I will shout this until my throat tears itself apart.

The fact that you were treated poorly at the start of your career - whatever industry you're in - is not an excuse to turn around and inflict that same treatment on the next generation.

Either you actively work for change, or you're part of the problem.

The "this is a hobby industry" narrative has really, really fucked me off.

If you're running a company that employs line developers, business managers, social media managers, etc, you're not engaged in hobby work. I guarantee you're paying all those people, so why not writers?

It may be a hobby for you because you're a middle aged white man with a well-paying job in tech but for many, many, *many* other people this is fucking serious work. This is food on the table. This is working my way out of poverty. It's not a fucking hobby.

If your publishing model relies on freelancers creating words to go into the books that you sell to pay the salary of yourself and your business manager et al, and you're actively exerting downward pressure on pay across the industry?

You're the problem.

You don't have to be the size of Hasbro to be a problem.

If you are paying people starvation level wages and calling them hobbyists when they're doing the work you profit from, and calling them "inexperienced" and talking down to them when they demand better?

You're exploiting people. You're the problem.

If your business would crumble without the work of writers then you need to pay the writers what they're worth or fuck off into the sea.

Fall in line or make room. It's that simple.

If @helloMCDM can afford to pay people $0.25/word *immediately upon launching* you can afford to pay more than $0.06 after 15 years.

If you can't then you don't get the privilege of employing people. Do the work yourself until that changes.