Advice on a Writer’s TV Fees
About two weeks ago, we got a question from an anon regarding how much a writer should charge for his sale of a TV show. This is, off course, great news — but if I wrote “Great news!” then -bam!- that’s it for my answer. Tumblr doesn’t give a lot of latitude for back-and-forth. This question merited a little more meat on the bone for a solid reply but unfortunately, the anon posing the question may have thought we were not going to answer and retracted his question.
But we are!
The bulk of my (positive) experiences as a paid writer straddle film & interactive writing; I didn’t feel comfortable answering questions about a writer’s fees for TV. So I brought out the big guns — everyone say “Hi!” to Celtx guru and all-round nice guy, Mike Jones of mikejones.tv.
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Q: I’m getting my first writing deal ever for a tv series, and I’ve been asked to set the price that I want for each episode. How much should I ask for as a first time writer?
A: Its a good question but Im afraid there is no answer i can give - or at least the answer is so dependant on so many variables as to be unpredictable.
1. The first question is Where in the world? Because what you might get paid in the US is different to Australia is different to the Uk, France or Canada etc.
2. What’s the budget of the show?
3. Is it network or cable?
4. Is it a commissioned series? Or just a pilot?
5. Next, what is meant be ‘deal for a tv series’? Are you the show-runner? Are you the pilot writer for which other episodes will be written by others? Is there a writer’s table of staff writers on the series? The show idea and its pilot often go together in the series bible package which would command a fee (perhaps as a percentage of budget but not always) and then there would be set fee per episode in the series that you wrote. But it would be very weird for one writer to write every episode.
Or are you just being brought on as a writer on an existing show or a show created by someone else? In which case there will be set fees across the board per episode and very little if any negotiation. In such a case it would be very odd for the producer to ‘ask’ what they wanted to be paid.
The short and simple answer is:
a) join the Writers Guild in your territory.
b) go to your Writers Guild and work from their guidelines. Whichever territory you’re in, the Guild will have standard rates and fees as a baseline and recommendations about proportion to budget scaling. Fees can then be negotiated up from this Guild-recommended base but that is not going to happen if they are a first time writer.
c) Get an agent. This is one of the occasions where an agent earns their percentage and if a sale you generated is already on the table, then this should go easy because you’re essentially money walking in the door.
Sorry I can’t be more specific than that. But a fee for a script for a TV hour for a first-time writer can be as low as $5000 and as high as $50,000 depending on where in the world, which network, the nature of the show, the profile of the producer, etc etc etc…
Thanks Mike!
