Addressing The "Do You Expect To Make A Living Doing This?" Crowd

"Why aren't you just giving this away for free? Do you expect to make a living doing this?"

This is a paraphrased version of a comment I received earlier this week, ironically while I was sharing a link to an RPG supplement that a colleague of mine wrote rather than a piece of my own work. An RPG supplement which, I would note, cost less than $2 for anyone who wanted to buy a copy (100 Problems To Encounter at a Starport by Adrian Kennelly, for those who are curious). While this isn't the first time I've had this comment lobbed at me (and it isn't even the first time it's been lobbed at me while I was trying to signal boost someone else's project), it is something I wanted to address this week.

Because I keep hearing this, and I keep wondering why people are still saying it in the capitalist hellscape that is 2022.

Yeah, there's going to be some theory in this week's update.

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Labors of Love Are Still Labors

Think of something you enjoy doing. Maybe it's painting, or making audio dramas, or being a Game Master for a tabletop session. Perhaps you love writing stories, or you enjoy training people to help reach their fitness goals. Maybe you really like sex. Even when you're just doing it for yourself, it still takes effort. You're putting in your time, your resources, your thoughts, your energy, and your expertise to make something, or to do something.

This is what folks in the economic sector refer to as labor, as it's the actions taken to produce a good or service. Yes, labor is more complicated than that, but I'm boiling things down here, so this is the definition I'm using.

Yeah, yeah, don't get ahead of me.

Now, imagine someone has seen your work, and they think it's really good. They want you to either perform similar work for them (likely to their specifications), or they want you to just give them the result of all your hard work. Not someone you know like a friend or a family member, but some random person off the street who just happened to be walking by. Would you do this job for them, or give them the thing you made, just because they asked you to?

Probably not, right?

Yet that seems to be exactly what people are asking every day. Not only that, but if you as a creator announce you are selling something you made, there will be a steady line of folks all too happy to berate you just because you aren't giving it away for free. No matter how many hours you took to make something, regardless of the skill of its execution, and no matter how affordable the price, they seem affronted that you're charging for your work.

"Do you expect to make a living doing this?" they ask.

A better question I would ask, though, is, "Do you barge into shops and demand free stuff off the shelf? Then why the hell are you doing that here?"

Why Are You Mad About It?

There is a unique thing that I feel a lot of creative people deal with, and it's that a lot of people want what we do or make, but a majority of them are affronted that we expect to be paid for it. You want $10 a head to run a 6-hour RPG module? "Ugh, what the hell, I do this for my friends for free!" You charge $12 for a copy of your novel? "Psh, I could read thousands of books online for free, why should I pay you for this one?" You quote your price for the particular fetish they want satisfied? "What do you mean you want me to pay you to satisfy my kink for the next few hours? Other people would do this just for the fun of it!"

It all blends together, after a while.

Why does this happen? Well, the main issue from my trench seems to be entitlement.

If you've been an author, or know an author, you've got stories about this. People who demand free copies of your book because, "You should be glad that somebody like me even wants to read this." If you have digital publications you can also throw in a side of, "It's just a digital copy, it's not like it costs you anything!" A lot of people out there do not put themselves in the creator's shoes. They're thinking only about themselves, and what they can get. And given that a lot of art is faceless, has been stolen, or is genuinely available for free online, there is often a rather vitriolic reaction to being told, "No, you can't just walk out with that. You need to pay for it."

The best way to combat this, from what I've seen, is to try to garner a sense of empathy in people, and to explain to them what's going on behind the curtain. Telling them that it took you nearly a year to write this novel, and that even if you only make a few dollars from every sale, you still have bills to pay. You might break down the numbers that it takes for creators to actually make anything resembling a notable wage (like I did in Talking About Numbers Again) to show them precisely what you need to hit in order to keep making things just to drive the point home.

This isn't a guarantee, of course. Some people are just going to rant and rave because you aren't giving them free stuff. Some people are going to realize just how much effort you put into your work, though, and they may choose to compensate you accordingly. Sometimes they may even give you a tip, just to help you keep the wheels greased.

If You Don't Like The Price, You Don't Have To Buy

Would we all like to be able to give our work away for free? Well, a lot of us probably would if we knew that we didn't have to worry about rent, food, gas, and utilities. But we are all stuck living under capitalism, which means that every month we have fees charged to our bank accounts just so we can stay alive.

Which means we need to get paid so that we can pay the other people who give us the staples we require.

If you think someone's work isn't worth what they're charging, you don't have to buy it. If you don't want to support them, no one is forcing you to. But if you want to see a creator keep producing work, they can't do that if they aren't making enough to pay their bills. Whether it's an author writing a fantasy noir series, a movie reviewer doing horror movie break downs, or someone who welds bizarre sculptures out of scrap steel, we all need a place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear, and the money to buy materials so we can make more things.

But if you absolutely refuse to pay for something a creator made, I want you to understand this if nothing else. We don't care. We would just really like you to step aside so that someone who is willing to buy a copy can step up to our booth. Because at the end of the day if you aren't helping us keep our heads above water, we don't have time to worry about catering to you.

And even if you don't have money, but still want to support the creators you love, consider what I said in A Lot of My Content is Free (But I Could Still Use Your Support).

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That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

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