kill fee

[Paul Frank]

Kill fee. 17,400 hits. Not in the big one.

Example: "In the three weeks leading up to the due date, I did no
writing at all, aside from my self-pitying, stultifying diary, whose
entries all began 'T minus X days,' referring to the twentieth, when I
would have to call my editor and tell her that I had failed, without
even the necessary pages of twaddle I’d need to qualify for a kill
fee."
  David Rakoff, Half Empty, 7% into the (Kindle) book.


"Definition: The kill fee is a negotiated payment on a magazine or
newspaper article that is given to the freelancer if their assigned
article is 'killed' or cancelled. This is generally expressed as a
percentage of the total payment, and is used to give the freelancer
confidence in putting their efforts into an assignment which may not
make it to the final magazine edition, in the case of, for example,
space issues or other change of plans."
<http://freelancewrite.about.com/od/glossary/g/KillFee.htm>

Paul

Paul Frank
Translator
Chinese, German, French, Italian > English
Espace de l'Europe 16
Neuchâtel, Switzerland
paulfrank at bfs.admin.ch
paulfrank at post.harvard.edu

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org