One year after its launch, the long-form site's founder Evan Ratliff sits for a Q&A with Nieman Storyboard. So how much does he pay his writers? "We’ll pay the writer a fee – a typical fee is probably $5,000 – plus 50 percent of the royalties. The royalties come after the platform takes its percentage," Ratliff says. "Which means that if the story doesn’t do well, the authors end up getting paid maybe what they’d have gotten paid to write for Harper’s.
