AMA Q&A

How much (or little) writing can pay, how quickly to turn around revisions, and what to do when presenters won’t stop talking

I love it when people ask me questions. More specifically, I love it when people ask me questions and I can give them helpful answers! And while I’m always happy to respond to questions in person, via social media, or in the comments to Page By Page posts (please do ask me questions in all these places!), I wanted to create a space where I could respond to questions at greater length and in more detail.

With that in mind, and with no further ado, welcome to the first installment of AMA Q&A, where paid subscribers can have their most pressing questions answered!

I saw you’re writing something that looks like a trade book. If you don’t mind my asking, are you getting paid for that?

(A.B)

Happy to answer this—yes, this is one of those rare occasions when I will be getting paid for my writing! That said, it won’t be enough to cover my rent.

As all academics know, most of the writing we do in our jobs (articles, book reviews, books) is not compensated, though there are exceptions. If we’re lucky, we might get a small advance on a monograph, or payment for a book review in a public-facing periodical. (If you’re fortunate enough to have secured an agent to help you negotiate an academic book contract, you might be able to get more.) I’ve yet to get an advance on a monograph or a payment for a book review that exceeds three figures. Once in my career, I had the wildly good fortune to be paid a whopping four figures for a piece of writing (a specially commissioned introduction for a collection of microfiche editions of early print texts, a job I took over after someone unexpectedly dropped out). If any publishers or editors out there would care to help me repeat the experience, please get in touch!

Hi! I recently had an article accepted for publication (my first!). They’ve asked for a few revisions—how quickly should I get the revised article back to them?

(P.S.)

Many, many congratulations on the acceptance! That is absolutely terrific news! Regarding turnaround time: there’s no hard-and-fast rule concerning how quickly