I first came across the term “Kill Fee” when the script I wrote for a children’s TV program was politely rejected by its producers. My story concept was demonstrably too expensive to produce. Initially I couldn’t fathom the reason why they had to tell me to go ahead and work on the script — from concept to storyline to sequence treatment to first draft — only to disapprove of it in the end. (Hmph!) The network paid me 50% of the fee normally assigned to a script completed by a fledgling writer. Naturally, I kept my mouth shut. I was paid any way, right? Later on, I realized that they just had to accept my script ‘on spec’ because they had to keep the scripts coming to keep the program going. OK, no hard feelings!

The case is the same with magazines and newspapers. Most publications offer a kill fee to their writers as a courtesy and to somehow assure them that their efforts were not totally wasted. The amount is usually a percentage of the price offered for the manuscript. For example, if you wrote an article called A Refreshing Way to Fight Cancer and the editor offered to buy it for $100, he might specify in the contract that the kill fee is 10%. Should the editor fail to publish your article, you should receive $10 for work done.

Some publications already have fixed or pre-determined kill fees depending on the amount of work exerted for the project or manuscript. If you’re working with an individual client, you can negotiate the kill fee and state it in your contract. I usually ask for 20% on most ghostwriting and PR writing projects.

If you don’t have a contract, you can politely ask your client for a kill fee. Explain why you need to be paid for your efforts and state that this is usual practice in the writing industry. If your client refuses to pay you, then you don’t have to work with that client ever again.

Oh, and don’t fret. You retain all rights to that rejected article, which means that you can always sell it to another publication.