Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;257295What are Wizards' pay rates? Just out of curiosity...

No idea. But for writing in general, you find that,

• rpg writing pays 1-10c per word
• short story writing pays 5-15c per word
• novel writing pays 10-20c per word
• magazine article writing pays 15-30c per word

Obviously being a "name" writer will get you higher rates - but most writers never become "name" writers, just as most office workers never become CEOs; and in any case you need to go through years of being a nobody before you can become somebody. So you have to suck up those rates of pay and struggle along somehow for a while.

A normal writer can write at the rates of,

• 2,000 words per hour of whatever shit pops into their head
• 1,000 wph if any thought is put into it
• 500 wph if research is required (and checking for consistency with other rulebooks is research), or if self-editing and rewriting
  
• 250 wph if both researching and self-editing and rewriting
  

Given those rates of writing, if the writing is to be any good, you need either a good rate per word, or else more than a full-time job (40hr per week) worth of writing.

A couple of years back Mongoose was hiring salaried writers for what they claimed was a part-time writing job of 20 hours per week, or 87hr/month, at US$1,500 monthly. However, they wanted a book out of the people each month, 72,000 words, implying a writing rate of about 1,000 wph, and 2c/word. That writing speed explains a lot of their products - nonetheless, I strongly suspect most of their writers were doing more than 20 hours per week to get the words out.

Using the writing speeds and pay rates above, you can imagine a variety of projects and weekly pay slips for people. Few of them lead to great prosperity. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the US,     "Thousands of other individuals work primarily as freelance writers, earning income from their articles, books, and less commonly, television and movie scripts. Many support themselves with income derived from other sources."
So for a freelance writer to get by, they must in general have multiple sources of income. According to these guys,   "Writers across the seven genres spend an average of 32          hours a week on writing and related activities, with 39          percent of the sample working part time, defined as less          than 20 hours a week. The vast majority of writers in all          genres, except staff jobs, are freelancers. [...]


The work week does not end with those 36 hours for many.          Some 53 percent of the surveyed writers spend an average of          16 hours a week earning money in a field outside writing. [...]


Writers' incomes fall well below those of          comparably-educated Americans. The average income for          individuals who hold bachelor's degrees is $29,868. Yet          while 91 of surveyed writers hold B.A.s and 50 percent,          graduate degrees, their income is significantly lower.          Looking at writing income during 1991-1993, a typical writer          with 15 years experience earned a median annual income of          $4,000 from freelancing. Staff jobs brought in $25,000. Long          term contracts - held by writers who are not employees but          have ongoing agreements with publishers - earned $12,500.

[...]          68% [of writers] - earn income in only one employee relationship -          either freelance, staff, or contract.

[...] only 16% of          freelance writers earn $30,000 or more. Some 39 percent of          staff writers and 24 percent of contract writers do.          

Nonwriting income - earned by 53 percent - averaged          $17,500.

That is, most writers are freelancers, two-thirds of them with just one regular employer, half of them earn less than $4,000, only one in six earn a decent income, and half of them must have nonwriting work to get by.

Now, we don't know Wizards' exact rates, or how much work they give their writers. But most likely the "non-compete" clause is ensuring that their writers must take nonwriting jobs to pay the bills.

If Wizards wants their writers not to write for anyone else, the best way is to give them so much work they simply don't have time and energy to do it, and/or pay them so much they don't need to take other work.

Meh, lots of jobs have people sign non-competes.

Of course, non-competes are a lot like prenuptial agreements, in that most of them are completely unenforceable and would never really survive a legal challenge.  It's just one of those boilerplate things lawyers like because it gives them a reason to bill you for more money.

Being contracted isn't all that rare amongst the largest companies. You aren't an employee, but you are contracted to produce a certain amount of work, work for a set time period (normally for a salary) or produce a certain wordcount. During that time, you can't work for someone else.

The only difference here is if freelancers are being contracted with no set criteria, which is a hand-cuff.