Great article, thanks! In my day job, I'm a freelance web designer, and the "You get what you pay for" mentality is always at play. On one hand, pricing my services too high can make me lose out on business. On the other hand, my best clients are the ones that value my work enough to pay me well, and thus empower me to value my own work. That's what led me to step out of my $30/hour salaried position this year and into the riskier but more rewarding world of $100/hour freelancing.
It *feels* much harder to value my writing, though. The enjoyment a reader might get from following my story is less quantifiable than the value a client receives from an improved website. There's a very subjective dialogue going on here: I feel that writing a page of fiction is worth essentially sacrificing $100 or so of working time. From a monetary perspective, fiction writing will almost certainly never be as rewarding as building websites. But life is more than money—that's true for both us AND our readers.
Interesting article. People will see you as how you value yourself. Writers/authors need to think about this when they put themselves out there for the world to read. I think some have a natural tendency to price low to get more readers/subscribers and I think it has the opposite effect. Just my .02
Soon I'll have a post on Valuing your Work and Knowing your Worth. Two very important phrases to keep in mind when it comes to putting our most vulnerable selves out there with our writing.
Great explanation on subscription-basis vs ebook Erica! This is all so new to me that I’m still getting to figure out on how do all this works. There’s also another similar argument on subscription and ala-carte paid articles (https://twitter.com/lessin/status/1427273784248127488?s=21) I read recently which I think is interesting.
Interesting thoughts on the difference between Amazon and Substack. I'm still getting my head around the subscription model and payment, so this is useful, thanks.
Great article, thanks! In my day job, I'm a freelance web designer, and the "You get what you pay for" mentality is always at play. On one hand, pricing my services too high can make me lose out on business. On the other hand, my best clients are the ones that value my work enough to pay me well, and thus empower me to value my own work. That's what led me to step out of my $30/hour salaried position this year and into the riskier but more rewarding world of $100/hour freelancing.
It *feels* much harder to value my writing, though. The enjoyment a reader might get from following my story is less quantifiable than the value a client receives from an improved website. There's a very subjective dialogue going on here: I feel that writing a page of fiction is worth essentially sacrificing $100 or so of working time. From a monetary perspective, fiction writing will almost certainly never be as rewarding as building websites. But life is more than money—that's true for both us AND our readers.
Interesting article. People will see you as how you value yourself. Writers/authors need to think about this when they put themselves out there for the world to read. I think some have a natural tendency to price low to get more readers/subscribers and I think it has the opposite effect. Just my .02
Soon I'll have a post on Valuing your Work and Knowing your Worth. Two very important phrases to keep in mind when it comes to putting our most vulnerable selves out there with our writing.
Thanks for this, Erica, as writers we often undervalue our worth... I needed to hear this
Great explanation on subscription-basis vs ebook Erica! This is all so new to me that I’m still getting to figure out on how do all this works. There’s also another similar argument on subscription and ala-carte paid articles (https://twitter.com/lessin/status/1427273784248127488?s=21) I read recently which I think is interesting.
Interesting thoughts on the difference between Amazon and Substack. I'm still getting my head around the subscription model and payment, so this is useful, thanks.