid fees ranging between $750 and $1,000.

Their new editorial policy is to use more, but shorter, stories--from 1,000 to 1,500 words--for which they are offering to pay no more than $300 per article. This translates to a rate in the range of 20 cents to 30 cents a word. So, despite what they told The Times, California Business has not raised rates; to the contrary, it has lowered them.

With regard to Fleming and Blaylock’s statement about reducing overhead, this has again been accomplished at the expense of contributing writers. Their new editorial policy encourages writers to submit copy, written on a personal computer, via a modem to their typesetters.

This saves the magazine the expense of labor-intensive keyboarding of words written on manuscript paper. But many writers, even some of the better ones, do not have computers, and fewer still have modems. California Business, nevertheless, wants writers to buy this equipment while working for less money than previously paid. As a result, many of the former editor’s leading contributors have declined to accept new assignments.

MARVIN J. WOLF

President

Independent Writers of Southern California

Culver City