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.
For more information, please email [email protected].