Adjacent skills · Less obvious
Judging, consulting and professional gigs
A prize panel, a publisher's question, a festival's programming note — hired judgement.
Once you have a name of any kind, people will pay for your taste: judging a prize, sitting on a panel that is not a festival chat, advising a producer, consulting on a game or a brand's 'story world', writing a blurb (usually unpaid, sadly), even helping a publisher think about a list. These are small, irregular, and useful. They are also how a reputation becomes a day-rate.
- Typical pay
- Judging fees vary from a token to a respectable sum for a major prize (read a hundred books and you will know why). Consulting day-rates follow the commercial world you have been invited into, not the literary one you came from.
- Ceiling
- Solid ceiling
- Speed
- First money in weeks
- Effort
- A real extra job
- Needs
- Needs a name
How it works
- 01
Someone invites you. You ask what the fee is, how many hours it is in truth, and whether your name will be used in publicity.
- 02
You do the reading, the meeting, the note. You invoice.
- 03
Sometimes it leads to a more interesting job. Sometimes it leads to a crate of hardbacks and a sore neck.
How to start
- 01
Say yes to the first respectable judging invitation even if the fee is small. It is how the next one finds you.
- 02
For consulting, write down what you actually know that a company does not. 'Storytelling' is not a brief; 'how to structure a six-episode documentary' is.
- 03
Keep a one-page rate card in a drawer so you do not invent a number while flattered.
Watch out
- 01
Unpaid judging of a contest that charges entrants is you subsidising their business.
- 02
A 'advisory board' with no fee and no influence is a name on a website. Yours.
- 03
Conflicts of interest (your student's book in the pile) are how panels implode. Declare them.
Being paid for your judgement is a late-career pleasure I recommend arriving at as early as you can. It means the profession has noticed you are paying attention. Quote a fee. Then go home and write something of your own, which is still the point.