I was owed about $5,000 from late-paying publications. I tried to hold them all accountable. Here’s what happened.

In late May, I returned home after four weeks on the road. I spent two of those weeks on vacation, and another two on the East Coast, visiting family and friends. I hadn’t worked much in about a month and — perhaps against my better judgment — I looked at my checking account, hoping that all my outstanding payments had been made in the time I was away.

They had not. A payment of nearly $2800 was past due. Another $1000 from a separate publication was also missing. And a third client owed me approximately $1200. I hadn’t received the check..

I have been freelancing for over five years. In that time frame, I’ve never been in a circumstance where that much money was cumulatively owed to me and not paid on time. Usually, when the check didn’t come, the most I did was follow up with my editor or the head of an accounts payable department to ask when I would expect to get paid. But being owed about $5000 really hit critical mass — that’s the minimum amount of money I need to bring in every single month to put away some of it for taxes, then pay my rent and credit card bills.

Looking at my bank account statement, I was first shocked, then panicked, then livid. After I cycled through those emotions, I decided to take action.

One publication, based in New York City, has a contract that explicitly states they will pay their contractors in 30 days. I sent them an invoice for a late fee, which amounted to 20% of the money I was owed: $200.

This was the email I sent:

“Hello, I am attaching an invoice for a late fee, which I send to clients who stipulate 30 days payment in the agreed upon freelance contract, but payment is overdue. Payment for my original invoice was sent April 16. Please confirm receipt of this email.”

Because that email went unanswered, I followed up five days later. In return, I received this response.

“Hi Wudan,

I completely understand that it's frustrating to not get paid within 30 days and our apologies for the delay in payment. Since our accounting team is processing a high volume of invoices sometimes there is a slight delay. We do not pay late fees, but we are operating in good faith here and [REDACTED] is doing her best to have accounting pay it out ASAP.”

I was confused as to why a publication would state in their contract that they would pay invoices within 30 days, but not accept that if they breached their own legally binding, contractual terms, someone would try and hold them accountable.

About a week later, after I had shelved my anger at their email response, I wrote them again.

“I received payment in the amount of $1000 yesterday, Monday June 3.

However, because [REDACTED] is based in NYC, it legally falls under the city's Freelance Isn't Free Act (§ 20-929) which stipulates that the hiring party must pay no later than 30 days after completion of the freelancer's services under the contract. This is a re-iteration of [REDACTED]’s own contracts that stipulates 30 days. My original invoice was sent on April 16.

The invoice for a late fee is attached once again. Please confirm receipt of this email and let me know if you have any questions.”

Their response, two days later, said:

“I am confirming receipt. Although we do not believe a late fee is required in your case, in order to resolve this matter amicably, we will be making an exception and processing the additional invoice you provided. You can expect payment for this invoice no later than 30 days from the date indicated on your invoice.”

Once again, I scowled at this message. A late fee is required if a payment is late. Paying a late fee on a client’s part isn’t to settle a matter “amicably.” It is a way to settle a matter professionally.

I received payment for my late fee on June 11.

Six days after I had not received payment from the client who owed me about $2800, I wrote an email to the accounts payable person and looped in my editor, asking if they could help check on the status of my payments.

My editor responded: “All payments have been made — we have had this conversation on email several weeks ago. Per our records [REDACTED] does not owe you anything. If you have some information to the contrary, please do let me know and we can look into it.”

Separately, I also sent a late fee directly to the persons handling money, citing the contract which stipulated the dates for the pay cycle. “As per terms of the contract,” I wrote, “the outstanding payment for the two stories listed above is deemed late.”

“It seems there was some confusion on the rates, but I think that likely lands on us,” the administrator wrote to me. “I have processed this payment.”

(The late fee was paid out almost immediately.)

A week later, after multiple follow-ups on my late story fees, my editor, in essence, said, “Just give us a day or two to sort it out so we can all move on, and one of us will get back to you.”

A week passed. Nothing.

On June 4th, I wrote my editor and accounts payable a detailed list of the monies I was owed, when those were paid, and any outstanding payments.

On June 7th, the pay for my stories was finally resolved. Yet, the accounts payable administrator wrote back to me:

Reading this email over and over, I wondered: had I been too difficult? Should I be faced with the threat of never working with a client ever again when all I intended to do in the first place was be strictly professional? (Which seems to not be quite… professional on the client’s part if the contractor has delivered everything as expected and on time, anyway.) And who is to decide what is more “reasonable”? If a publication is in the wrong and pays late — and admits to it — why not own up to those wrongs by paying out a late fee? It is what anyone else would have to do if they didn’t pay their rent, healthcare bills, or credit card statements on time. Why do publications who hire freelance writers get a pass when the other businesses operates on a monthly payment cycle?

I responded with:

On June 12th — at which point my payment was nearly a month late — the issue was finally resolved.

The third client I needed to follow up with — also based in New York City — failed to reimburse me for my travel expenses on time. All told, those expenses amounted to a little less than $200.

I sent my editor an email about the late payment and included a late fee.

Her response:

I was confused: she had acknowledged her own fault, yet declined to pay a penalty because the other payments were on time? That logic evaded me.

What’s more is that it’s much more likely for a freelancer to put their expenses for travel on a credit card. When we are not reimbursed for travel in a timely manner, we are paying interest on someone else’s late payment.

I didn’t feel like pointing out this flawed logic and expending even more emotional energy in pushing back; that might have never gotten me anywhere. Instead, I found a lawyer who writes letters for freelancers demanding payment (pro-bono!). This lawyer helped draft a demand letter to the magazine for their late payment. My late payment was a meager fee, but as of last week, the legal counsel at the magazine agreed to pay my late fee.

I’m still waiting for my check.

For me, freelancing as a journalist is not just about being a good reporter and cultivating relationships with colleagues and editors — it is also a business. It is a business that survives on being paid fair rates, and being paid on time. Over the years, I’ve fallen into a routine where I expect to receive the equivalent of a ‘regular paycheck’ every month. When that doesn’t happen, my entire system breaks down. It erodes my ability to do my actual work.

My goal here was not to name and shame any publications, but to show others how the industry writ large does not take these concerns from freelancers about late payment seriously, even when we try to hold them accountable. Some of these responses show that publications don’t even see contracts as terms that are legally binding. It seems that we aren’t taken seriously until we are relentlessly persistent, or pull out the big guns by finding a lawyer who can speak on our behalf.

It goes to show how the industry continues to exploit freelancers and think that a note — “so sorry!” — is enough.

“So sorry!” doesn’t work when you don’t want to pay a late fee because your rent to your landlord is late.

Your credit card company doesn’t care for “so sorry!” when you pay your statement late; they will charge a penalty.

Some healthcare companies will even decline you service if you can’t pay your monthly premium on time.

During this time period when I was so diligently following up on my late payments, I wondered what happened in the ecosystem of journalism that created this expectation that freelancers would somehow be okay if they went months without getting paid. Perhaps it is an extension of the idea that only people who are financially privileged enough can be freelancers. Therefore, if a payment is late, that freelancer will have a cushion and will be okay.

Paying contractors on time feels like the bare minimum that any publication can do if they value the work that their freelancers do for them. Watching editors who tout themselves as people who advocate for freelancers and not help them get paid on time really makes me wonder how much they actually care.

But this lack of accountability also exists because freelancers typically don’t speak up about late fees. When I’ve asked one of my colleagues why, she said, “there are too many battles to fight at once.”

It’s true: if I was in the middle of a busy month of work, I might not have had the time — or emotional energy — to wrangle late fees from clients. My time would have been better spent looking for new story ideas and writing pitches.

It won’t be until we all start holding publications accountable for late payments that we can turn the tide. It seemed to me the publications I worked with here are not accustomed to having to pay out late fees likely because others haven’t bothered in the past. Of course, sometimes the money that we are owed from a publication is only a few hundred bucks, so we end up calculating whether or not hassling a client to pay tens of dollars is worth it. It often nets out to a hard no. An organizer from the Industrial Workers of the World Freelance Journalists Union I spoke with said that it’s rare for anyone to go to the lengths that I did to get outlets to pay a late fee.

One of the most fascinating things I’ve stumbled across while freelancing is the whisper network. Freelancers not only warn each other about publications that steal our ideas, editors who ghost, and those who expand the scope or word count of our stories without any additional pay — but also publications that pay late. This sort of information impacts who we decide to work with or not. Ultimately, it may mean that really important stories never get told.

January 2024 — an update!

A lot has changed in the freelance landscape in the last four years since I published this viral blog post about how I got late-payers to pay up. And, plenty of questions from the freelance community have surfaced as well, on how to handle late-payers. 

The really good news first 

In the last four years, waves of legislation have been introduced in major US cities that are similar to the NYC’s Freelance Isn’t Free Act I cited above. This is in a large part thanks to the tireless work and advocacy of the Freelancers’ Union. 

As of November 2023  in New York, Freelance Isn’t Free is now a state law. That means freelancers based anywhere in the state of New York or freelancers who work with New York State-based companies can reference FIF to be protected against retaliation, late payers, and more. Read the fine print for New York’s Law here

Versions of the Freelance Isn’t Free Act now exist in Los Angeles and Seattle.

In Los Angeles, the law (called the Freelance Worker Protections Ordinance) only applies if the freelancer and the client are located within the city. Read more about it here and the fine print here. 

The law in Seattle is called the Independent Contractor Protections Ordinance. You can read more about it here. If you conduct your work within Seattle city limits, no matter where your client is based, this law applies to you. 

I am only familiar with the law in instances  that I’ve had to leverage it, so I encourage you to read over the text yourself depending on what jurisdictions are relevant to you. But generally, all these laws help you get paid within 30 days and late payments are subject to as much as double damages on top of what’s already due. 

Unfortunately, I still run into late payers from time to time. Here’s what I do about it.

For a second, I thought my original blog post would ward me off from late-payers. Alas!

I still get clients who have net 60 or net 90 payments in their contracts, in which case I ask if they can amend it to net 30. Sometimes they can’t budge, in which case I’ll ask them to increase the project fee such that the late fee is built in. Other times, I ask for a deposit upfront, so I’m not just waiting around for months for the money to land in my accounts. Clients have both said yes to an increased fee and/or a partial payment. It literally pays to think creatively about ways to work around getting potentially paid late.

Many clients are unwilling to explicitly include a late payment clause within their contracts – it’s still worth asking them, though! I’m given the roundabout: they’d have to take it to legal and there’s “no way” legal would approve it. 

But the bare minimum here is to establish how many days a client would have to pay you. That way, if the client is late, they’re in violation of the contractual terms, and it’s possible to use what’s in your contract as leverage.

I include a line in all my contracts that say late payments exceeding net 30 days from the date on my invoice are subject to a late payment, compounded monthly. This way, clients at least know that I am enforcing a late fee. I also make it very clear that I’m protected by Seattle’s laws, which stipulate that I must be paid on time within 30 days before a late fee will be enforced.

I have been working with an assistant who reaches out to clients the week my pay is due to see when it is coming. If it is late, she will help me enforce a late fee. This takes off the emotional work of me having to deal with my money!

Question from the audience: “How late does a payment have to be to ask for a late fee? I’d be hesitant to ask if the payment was, say, a week late – often I can shake that loose with a simple follow-up email. So when do you start the convo about late fees?”

I start talking about late payments the second I have a contract to review - so very early on!

At that time, I remind them that I’m protected by Seattle’s laws, which have a late payment clause. My invoices remind them of the payment terms. If my invoice is still outstanding the week that it’s due, my assistant/bookkeeper follows up to inquire when it would be due. 

If a credit card bill is late by one day, it’s late. If your rent is overdue by a day, it’s late. 

If your freelance invoice is late by one day, it’s also late. 

Since I published this original blog in 2019, my goal has been to get paid on time; and if I’m not, then the client would pay a late fee. 

I’m happy to say that the protocol I’ve set up for myself ensures those goals are met!

Question from the audience: “My biggest fear in imposing late fees is being blackballed from writing for that person/place ever again. How do you preserve relationships?”

First of all, I know that usually accounts payable are responsible for invoicing and payments, and that my direct contact there is not. If I don’t already have a contact at AP, I find one, or ask my manager to refer me to someone else who can better answer my questions. That saves me from dragging my editor into something they likely had nothing to do with.

Next, the question I’m not curious about when I start talking about late fees with a client is: what is their reaction like? 

If they decide to attack me or get defensive, or say it’s ‘not their fault’ or say anything else that shows they don’t take me seriously as a business, they end up on my blacklist (I do believe freelancers should keep their own blacklist!)

I have no trouble keeping in touch with clients who immediately own up and pay my late fee – something that, at this point, isn’t new news to them.