U.S. freelancers given a Canadian view of Canadian freelance rates

Veteran freelance magazine writer David Hayes has written a guest posting for Michelle Rafter's WordCount blog, briefing a U.S. audience about the issue of freelance rates in Canada. He acknowledges that many excellent reporters and writers are less-than-brilliant business people and talks about why he is encouraged by the genesis of Derek Finkle's Canadian Writers Group agency.

Some argued that launching the agency in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression was a bad idea. But after more than three decades of publishers stubbornly claiming they couldn’t afford to increase writers’ rates even as they found ways to absorb rising prices for every cost associated with their business, many of us thought the momentum happened to build now so the time had come.