For at least the past 20 years or so magazine publishers have tried to get away with paying authors by-the-word at a dime per word and without any future rights reverting back to the author.
Not only is ten-cents-a-word an outrageously bad sum of non-money -- it denigrates the idea of "the whole of the writing" by breaking down the craft into its tiniest bits and not even its architectural pieces.
A decade ago, the going price for a regularly published author was -- on the low end -- a dollar a word and, even then, a 3,000 word article was still work-for-hire and no rights whatsoever were transferred to the author's side.
Many authors were willing to make that loss of ownership deal with the publisher Devil in exchange for a promised turn of a quick $3,000 profit on a topic that was usually only "of-the-moment" and without an everlasting afterlife.
The crushing return to a dime-a-word for any sort of periodical or online writing is the pinnacle of an insult -- and must never be cotton to or tolerated by -- any author anywhere at any time.
It is far better in the long run for an author to turn down a measly publication opportunity in the short term in order to remain rich in self-worth in the now and triumph over the con as a preservationist of the lifeblood of inspiration in the marketplace of ideals stretching far along the horizon.
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