That is a generous amount for an article based on what the paper magazines with a Cover Price pay.  I wonder how you can afford to do it when your magazine is free!  Makes me wonder what exactly I'm paying for at the newsstand. Keep up the great work.  Thanks,

Peter

Good grief. At 2.5 cents per word, starving author takes on a whole new meaning! That's by far the lowest rate I have ever heard of for a national (really international) publication. The last article I wrote for publication paid $900 for 2,500 words. That was in the early 90s. Today, I would expect about a dollar a word. The article was not model railroad related, however.

Obviously, the model railroad press pays substantially lower rates than general interest magazines, or even widely read special interest publications. On the upside, we do theoretically benefit from those low rates in the form of more advertising from small companies that would not be able to afford it if the writers were paid a living wage. But 2.5 cents a word? That's low....... 

That's by far the lowest rate I have ever heard of for a national (really international) publication

And how many of those are free and cater to a hobby market?

At $1 per word it would cost over $30K per month to publish this FREE magazine.  All of that money would need to come from advertisers.  While model railroading is a relatively popular hobby it's still a small niche market in the grand scheme of things.  A lot of the advertisers are themselves small companies, paying out $2K+ per month in advertising is likely not feasible for them.

I get the impression that the request for articles is aimed at amateur model railroaders, not professional writers.  The majority if not all of the articles in the magazine are written by people who love the hobby and had a great idea or built something and wanted to share it.  I suspect very few of them are professional writers who are execting to make a living writing for MRH.

Marc, I don't think you actually read my post.

I was countering the first comment that suggested the rates were generous. They aren't. I pointed out what generous rates really would be.

I also pointed out that the low rates keep the ads rates down, thereby giving small firms the opportunity to advertise that they otherwise would not have. This is true of all model railroad publications. Did you miss that part? Take a gander at the rates charged by some of the general interest magazines found on any newstand and you will understand the difference.

SRN

I would write an MRH article for free if I were advanced enough in the hobby to have something of interest to the readers. For me it would be part of the hobby experience much like working on a club layout or donating time at a show table. And, for non-professional writers, it makes one feel good to see their work published in a magazine.

 I would write an MRH article for free if I were advanced enough in the hobby to have something of interest to the readers.

That's the key right there. Niche magazines rely on attracting authors with a combination of a token payment and the panache of an author seeing his work in "print." I am constantly amazed at the quality of the articles that appear in the model railroad press. I know that most of these authors are not being generously compensated for their work, probably significantly less than minimum wage, when all is said and done. While some of it may be good editing, it's clear we have some really talented people out there, both as modellers and as authors.

On the other hand, a certain print magazine seems to be running a lot of staff generated pieces lately. 

 SRN

It is not a big hobby in terms of popularity.  Look for railroad titles at your local newstand, Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc.  At my local Banes & Noble there are as many monthly magazines devoted to Ferrari with a starting price for a base model above $100k as there are for trains, both prototype and model combined.  Every drug store, grocery store, or big box discount storee with a magazine rack carries at least 6-12 monthly magazines devoted to automobiles, they wil have another half dozen titles devoted to boating, same for shooting, hunting & fishing, as well as the weekly Sports Illustrated.  I've never seen a railroad title model or otherwise at one of those stores.

What MRH pays for published material is competitive with MR & MRC, but obviously not comparable to magazines in more popular fields.  If the model railroading press does not get submissions from hobbyists, they have very little to publish.  I don't know of a single automotive publication that solicits, or publishes anything from an author other than staff writers or publishes pictures with those articles other than those taken by a staff photographer.

Regarding to the question about what you pay for when you buy a magazine at a news stand or subscribe to a magazine, you are paying for printing and distribution of the magazine only.  If the local store does not sell all of the issues of a magazine in a timely manner, they cut off the "mast head" on the cover of each unsold magazine, send it back to the publisher and destroy the remainder of the magazine and then are credited for those issues that didn't sell.  Advertisinfg pays for everything else in the magazine.  MRH is free because the relative cost to publish online is a small fraction of the cost to print.

I belong to the NMRA and the Santa Fe Hisrtorical & Modeling Society.  In both cases the reason for recent dues increases is the cost of publication and distribution of the magazines.  The SFHMS recently polled the membership because the dues was $30.00 per year at the time and the magazine cost for printing and distribution was $29.95 per year for the 4 quarterly issues.  I asked for them to put the magazine online, but I was in a less than 25% minority!  The majority elected to have the dues raised to maintain the magazine at the content level it was at with a smaller % asking to hold the line on the dues and reduce the size of the magazine.

"Words are cheap" to coin a phrase.

With MRH, we pay premium rates for media - digital images, animations (click-n-spins, panoramas) and video footage.

If all you're looking at is the text payment, you're right - we don't pay a lot. But when someone includes lots of media in their submission, the payment goes up quickly for the article.

We've paid a few hundred dollars for articles that are mostly text and a handful of images. However, on our step-by-steps with lots of photos, a click-n-spin or two, and video footage, we've written checks for well over $1000 for the article.

I don't know of any other model railroad publication that pays for individual images as well as text. They usually just pay a flat per page rate. With us, a page of text alone is $10. With one photo plus the text, $20 - double the payout. Some step-by-steps have had 5 or 6 images on a page - that's $50 or $60 per page!

Keep in mind we're modern media-centric. If you want good payout, include lots of photos and other media. If you're unsure exactly how to do that, just ask. We're happy to give you advice on how to do click-n-spins and video, as well as what we're looking for in still photos.

Word value has taken a serious hit since tthe 1990s, thanks to the internet.  EVERYBODY is writing now, which means you can expect more starving writers...unless they are smart and do their writing only as a hobby!

• News Articles ( web related ): $15-50 per page
• E-books:$15-25 per page
• Novels and Books: $75 per page
• Articles for web content, not related to news: $10-$50 per article based on word count

MRH's average pay rate is approximately $30 per page, although it can be as high as $50 per page if you include lots of media / images. A typical 6-page article will fetch between $180 and $300, depending on the amount of media / images you include. You can add $100 to that if you make the cover.

However, if you do a step-by-step, those typically run from 15-20 pages, and will yield from $450 - $1000.

So you're saying I should have done the pole barn as a step by step and then submitted it as an article instead of a free for-all-blog? :P  Meh, it's just money!

I was wondering why you didn't do just exactly that. All three of your subjects of Remodeling your Wire plant, Kit Bashing an early Fork lift, and the construction of the poll Barn. you could be making a few bucks for your RR work.

The only limitation on step-by-steps is we're only running one - two of those per issue in order to run lots of smaller articles as well to improvie issue article variety. For a free magazine that you can opt out of getting on a per issue basis, if we dont' have a good variety, readership can drop that issue.

While in theory we can go as many pages as we want, there's a practical limit to how much time we have to put into each monthly issue. Each page needs laid out and put through several layers of editing - that takes time. Plus people won't be as likely to download a magazine if the file size gets too large.

Joe, you're absolutely right.

Dan, this is true - but then you'd have to wait for the next issue for all what has already transpired...in fact, by this time next week I should have the project entirely finished!!

And speaking of the tractor...I painted it tonight.  I think you'll really like the results...

Joe, I'll see what I can knock up towards writing an article...