What to pay a RPG writer?

[Embassy of Time]

I've been working on my passion project RPG for a bit now, and I was thinking that maybe I could hire some aspiring writers to create material for it, using any income from the project (I do not expect it to be a source of personal income, anyway) to hire as many as possble. The thought is that Corona has beaten the cr*p out of a lot of people's finances, maybe I could help a few make the bills more easily. I'm not a publisher, but I'm financially stable, so two birds, one stone.

But finding information about hiring anyone for anything is a nightmare, apparently. Most job sites seem to use a lot of false advertising (and if not the site, the users sure do), and there seems to be no standards in place for anything. So I was wondering, is it better to pay royalties or fixed rates, and what would those rates be? (If royalties, I expect them pretty high, since RPGs sell relatively poorly and I am not aiming for profit in the first place).

Anyone have some experience in the matter, or personal preferences? Any advice will be gratefully accepted...

Note: The most common number I've found is 3-5 cents per word, mostly from article writing. But even that is far from general...

[DarkPumpkin]

If your aim is not to make a profit but to give work to writers, why not crunch your personal numbers and pay them as much as feasible? You could also ask your prospective writers their rates. RPG freelancers with a track record will have no problem getting down to the nitty-gritty.

[Christopher R. Rice]

I mean, what sort of work is this. 3 to 6 cents a word is common. More information would be nice.

[namada]

3 cents per word is fairly low these days for freelance writing, less so in RPG's. However, I've still seen folks only offering rates of 1 or 2 cents per word for RPG writing as recently as 5 years ago (simply the last time I looked around any) - albeit, tiny one-person-operations in those instances.

If your goals are to build up your IP, not make money doing so, and help folks out at the same time - consider paying a flat rate for projects, with a minimum word-count, and funds to be dispersed at submission, approval, rewriting acceptance, and publication. This will discourage writers from overwriting, while allowing you to be as severe in editing as you can be. I can't help but feel that per-word writing encourages writers to overwrite and owners to under-edit simply to get the job done, rather than doing a good job on the whole project from start-to-finish. Be sure to buy all rights at each stage (so you can immediately drop a writer that can't meet your level of standards, but allow you to get something for your troubles).

I've done freelance writing, proofreading and editing work in the past from as low as free (for projects I simply couldn't NOT be a part of), to as high as 3 cents per word (for projects I merely liked a lot). I don't bother working with projects I don't like because the pay isn't worth the effort for me.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Embassy of Time

I've been working on my passion project RPG for a bit now, and I was thinking that maybe I could hire some aspiring writers to create material for it, using any income from the project (I do not expect it to be a source of personal income, anyway) to hire as many as possble. The thought is that Corona has beaten the cr*p out of a lot of people's finances, maybe I could help a few make the bills more easily. I'm not a publisher, but I'm financially stable, so two birds, one stone.

But finding information about hiring anyone for anything is a nightmare, apparently. Most job sites seem to use a lot of false advertising (and if not the site, the users sure do), and there seems to be no standards in place for anything. So I was wondering, is it better to pay royalties or fixed rates, and what would those rates be? (If royalties, I expect them pretty high, since RPGs sell relatively poorly and I am not aiming for profit in the first place).

Anyone have some experience in the matter, or personal preferences? Any advice will be gratefully accepted...

Morrus, What's a Freelance RPG Writer Worth (February 2015)

I can't afford to write for RPGs, certainly not on spec (write the piece before you have a contract), although I did have a passion project in the Pyramid slushpile.