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[GWL]: Getting paid

Several years ago at GWAA a lead speaker suggested that if you have done work for a magazine which is clearly in trouble (not paying their bills),and it is reasonably clear that they are about to fold and you are not going to get paid, that you gracefully write off the amount and send a letter of condolence to the editor who is about to be jobless.
 
Later that year a magazine who owed me several thousand dollars for a batch of features sent me a letter saying that after 13 years of publication, the magazine was closing down and there were no assets.
 
I was, of course, not thrilled to get that letter...but I followed the GWAA speaker's advice and sent a gracious note to the editor.  I had no way of checking if the "no assets" story was legit, save hiring a collection agency or lawyer which I was loath to do.  I knew that altho the magazine was well liked and had a decent subscriber list, they had been having bigtime problems with ad salespeople and no ads = no magazine.  The editor had a quasi nervous breakdown, but several months later resurfaced as the editor of a bigger magazine.  Altho I had to write off my initial loss, the editor has continued to offer me assignments, many with titles I wrote for the defunct mag, and I have been paid more - and promptly. 
 
I think that if a magazine is late in paying you, it should set off a big alarm bell in your mind.  Sometimes there IS a screw-up; but in my experience, more often than not, the magazine is in trouble.  When you are writing for every issue and are being paid "on publication" you are highly vulnerable - especially if for some reason the story is set aside for a later, more suitable issue (who hasn't had that happen) and the completed and unpaid for work is piling up, so the best arrangement is to get paid "on acceptance".  That way they can hold it as long as they want and they, not you, eat the dollars expended.  Stories paid for "on acceptance" are very seldom not published.  The moral of the story is to push for payment on acceptance and try not to let the number of stories you are owed for escalate to the point where your potential losses are great. Take the high road, too, if possible.
 
Another pothold which appears on a garden writers road is when you have a long list of stories booked with a magazine who suddenly (it seems to you) sells itself (meaning mailing list and maybe staff) to another magazine.  I had that experience this past year.  I had been working on a year's worth of titles for a good regional magazine, growing all the beets in the world for a story on beets, and I had done much of the research and photography for other stories - and I had one completed story which the editor had accepted with compliments.   I had been paid for years by this magazine on  publication, so my finished story fell between the cracks.  The new magazine did not run it and I was never paid for it. ...The new magazine asked me to complete one of the stories in my former list for them, but all of the work I had already done for the year long list was down the drain.  In trying to analyze how I could have avoided this loss, I can only think that (a) I should have been asking for payment on acceptance, and (b) if I had maintained a closer relationship with the editor, I might have been told or gotten an inkling that change was in the wind.
 
I would appreciate thoughts on this last one.
 
Darlene
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