Thinking Like an Editor

Chances are that you've edited someone else's work. It may have been as an editor, or perhaps you were doing a favor to a friend or colleague. You look at the piece and, without any personal attachment, concentrate on making it better. You look for places to reduce unnecessary verbiage, find spots that are unclear, and generally try to tighten things.

Few of us do that automatically with our own work. It's too easy to think that you've been too long at something already, or that you have a fondness for some phrases. But whether you're writing an article, a chapter, a brochure, or a query, you need to bring out your inner editor. Pretend that you have before you something written by another and go to town. Find every error that you can. Take pleasure in showing that person how to really express yourself in words. Toss out sections that don't work, and go so far as restructuring the entire piece of you think it necessary.

It's a bit of acting, this pretense, but will lead to the most real writing you can do. By tricking yourself into a different frame of mind, you reduce your urge to justify your work. On a playwriting list, I recently saw a post from someone who was getting a lot of positive reinforcement from some talented professional theatrical professionals, yet one comment from one admittedly talented and experienced actress was throwing him. He wanted to know how to discount it. I asked why he didn't also discount the praise from the others.

Writing is ultimately an unsentimental affair. You have a job to do - express certain ideas in a way that only you would - and nothing should come between you and that goal. Cultivate the dispassion of a surgeon trying to save someone's life. Only then will you do your best work, because you'll happily sacrifice any part that isn't doing its job.

The En Passant Quote

In chess, en passant (in passing) is a specific circumstance under which one pawn can capture another while moving by it. But a few years ago I found a way of using a quote in passing.

I was writing an article for Newsweek, which meant a lot of information in a small amount of space. In this case, I had about800 words and 10 sources. Normally that would be overkill and you wouldn't use all of the material, but in this case I really wanted to, so I had to find a way to fit it in without being too obvious in the reading.

So I experimented with using a quote as both a way of delivering additional information and acting as a transition between paragraphs at the same time. Here's an example:

..."Many of the people running dot coms have never run a business before. All they're doing is spending a lot of money and getting very little return." Experience is key, because there are no hard and fast rules about exactly how to value intangible services like consulting. As Marty Winston, an old time technology PR expert, puts it, "PR pricing always has been a bit of voodoo."

More often, though, the real source of trouble is "Internet time," the frenzy that arises when the impossible is expected and service providers have to lavish staff and other resources on projects simply to keep up. ...

In this case, the Winston quote adds an insight into a business issue - PR pricing - while creating a natural transition to the next paragraph. It's not a technique that always works, and overuse can look clumsy, because you might well be using quotes from two different sources in one paragraph after another. But when you need to squeeze a bit more into limited space, this reduces the need for separate transitions, and the words they require.

Organize Magazine and Opportunity Risk Analysis

Part of a freelance writer's business is analyzing a client before you consider working with it. You need to answer questions about the reputation of the people involved in the venture and the company's financial stability and ability to pay. I thought this might be clearer through an example.

The subject of a recent New York Times article was a new publication called Organize. Joyce Dorny, a professional organizer, developed the concept with an investment of about $100,000. No one involved with the venture has ever run a magazine before. According to a second article, the title is selling in some supermarket chains, all 500 Borders stores, and three-quarters of the 800 Barnes & Nobel stores, with the first issue getting orders for 20,000 copies. The bimonthly's first issue has nine pages of advertising.

I did a quick web search and found nothing alarming. If I were actually thinking of taking an assignment, I might do a search on a service that can pull up public records, including criminal and bankruptcy, to see if there are any red flags that might make me uncomfortable about doing business.

Now let's look at the available financial information. In this case we have a significant piece of information: the size of the start-up investment. According to MagazinePublisher.com (site of a custom publisher):

A small niche subscription base magazine can probably be launched for under $50,000 - a full featured newsstand consumer magazine would require into the millions to successfully launch.

Distribution and content help tell you what the magazine's focus is. In this case, according to the Times piece, the focus definitely seems to have a consumer slant:

Marketed to women who work full-time or are full-time mothers, its purpose, Ms. Dorny said, is to help these women find “a sense of order and a feeling of control over the work desk or toy bin.”

If you see a picture of the magazine, it appears to be a glossy with sophisticated design. All this means that the start-up costs are quickly racking up the zeros. This money has to cover printing, design, content, customer acquisition, marketing, and many other expenses. In other words, $100,000 for a title like this is little money. Now factor in that the ad sales of the first issue were only nine pages out of a total of 64 pages. That's 14% ads, which is extremely low in the industry. The question is whether there will be enough cash flow to keep everyone paid in a timely manner without depending on an additional investment.

Of that first 20,000 order, according to experts in the business, traditional magazine distribution typically sells only 3 out of every ten copies it places. Combine that with the $4.99 cover price, and the total brought in could well be just under $30,000, and the publisher sees only some portion of that, with the rest split by the distributor and the store. In other words, newsstand sales aren't going to bring a windfall, and neither will 9 pages of ads.

I don't know the people involved and certainly can't predict whether this venture might hit a consumer nerve or not. But the quick analysis would suggest that the numbers are against them without more investment, meaning that getting paid could be risky. Even if you took an assignment, it would seem prudent to wait for payment before accepting a second.

There may be rare cases where this kind of analysis causes you to turn down what would prove itself a great opportunity, but in the long run you'll avoid far more painful times than paychecks.

Addendum: Ms. Dorny emailed me. I had misread something in an article that made me thing she was an author - she isn't. I suspect the public reports of the numbers were off, as she said the distributor sold 35,000 copies of the first issue and they have about 1,200 subscriptions. The second print run will be at least 110,000, and they're investing more of their own money.

That said, the magazine hasn't paid any writers for submissions. As she wrote:

We have been very blessed with writers who believe in the idea of the magazine so much, and in the long term possibility of it, that they were willing to contribute for the mention of their name, business and/or website. They will be the first to get paid when we begin doing so (we plan to start with the jan/feb issue).

Definitely not a market for a pro writer, as you'd apparently be helping to underwrite the development of the magazine. I don't know if the designers were paid, though I'm pretty sure that printers don't work for nothing.

Update - March 29, 2008

Some writers had asked again if this market was paying, so I emailed owner Joyce Dorny. She responded as following:

We do now pay, but on a limited scale.

We pay $500 for a feature article and $250 for a column. We also pay on the 15th day of the publication month.

So it is a paying market, though limited pay and payment comes after publication.

Time for Online?

When trying to understand publishers and where they're going, it always makes sense to watch the usual business leaders - like Time Inc. It's not necessarily the most cutting-edge or experimental, but the organization is one of the most prestigious in the industry, and others look when it moves.

So it's interesting to see a couple of items about the company's commitment to online publishing. About a week ago, Gawker reported that Time Magazine was "shoving its reluctant writers online." As managing editor Rick Stengel wrote in a memo:

I suspect that some of you regard writing for TIME.com as an obligation, and not what you came to TIME to do. But times have changed, and we have to change with them. If you care about what you do - and I know you do - then you need to display your talent, your expertise, and your dedication online as well as in the magazine. That goes for editors as well as writers. Everyone should now have beats and areas of responsibility (Ratu has the list), and you should talk to Josh as well as your editors about what your contribution to TIME.com should be.

And now Advertising Age has an article about how 1.2 million subscribers to the company's publications are getting emails pointing them to People's first digi-mag - a 30 page magazine/website hybrid found only online with an animated cover. The print version of People (notice how we adjust our language almost unconsciously to address the changing circumstances) will also promote the site.

The online world is already business as usual, but emphasis will continuously shift there. Now is not the time to bemoan print magazines folding or how the world is changing. Yes, it is - and it always does. Now is the time to position yourself to become an expert at online work. If you asked most writers now, I'd wager that they'd say it's just a matter of writing.

That will change. You'll see a growing push for additional skills that make the lives of the publishers easier. At least some degree of HTML coding. Knowledge of popular web software. These and others will become what business calls barriers to entry. Then there will be the additional skills - multimedia, use of specialty programming languages, comfort with databases - that will be the additional value making some people worth paying more than others.

So how are your skills?

The Dangers of Big Projects

At some point in your writing, you'll get involved with a project that seems great - a large sum of money (think five or six figures), work guaranteed for a period of time, and all looking right with the world. But the big-ticket job can, in its own way, be as dangerous as the assignments that pay too little:

• No client should be too important. You don't want any one client to provide too much of your income; losing it can become a devastating financial blow. That's what can happen with a big ticket project, particularly if it's out of scale with the rest of your work. If something like this does seem likely to happen, then consider pushing to expand the rest of your business to keep it in balance. After all, few clients offer such projects on a regular basis, and you don't want to become used to nice money only to see it dry up.


• Emphasize the client, not the project. Real success comes from relationships. A big project may seem a delight, but keep it in perspective. Big projects just don't happen as often as smaller ones and so are harder to find. Clients that provide significant revenue over smaller projects year after year are always worth more.


• Keep projects in their places. When you have the chance of a big project, there's always that temptation to do nothing else. But that has its price. If a five figure project keeps you from maintaining ties with important long-term, high-value clients or from ongoing marketing, it disrupts your work flow after it's over. And then, 30 to 60 days after it's over, you'll take a hit to your cash flow because you didn't keep your business pipeline filled. Always have projects and customers fit your business model. See if you can negotiate and schedule the work to be part-time over some number of months. In any case, always keep marketing so that when the project is done, you aren't done for.


• Clients cancel. Many contracts have termination clauses, which means there's always a possibility that the project will suddenly end. Even if there isn't a provision, if someone stops paying, you can go to court, but it can take a long time to get satisfaction. Manage your risk so it's at a level you can tolerate.

I'm not suggesting that writers shouldn't take large projects by any means. Just use some caution and common sense so that the offer that seems to be too good to be real doesn't turn out that way.

New Radio Frontier

According to ReclaimtheMedia (and thanks to Slashdot.org for pointing this out), low power FM stations might get a chance to break current radio interests to limit their existence:

The Local Community Radio Act of 2007 would remove the artificial restrictions imposed on LPFM by a 2000 law passed at the urging of corporate radio giants and NPR, claiming that small community stations would interfere with the signals of larger stations. While these claims were debunked by a taxpayer-funded study in 2002, Congress has not yet acted on those results - denying many communities the opportunity to apply for LPFM stations.

If this passes, what it means for writers is an experimental medium to try new forms of reporting and telling stories. Non-profits, schools, unions, advocacy groups, and other community groups, will be able to set up lower powered FM stations to broadcast alternative content. In the same vein as my post about blogs being a way of practicing writing, you could look for such opportunities to expand your reporting repertoire. If you want to continue writing over the long run, you need to break out of old concepts of publishing. This could be an opportunity to learn how to handle a mic and to edit sound - giving you the experience to produce audiocasts and part of the multimedia packages that, I think, will ultimately drive the industry. The more you can offer your client, the more value you bring, which means more money and greater security in the market.

Get That Publishing Lawyer

Over the years I've heard a number of experienced writers and authors saying that they trust their agents to tell them if there are problems with a book contract. In my experience dealing with contracts and agents, this is a big mistake. Here are the common rationales I've heard:

• Agents deal with contracts all the time. Writers deal with contracts all the time, and how many of them are capable of providng a thorough review of a contract? Of the many hundreds of writers I've met over the years, there has been just a few that I think would be able to find most (though possibly not all) the potential probelms in a contract, and most of them have either been lawyers, paralegals, or corporate contract negotiators. The logic doesn't hold up. Yes, agents are likely more sensitive to contract language than authors, and they will spot many problem areas. But not all. I've seen too many writers who had used agents and ended up with problems in contracts to assume otherwise. Unless your agent is a trained publishing lawyer, he or she will be unlikely to catch every potential problem in a contract.


• I trust my agent. It's good that you trust your agent. But why put your agent into the box of having to know what a lawyer knows? If something does go wrong, you will no longer be able to simply say that the agent didn't catch a particular issue. Now the person will have let you down and your working relationship will go into the dumpster. A good many agent contracts also specifically state that they're not lawyers and that if you need one you should hire one. They don't include the language just for fun.


• A good agent will know the business and the potential problems of a contract. I agree that a good agent will know the business, but contracts change constantly and a slight difference in wording can make a big difference in interpretation. Also, agents will know the area - publishing - in which they usually work. But what if there's a problem with some other set of rights? An attorney familiar with licensing deals brings a broader perspective.


• Contracts is why I had an agent to begin with. I beg to differ. An agent is a salesperson. You have the agent to sell the book to an editor for more money than you'd be able to get on your own, assuming that the editor was willing to talk to you. To expect the agent to be a lawyer as well is to demand extra work that the person is not qualified to give.


• Why should I have to spend the extra money? If you ever have a problem and find yourself having problems with the publisher that could have been avoided, you'll know why you spend the money. Most of the time there won't be a problem. For the times that there are and the stakes are high, the cost of the lawyer (who, charging by the hour, will cost far less than the agent) becomes inconsequential. The cost of fixing a problem after the contract is signed can be orders of magnitude (as in 10, 100, or 1000 times more) than the review would have been. If the book is important and the contract amount significant, then you should make that much of an investment in your business.

I think the underlying factor is a combination of not wanting to part with any money and, more importantly, fear of the legal process. All that's really involved, though, is doing some research to get a lawyer experienced in the field, submit the document, and get the review. This should cost far under $1,000 - possibly under $500. If you're looking at even a low five figure advance, you're talking about a relatively small percentage, and a lot of peace of mind.

Blogs: the Writer's Weight Room

Many people spend hours a week on treadmills, in front of weight machines, and traveling to and from the gym. They don't get paid; on the contrary, they pay with both their money and time because the experience itself provides a benefit.

I've seen many writers take up blogging and then drop it, or only do so sporadically. My own experience over the last six months would suggest that even when you are busy, it can make sense to set aside time to blog.

To write well, you have to set words to paper. Lots of them. The more you write, the better and faster you will get. But there are only so many assignments you can land. So unless you're writing constantly and getting paid for it, try blogging. Not just a quick line pointing to something that has appeared somewhere else, but actually writing.

I'm currently maintaining four blogs with new posts once a day, Monday through Friday. At even a few hundred words a post, that adds up to well over a quarter million words a year. No, I'm not getting paid for it (although I've had at least one assignment come from an editor I knew looking at a topic I had pointed out).

But it's like intellectual weight lifting. My writing feels stronger and faster just in the last few months. There is always room to improve, if you're putting in the requisite work. Concert musicians will practice hours a day to keep limber and to stretch their abilities in new ways. The same applies to writing. If you're a pro, you should still be writing every day, doing the equivalent of scales, putting one letter after another. You can write non-fiction, write up material that you couldn't otherwise use, work on a novel section at a time - anything you want. The important thing is to sit and write, whether you feel like it or not. You'll get the direct satisfaction of improvement and the indirection one of being able to more easily impress editors. It's a long term investment, but one that seems to me worthwhile.

Developing Your Own Theory of Writing

There are a lot of writing books and many theories of how you should do one thing or another. But there comes a time, after you've been practicing your craft for some years, that you need to develop your own theory of writing and its processes.

There used to be a tradition in craft guilds of someone progressing through the ranks as an apprentice, then journeyman, and finally as a master. The master took on apprentices to teach them the craft and to get inexpensive help. They hired journeymen to get more practiced aid but were still expected to pass things on.

When you teach, you solidify your own grasp of what you do, because suddenly you're forced to think it all through. The more conscious you are about what you do, the better you can do it, because you will notice what you might change to improve, what the best practices are, and so on.

So even if you aren't teaching anyone about writing, act as though you were. Work out the explanations so you can gain that greater degree of consciousness into your own work. You can always mentor people, answer questions on writing boards (though too seldom are they about craft), help newcomers, and otherwise give yourself a chance to communicate what you've come to intentionally understand.

The added benefit? When someone actually does ask you about writing problems, you'll be ready to answer.

Practice Makes Perfect Sense

At some time in your writing career, you will find the overwhelming desire to coast. You might notice it as a greater reliance on formula writing, where you use the same types of openings, always make the third paragraph the nut graph, and go out on an ironic quote. Coasting might come up in pitching to familiar editors only, or in always pursuing a specific topic or story type. You might keep doing the same amount of work.

No matter how the coasting starts, the taste of sameness is always there. One story sounds like the next. Each day becomes a slogging through a business that might as well be working for someone else. Then you start thinking that maybe, just maybe, the problem is with freelancing and that a change in what you do would solve all your problems. There would be enough money, adequate insurance (at least at an affordable rate), interesting people to speak with, challenges, and the possibility of advancement. But there won't be, because the problem isn't with circumstances; it's with how you meet them.

Granted, some people are not cut out for the freelance life and never will be. They really would be much better off working for someone else, or possibly doing something completely different from writing. But for those who really are suited to freelancing, this sort of feeling is a sign that you've forgotten an important life lesson: practice makes perfect.

We all know that the more you do something, the better you get at it. But doing isn't the rote replication of action. By essentially writing the same story and undertaking the same assignments, you aren't doing. Instead, you're working on an intellectual assembly line and just becoming more efficient at fixing the nut onto the bolt. That's unfulfilling because it misses the human inner drive to achieve something more. When you perform by rote, you work without really being present; you cease to exist. Any wonder why that would leave you unhappy?

To find meaning and fulfillment, keep practicing amd challenge yourself so that you must be present to solve the problems that will arise. Of course some of your work will be similar, but it won't be identical or rote. Push into new markets and talk to new editors. Improve the approach to your profession so that you stretch your skills and increase your knowledge of craft. Toss the web for a week and use a library for research. Go on location to do some reporting. Try a different way of writing an article, even if think the results might not work. Just keep pushing - keep practicing. You'll never reach perfection, but you will gain satisfaction, and that's something that few jobs ever offer.

Searching the Web's Past

One problem in searching the web is that it’s constantly changing, and something that may have appeared on a page might not longer be there. For example, a company might have posted something that was incriminating in some way, shape, or form, and then, realizing this, taken it down.

In such a case, it’s time to call Mr. Peabody and hit the Wayback Machine. It’s a reference to the old cartoon episodes when a genius dog and his boy, Sherman (no relation), would travel into historic periods for amusement. And on the Internet, there is The Wayback Machine Internet Archive.

You provide the URL and this site goes through 85 billion pages archived since 1996 and shows you up-dates for each year. It doesn’t capture every change on the web; for example, I used it on my own site and found no changes in 2007 and only one in 2006, though I’ve made incremental changes in my home page. But, I did find older versions. It’s worth a check. Also, there is archived video, audio, text, and even legally down-loadable computer pro-grams and you can search through these as well.

If you only need to go back a few months, there are other options. Google.com, Live.com, Yahoo.com, Ask.com, and Gigablast.com all keep cached searches going back anywhere from three months to a year, depending on the search engine.

Dangers of Boilerplate Contracts

Writers often look for boilerplate contracts. Some want a document for a client; others think that having a "standard" document will help them better understand what they receive from clients, particularly publishers. I understand the motivations, but almost inevitably the results are risky because the writers don't understand the limits of what they seek.

One is that the agenda of the entity presenting the contract will affect how it is written. Any writer who has received a contract from a publisher knows this, but the same is true for documents you find on the web. For example, I remember once reading through an example magazine contract offered by a writers organization. It called for payment not on acceptance, but simple receipt of an article. Receipt? That's like asking someone to pay for a car before they get to turn the key to see if it works. Payment on receipt is completely unrealistic and even unreasonable for the publisher, yet one writer after another now thought that this was a realistic approach. Chances are that there were some contract purists who refused work because they couldn't get such ideal terms.

Another problem is that boilerplate contracts are generally so generic as to be almost unusable. They almost never cover all the areas you need to address, and you also have to wonder whether a really good lawyer is going to create such documents for free use. When I needed a collaboration contract, I did start with a boilerplate - and then proceeded to double the length with all the areas I knew I needed to cover. Only then did I go to a publisher lawyer and get help with a final draft - and the lawyer added yet additional considerations.

I've often seen writers, even very experienced ones, trying to cut corners and get away with something they found and a free review from a writer's organization. Yet the very same people would shake their heads at someone trying to sneak by with non-professional writing. The same reasons apply. If you need a custom contract, you need to invest in setting up a proper contract, which will force you to consider problems before they occur. If you can't afford to get professional help, then either you're not doing enough of the given type of work (so the cost of the contract is reasonably spread over a number of assignments), or you're working for too little. Cutting corners might work for a while - even a long time - but eventually you get burned, and it's a cost that all the money you saved will never equal.

Contract Review: CanWest

Someone jsut sent me the new contract from Canadian publisher and broadcaster CanWest. It's pretty much the same for writers and photographers, so both should be able to get something from this review. Please remember that I'm not a lawyer and that this isn't legal advice:

• CanWest seeks rights for all media, including "any and all third party print, broadcast, online, digital, and other media and the right to repurpose and/or resell in any media worldwide." Furthermore, payment schedules can be changed by the company without notice, so you could find yourself suddenly working for less money than you thought.


• The first numbered clause indicates that all rihts are exclusive, so the writer or photographer can never publish the material in any way, shape, or form (including self-promotion on a web site) without permission. The company can make any changes it wants and the writer or photographer has to waive moral rights - non-existent for US writers, but for Canadians as well as for US visual artists (photographers), it means that even if the company makes you look bad with the changes, you can't take any issue. They can sublicense any of the rights to anyone, which means that, combined with the moral rights waiver, you have no control over how and in what context your material is used. If a legislature grants additional rights in this area, you waive them as well.


• The second clause looks for a warranty, or promise, that the material "shall not infringe upon or violate the rights of any third party, whether personal or proprietary, including copyright." That means if a court in any part of the world (worldwide rights) decides that your piece has infringed any rights whatsoever, you've just breached the contract. Remember that laws vary widely, and you're promising that which you probably can't know. The contract also restricts the damages you can seek to "damages at law," and that a court cannot curtail the company's rights. I know less of Canadian law than US, but I think there is a distinction in terms of the remedies available if they cause you an injury of any sort. That means you could sue for money but not to force CanWest into any particular action, including an injunction from doing something or other and where money alone won't make up for it. If you use best efforts in trying to comply with this, the company will defend you in a defamation action - but no other type of action is mentioned, so for those you're on your own.


• In section three, aside for the "independent contractor" language you might expect, the contract further says that your services "are not now, and will not become, subject to any union or collective bargaining agreement... ." In other words, should someone organize a union for freelancers in Canada, this agreement is exempt.


• Section four provides for a freelancer to get 50 percent of the gross (that at least is a reasonable amount) for syndication sales. But the contract defines that as individual sales to third parties and not part of the Base Use (everything owned by the company or affiliated with it, including broadcast media and the Canada.com web site) or Electronic Use (all third party online and digital services). Since the base use includes the CanWest News Service, that may not leave a whole lot.

Sounds like the CanWest contract is a Can't Do for freelancers who value their business.

Short Guide to Guidebooks at Joshua Berman Blog

Joshua Berman is an experience travel writer and guide book writer, and at his blog he has a great entry about writing guide books. It's in a Q&A format and is a must-read for those who want to write one of these. A short take: better have a good reason to do one because the advance will probably only cover your expenses if you do it right and have to travel to the destination. He notes that he only knows of "a handful" of writers who actually make a living doing this type of work. Even spinning off magazine articles doesn't seem to do the trick, so he takes season work as well to make ends meet.

The Fallible Book Excerpt

The New York Times had yet another article on book marketing, this one on whether book excerpts help sell the titles. It's another facet of what I covered in my Book Blockbusters article. It comes down to the subtle and treacherous world of publicity. Contrary to popular opinion, not all press is good. As the article points out, if there is one major revelation to be found in a book and that finds its way into the excerpt, then you've just killed sales. Here are two paragraphs of the article that give a good summary:

Because the excerpt is just one weapon in the publicity arsenal, publishers are hard-put to assess its role in the campaign. Still, they can point to recent successes like "It Ain’t All About the Cookin’" by the restaurateur and Food Network host Paula Deen, which was serialized in Ladies’ Home Journal and hit the New York Times best-seller list immediately after publication.

On the other hand, Time magazine’s excerpt of "I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story," by Rick Bragg, put a dent in book sales, according to Mr. Bogaards of Knopf. "The excerpt gave away too much — I think people felt they’d had their fill," he said. "We sold 175,000 in hardcover but had expected to do twice that."

Publishers in the past were motivated to place excerpts because the money for them could hit $100,000 - and that's the equivalent of a lot of copies at one shot without the actual cost of producing them. Yes, writers get a big chunk - sometimes 90% of such serial sales - but that's still a lot of cash for a single book. When the magazine paid big money, they wanted big and juicy parts, sometimes even taking a bit here, some there, and putting them all together, even if they've given away important parts of the book.

Now the fees are less and the benefit less obvious. As the publisher of Hyperion was quoted, "For $1,500, why risk exposure of all the juicy bits if it’s going to hurt sales?" That's pretty short money, which means someone will have to explain why this is all a good idea and just how many copies moved as a result. For authors the point is clear: You have to take significant interest in the marketing of your book, because there are so many ways it can go wrong. So much habit, so little desire to do something new, which only shakes up the status quo and leaves everyone at the publisher feeling less comfortable. Oh, and then the entire marketing department is so overwhelmed with work and titles and lack of resources that all they can do is plod along like automatons. If you're not keeping watch, there's little chance that anyone else will.

The Temptation to Diversify

I'm not generally someone who believes that writers should have only one specialty. It's a model that works for some, though I prefer spreading my business risk over multiple areas, so a downturn in one area won't necessarily affect all of my income. Yet you want to expand, not expend. When looking to enter an area new to you, it is dangerously easy to become distracted and waste time and energy. For example, I know a writer now that is considering trying a travel book. I've known others that have as well, and have even done one myself.

Unfortunately, the money in guidebooks tends to be, at best, mediocre. Someone looking to do this would have to start with some hard financial questions:

1. What opportunities am I giving up?


2. What is the difference between what I'd get and what I give up?


3. What natural opportunities would this tangent open?


4. What are the revenues that these would likely deliver?


5. To what degree are these additional revenues additional to what I'd make anyway?


6. After all is said and done, am I financially better off, worse off, or would the experience be a wash?

Once you've gone through this list, you have a sense of your net investment and what your resulting financial position will be. Then, unless the money is a non-issue (and that is true for some people), you can look at the other factors - fun, ego, resume burnishing, perks, satisfaction, and so on - more than balance things out. You might decide that what you get out of a project might even be worth a financial loss. That's fine - so long as you go into the opportunity with your eyes open, and not just your wallet.

When Contracts Aren't Enough

Reading a contract is an important task in the life of a businessperson. You agree to terms and conditions that govern how you will do business and that could come back to bite you in the posterior. But when dealing with someone new, there's an even more fundamental - checking someone's reputation.

Alex Beam in the Boston Globe wrote a column about a ghost writing firm - New York-based Penn Group - that has sued a couple of its writers, allegedly because the young owners got made at the authors. The column may be accurate, or not, and I have no idea who ultimately holds the blame for the dust-up. But I do know one thing - that type of story is enough on its own for me to shy away from doing business with a company.

No matter how beneficial a contract's terms seem to be, you should have the basic sense that you can more-or-less trust the people on the other side of the table. If you can't, it won't matter what the contract says, because someone somewhere will be ringing a lawyer.

Before considering a contract, do some some background research and check a client's reputation. If there are some red flags, then you have a chance to steer clear. It might be that a company like Penn Group actually would be good to work with. Perhaps the writers really are at fault. After all, one of the writers at least had done more than one project with the company. But we're not talking about proving something for court. Instead, you want to limit unnecessary risk when it is tied with catastrophic results. Otherwise you might find that you were playing the business version of Russian roulette.

Value and Pricing

Pricing seems one of the most contentious business issues that writers face, if posts on every writing board I've ever seen are an indication. People want to know what others charge, what they should charge, how to bill it, when to bill it, and in what form the invoice should be.

Unfortunately, while the information someone gains could be useful, it often isn't. Pricing is an individual thing, not a regurgitation of all that the market will bear, because what it will bear for one it will deny another. A large company in the high tech industry is likely to pay significantly more for a press release than the mom-and-pop local business, largely because they will require a significant level of experience as well as relevant knowledge on the part of the writer. A corporate writer experienced in navigating the regulatory requirements of the SEC will command significantly more to write an annual report for a public company than one with less experience. That's because there is a difference in the value offered.

Price is the compromise between the value a writer can offer and the value the client perceives. You start with your own hourly price and then do research to try and find what equivalent work from writers with equivalent background and experience for similar types of clients might command. That tells you if there is additional you *could* charge because the client is likely to expect it. Then you layer on the specific value that you bring. For example, I've charged companies $150/hour and more at times to write marketing materials, but I had significant experience in the specific type of work and could bring a lot in specialized knowledge of the customers and products. I can think of a time that I literally got 20% more than another experienced writer because of a specific value edge.

But there is another part of the value equation - what value you receive. Value is more than the money you receive. I've recently embarked on a large project (not the speechwriting I previously mentioned) for less than I might ordinarily charge, but then I'm gaining a credit in a particular type of project that will let me win more bids in the future and charge more. Don't just look at what the market will bear when pricing a project. Consider the value you offer, the value you gain, the money you need to make for the time invested, and market realities. Then you can intelligently use the feedback you get from other writers.

Breaking the Book Blockbuster Bane

I have a new article up on getting smarter about book publicity that came from a post I had at ASJA that a number of people found useful. Hope it's useful to you as well. Look under Resources to the left, or click here.

Simon & Schuster Blinks

From what the Association of Authors' Representatives (literary agent organization) and the Authors Guild are saying, Simon & Schuster is backing down on effectively elminating out-of-print rights reversion. The company had tried questioning the Authors Guild in a statement on Publishers Weekly, but apparently that was short-lived. Here's what the AAR had to say after having a few of its crew meet with S&S:

They informed us that S&S is investing a lot of resources in its digital publishing initiative, and their expanded efforts in conventional and newtechnologies will enable them to supply books to consumers in a variety of formats, including Print on Demand, electronic books, digital downloadable audio, online page views, et. al. Their goal is to keep books in print more effectively and to market frontlist and backlist titles more vibrantly.They have confirmed for us that they are agreeable to negotiating with agents a revenue-based threshold to determine the in-print status of a book.

That is certainly good news - and proof that if writers don't roll over, publishers are quite capable of backing down.

Will Write for Experience

I just wrote a 2,200 word speech for less than I'd typically charge for a front-of-book magazine short, let alone a press release. That might seem crazy to many. Obviously I could have researched the market, determined how much such work "goes for," and then priced accordingly.

But I deliberately shunned the "smart" approach and charged a pittance. However, i did so for solid reasons. I knew the person and her likely available resources, so knew that charging more wouldn't work. She sent the payment ahead of delivery, so getting stiffed wouldn't be a problem. And, most importantly, I went through the value calculation.

Clients determine whether they are getting value for their money. Most work with budgets and have an idea of how much they're willing to pay for something, depending on the value to them. But the value has many components: specialized knowledge of the writer, ability to provide material in specific formats, time pressures, and so on.

Writers have to make a similar calculation. yes, money is important, but is there reference value to client, so getting work from others becomes easier because you have a marquee accomplishment? Do you learn a new skill or area that increases the value you can provide in the future to others? Are you getting a first chance to break into a new type of writing? Will you be paid faster than usual?

In my case, I was breaking into an area that I knew I could do, but where I had never done professional work. Saying, "Oh, I write plays and give public talks" doesn't necessarily translate into confidence that you will produce a decent speech. But now I can give a reference to a real client who needed to speak before a prestigious national legal conference.

That alone brings a lot of future value - potentially many times more than the money I didn't get, as speechwriting is usually a pretty well-paid type of work. Don't generally do cut-rate work, but consider it when the results are a solid investment in your business.