Meet-Up Roundtable: How much should you pay your friends?

Last week the NYU Publishing Alumni held another meet-up roundtable at the Citigroup Atrium. Once we'd warded off multiple individuals wanting to play "Warhammer" (the Atrium turns out to be a Mecca for role-playing game meet-ups) it was down to business. There were two questions of the night.

First, if you are starting a new publishing project, how much is an ethical amount to pay friends who freelance for you? What standard freelance rates have you heard recently?

"It's a buyer's market" said Felipe Cruz, speaking of freelancers in a down market. "Stellar writers are willing to slash their rates, sometimes even in half." Kristen Quan added that she could see cutting your magazine's going freelance rate by about 25 percent if you were calling in favors in order to get a project off the ground.

"Hiring friends is about setting parameters," said Ania Levinson. "Will you pay a kill fee? Will you be the one personally editing their work?" Levinson, who works at Nature Publishing, said she'd pay $30 to $40 an hour for freelance design and about $1 a word for freelance writing.

Tony voiced a common refrain about working with friends: "Be upfront and fair." Being fair, Ashley added, will actually get you a better product.

"The quality will suffer [if you exploit writers] because the project won't be a priority," said Ashley.

Ashley, who works/volunteers for a young (broke) publication, added that one solution for getting friends to help with your start-up is to pay them with gifts, or a gesture. Everyone agreed that it all depends on your circumstances, however. Sometimes a sweet block party is compensation enough . . . but sometimes you just gotta make rent.

"Give your friends a choice," said Karina Mikhli, "a token [payment] or a gesture."

"If your friends are unemployed," said Jeff, "they'll probably prefer the discounted rate."

Joanne summed it all up: "Hiring friends is rough! Your friend relationship is different than your work relationship. Is it worth getting tough with your friends over work, at the risk of losing your friendship?"

Excellent question. At some point, as our freelancers become colleagues and colleagues become acquaintances, we will all have to deal with walking this line. Do you treat someone differently just because you can get away with it, or because they're desperate? Deep down, we all know the answer to that, but the industry will always push us to cut corners. Let's continue to challenge one another to value writers and pay them a living wage, on principle.

On a different topic, I've got this new publication idea and I'm looking for an unpaid intern . . .