Would You Work for Hire? Should you?

 For many writers seeking steady money for their writing school, work for hire offers opportunities that are often easier to break into. Most work-for-hire writing opportunities are based on your skills, not your previous publishing credits, making this one way to break into book publishing without the struggle of finding an agent or luring interest in your idea. In this type of project, the publisher hires a writer to create a book instead of being offered a book for possible publication by an author or an agent.

Who Hires Writers?

Work-for-hire opportunities are often linked with educational publishing, but they also exist in more traditional commercial publishing. If you see licensed character books (such as books with recognizable super heroes or books based on popular children’s television programming) most of these books were written as work for hire and these books can appear in both traditional commercial publishing and educational publishers. Mass market books such as lift-the-flap books or things like coloring books are also often work for hire and are usually done by commercial publishers who sell in markets like Walmart or Costco. Also traditional commercial publishing sometimes hires writers on a work-for-hire basis to continue a series when reader interest remains but the original writer no longer wants to stay on the project.

Much of educational publishing is also done as work for hire. This includes both nonfiction books (which are often produced through a middle-man company, sometimes called an educational provider or a packager) and fiction books (usually done in series).

The topics for nonfiction books usually originate with the publisher and authors are offered the opportunity to write the book that the publisher needs. Often these nonfiction books are crafted based on very clear and specific formats.

Fiction work for hire with educational publishers sometimes begins with an idea by a publisher, but sometimes begin with writers who pitch ideas. For example, my own series with Abdo about cryptid hunting began as an idea I came up with, and I was only bound by the general format needs of their chapter book line. On the other hand, my series with Abdo featuring pirates began when an editor told me they’d like to see a proposal for a pirate series for their hi/lo line. So I came up with the series specifics, but the idea (pirates) was theirs, and I had to work within their hi/lo format requirements.

How is Work for Hire Different?

One of the ways that work for hire is different from the kind of publishing we most often think about is that payment is made as a flat fee with no royalties (most of the time). The benefit of this is that it’s much easier to budget when you know exactly how much money you’ll be making. The drawback is that there is no bonus if the book becomes extremely popular.

There are few runaway best sellers that come from work-for-hire books, but it is not impossible. I’ve known writers whose work-for-hire, mass market book literally sold millions of copies, but the writer never made more than the few hundred they were paid when they turned in the manuscript. For this reason, some people feel work-for-hire contracts are unfair, but keep in mind that this kind of bestseller is really quite rare.