Getting Paid

Purchase

When we say, yes, we want it, we'll send you an official email and a contract. From there it's a few scant months to publication, and on or slightly before publication we'll pay you (in US dollars) a minimum of $5.00 per piece, or $.03/word for longer pieces, first rights, or minimum $2.00 per piece, $.01/word for reprints. For the right to reproduce artwork, we pay $12.00 per piece for photography, art, or comics. We can cut you a check and mail it, or we can PayPal you.

Sales of Material

Each magazine that sells pays you something for your work, once production costs and advance payments have been covered. Each time your piece is selected for individual purchase (PDF format) you get paid for your work, once production costs and advance payments have been covered. We figure out how much you get paid according to the schedule below.

When Do I Get Paid?

If your payment total from sales is more than $25.00, we pay you on publication of the following issue. If your payment total is less than $25.00, we let it ride and pay everyone who has money in the GUD bank in December. That holds for every year. Every time you sell material, we keep track of it, and pay you according to the schedule outlined above. We use a system we call "dibs" to figure out exactly how much is coming to you.

Of course, you get the advance up front. That's why it's an advance. And no, you don't owe us anything if the magazine doesn't earn out your advance. That's why it's an advance.

Dibs/Advance

cover5 dibs$60
comics, art2 dibs$12
stories, reports, scripts, poetry1 dib per thousand words$0.03/word, $5 minimum first rights, $0.01/word, $2 minimum reprint

Once the printing and production costs have been reached by sales income, the profit from each magazine (print or electronic) will be split equally between GUD and Dibs. Any Advance monies (purchase price of the piece, paid up front; as well as contributor copies) count against the Dibs (royalties). Once the initial payout (Advance) has been reached, the Dibs (royalties) will then be split up according to the profit-sharing scenario:

NOTE: Shipping rates went up May 2007; the below does not reflect that

For example: Issue 0 had a cover, of course (5 dibs); 9 other pieces of art/comics (18 dibs), and more than a handful of stories and poems of various lengths that totalled 71 dibs; the issue then, is comprised of 94 "artist" dibs. GUD gets the equal of that, so the issue as a whole has 188 equal claims on its profit.

exact numbers below are out of date, but the premise remains

At 200 issues per print run, a single issue costs us roughly $5.00 to print plus $1.70 to ship--and on a $10 order, $.60 in paypal fees. So a single $10 order nets $2.70. If we sold all 200, and another 9800 besides (just to make the math easier), at $10 apiece, that would be a net of $27,000. This net then gets divided into those 188 equal pieces and divvied out--GUD gets $13,500 (which goes to advertising, services like skype and docusign, prepping the next issue, maybe paying back some of our seed money, etc); and then $13,500 gets split out over the artists, against their already paid royalties (we pay out around $2000 for content, up front, per issue).

For instance, we paid $60 up front for the cover--and gave it five dibs. 5 of 188 dibs on $13,500 is $360. So if we were to sell 10,000 copies, all else being equal, we'd cut a check for $300 to our cover artist (recouping the $60 advance we paid them). And if we sold another 10,000 copies at $10 apiece, we'd cut the cover artist another $360.

Of course, 10,000 issues is a lot. And we don't sell every issue for $10--there are promotions, subscription rates, and so on. The accounting does get a bit complicated. Hopefully this gives you an idea of what we're trying to do, at least.

For electronic sales of individual pieces, profits will be split 50/50 between GUD and the author.

Ready?

Then send us your best work.