Writers Victoria supports and advocates for writers, illustrators, editors and literary-sector workers to be paid for the work that they do. And we believe that more transparency about who is paying what is needed to help achieve this. Writers Victoria is a not-for-profit charity. Our writers’ fees are paid through a combination of workshop and advertising sales, membership income and grant funding.
Writers Victoria works with hundreds of authors and industry experts as tutors, mentors, manuscript assessors, speakers, judges and commissioned writers each year, and advocates for them to be adequately paid for their work. As the diversity of our writers means they don’t fall under the remit of any one industry association, our rates are informed by the Arts Law Centre, Australian Society of Authors, Australian Writers Guild, Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, funders, advocacy bodies and sector research. We work to increase our rates depending on which areas we identify as having the largest disparity from sector average.
Our paid staff are supported by a volunteer Board of Directors along with a team of office, program and editorial volunteers.
Writers Victoria also offers a number of unpaid internships each year. To ensure that our internship program is as fair and beneficial as possible, our internships are offered part-time, with flexible hours, over a fixed term (usually one day a week over three or four months). Our internships are based on mutually-agreed research projects, not business-critical work, and we agree a set of personalised, aspirational targets with each intern.
As an organisation, Writers Victoria advocates for the rights and interests of writers as well as aiming to continually improve the way we work with writers ourselves. We are also a member of the National Writers Centre Network, a group that is particularly interested in supporting national cross-sector research into literature-sector pay rates.
The following rates were last updated 2020 with manuscript assessments updated in 2022. Pay rates may change from time-to-time. Payment for activities funded through external grants or Business Writing programs may vary.
Workshop program and literary services
For our workshop program and literary services, we currently pay:
- $880 for a one-day workshop (6 hours)
- $630 for a one-day workshop (6 hours: repeat of a previous Writers Victoria workshop)
- $550 for a half-day workshop (3 to 4 hours)
- $300 for a webinar (up to 1.5 hours, including recording)
- $375 for a seminar/workshop (2 to 2.5 hours)
- $250 for a seminar/workshop (1 to 1.5 hours)
- $100 for a panel session (up to 2 hours)
- $50 for a reading of up to 10 mins at an event
- Manuscript assessments are variable based on word count and genre, and are costed out based on estimates at $100 per hour
- $65/h for mentoring (includes reading, written feedback, meetings)
For activities that take place outside of your home town, we will reimburse you for your direct travel costs (upon prior written agreement). We are not able to pay an hourly rate for travel time.
Publications
For our publications, we currently pay:
- $75–$250 for a commissioned article (depending on length)
- $100 for a cover illustration
- We ask published writers to grant us licence to use their work within The Victorian Writer magazine and/or Writers Victoria website. All copyright remains with the writer. However, we do ask for an exclusivity period of two months from publication.
- Following feedback from our membership, we recently increased the number of pages in The Victorian Writer magazine to publish creative work from our members.
- As we do not currently pay for online content, we do not ask people to write for our website unless we have dedicated funding or sponsorship. The vast majority of our online copy is produced through our program.
We pay all invoices within 14 days.