What's the Payoff?

One of the most difficult things to address in any business, including writing, is the value of speculative ventures. I've seen attitudes among writers go from the free pass ("It gives me good exposure," even if someone doesn't check metrics and can't track work to the blog) to the determinedly skeptical ("When will it turn into high paying work?"). Being on the extremes is often a bad idea because your view is like looking at something with one eye closed: there's no depth of field and no perspective.

The problem with the enthusiastic view is that you won't determine if the venture does offer your business anything. As I've mentioned, exposure for its own sake does nothing. It only makes sense as part of a planned business if your potential clients (whether a corporation or an editor or someone who might be part of your audience) see it and if the exposure helps to positively market your work. If the venture is simply low paying, then you must decide if there is really something of value, or if you are wasting time that might be better spent elsewhere.

Now that we've spent some time I've worn the glasses of the pessimists, let's look at the other view. It's great if you can predict that a venture will turn into a significant revenue stream, or lead to better paying work, but sometimes there is no way to know in advance. At best, you may only be able to use the clips as examples of your work and/or expertise in a given area, which might lead to better assignments, or the connections you make in covering an area may pay off in other venues. There is also the question of whether you just want to write about a given area for your own pleasure and don't care about payment.

So, when it comes to speculative ventures, I'd suggest the following approach:

1. Determine if the subject and format are ones that you would enjoy doing anyway. If the answer is truly yes, and not an affirmative that is really rationalization, then you have some benefit no matter how the money comes out.


2. Take a look at the venture and determine what skills and knowledge areas you might gain, and then do research to see if there might be some advantage to them. For example, learning to use a blogging system in a mechanical way isn't of that much value. But if you pick up how to embed online references, control such aspects of formatting as italics or bold, and learn how to set up tables and embed images, then you have skills that will make doing online work easier, and possibly increase your marketability with clients.


3. Consider the market for this type of work. Are the rates reasonable? Or are you effectively learning to use a word processor to become the high tech equivalent of a typist? If there is the opportunity to make significant money, then you might have a solid financial reason to start. However, realize that most new undertakings don't succeed. You need a realistic estimate of the chance that the venture will thrive and deliver what you anticipate. That means don't throw yourself completely into it unless you have the resources to carry you and your business in the meantime.


4. If the venture is a new business that you will own - maybe publishing your own blog or specialty web site - then ask if you've factored in the need for marketing the venture as its own entity. You might make money or you might not, but you certainly won't if you aren't promoting the venture to its potential audience. That will require time and could even demand monetary investment. That becomes a counter balance to what you might gain from it.


5. Finally you get to the question of the promotional value to you of the venture. This is not an area for feel-good guessing. You must be able to pinpoint what prospects will see it and potentially contact you to do work.

For a venture to make sense, I think it's smart to have more than one factor going for it. Look at each factor skeptically, but recognize that multiple benefits increase the chance of "success," at least as defined as being of more benefit to you than the time and energy you put into the venture.

Free Media: Who Pays?

In keeping with getting paid for reuse, let's have a look at an article on MediaPost, via a note from the BoSacks Reporter. This is a must-read for creatives of all disciplines, I think, because it quotes a simple and brilliant summation of the issue of media and their cost. In this formulation by Shelly Palmer, there are only three models for paying for media (with an obvious fourth):

• I pay - in which the creator absorbs the costs of producing and distributing the material


• You pay - in which the reader pays with a subscription or some other type of purchase


• They pay - in which a third party that typically wants to associate itself with the content pays


• Somebody pays - a combination of two or three of the above

The reason this is such an important formulation is that it clears your thinking of all the details - Google ads, per copy pricing, selling through Amazon, and so on - that keep you from understanding the fundamental problem. And when you look at the fundamentals, suddenly some innovations aren't so that different from what we've seen in the past:

Palmer scoffs at the notion that Radiohead's "pay-what-you-want" album sales model is at all a breakthrough. While a third of consumers who downloaded the band's latest album paid something for it, the real point of the model was to get the band's music heard to generate residual sales in the form of concerts and merchandising.

"It's really the Jerry Garcia model," says Palmer, referring to the late lead guitarist of the Grateful Dead, who encouraged deadheads to record the band's live performances and distribute and share the recording for free, because it would generate a broader marketplace for the band's music and concert tours.

When you blog or give away material, you are either underwriting everything to promote yourself or, more likely, you hope to eventually sell something to the people who come by. Again, it's that give it away and make up the promotional activity in another area model.

This reminds me of a conversation I recently had with one of my book editors. She mentioned another writer she had used - polished, capable, understanding material, but unwilling to promote. Therefore, the books didn't do that well and when he wanted another assignment, she said, "You really need to be willing to help promote, otherwise I can't give you anything."

What she said goes right back to the three models. Each part of the publishing industry has the same issue: someone has to pay. The book publisher currently depends on the audience bearing all the costs, and the greater a response, the more readily it can undertake a new book idea. The writer gets paid by the publisher, but might have to do some self-supporting work to help bring the audience to the venture that eventually pays. If there are ads, people must pay enough attention to the ads to make the third party advertisers feel as though they are getting enough for their money. Instead of sweating all the details, take some time to get to the fundamentals and answer these questions:

• What do you offer?


• Who pays for your work?


• What must you do to ensure they get what they need?


• Are tehre classic examples of business models that might work for you?

Why Writers Should Seek Payment for Reuse

These days, you'll find many people, from consumers to large corporations, all asking why content providers should get a cut of revenues made off their work. I've recently been involved in some discussions along this line and have found the following points helpful - you might as well:

• This is an issue of ground rules and assumptions. In our society, writing is considered a form of intellectual property because of choice - copyright has not always existed, and when it didn't, the English printed and sold Mark Twain's works without paying him a penny, just as the Americans printed and sold Dickens without royalties. The reason that writing and other forms of creative expression get property protection is that society as a whole sees the need to encourage innovation of many types, but if we say that it's open field day on what people create, many now have an enormous financial disincentive to continue their work. That reduces the benefit to everyone. Now, some people might argue that the periods of protection are too long, and I might agree, but that is a separate argument.


• The reason to let property interests lapse is not so people can take the material as is and make money off it, but to let people build upon what has gone before. Those who focus on wanting free stuff might ask themselves what it would be like to buy a house and then be told that other people would also be making use of it without chipping in on the investment or doing any work of upkeep or maintenance. Yes, a house is tangible, but so what? Are love and hate an illusion because you don't see them floating around in the air?


• There are people who argue that all "content" should be free - whether writing, music, software, or art - and that taking it is ethical. To take someone else's work and to proclaim that it is ethically allowable to copy and sell it, making a profit without their permission and, in fact, in the face of their express disapproval, is just rationalization of an unethical act. Just because you don't like the way your neighbor cuts his lawn doesn't give you the right to tell him how to do it, which is essentially the argument being made with "all content should be free." Some activists think that any control over content prevents free exchange and common work. If someone wants to write open source code or make a book available for free download or turn an artwork into a free image file, that is the person's right. But if I’m putting the effort in to create something, and I’m the one whose business is making the investment to do something, then I'm the one who has control. Why should all my investment be taken out of my hands and given to someone else to profit from it? For the same reason, I cannot tell others not to freely distribute their own creations.


• A large part of the problem is that people often do not distinguish between intellectual property and a product. There is a difference between licensing a use and selling the property. If you rent out your car, you retain ownership and control, even if you allow someone to use it. If you sell some electronic device, the units are the physical property of those who buy them, but those buyers do not necessarily have the right to take the design of the device and incorporate it into something else for profit. When someone brings up the word product, try having them substitute something else, like design or underlying concept or brand or business plan. What makes writing different from many businesses is that it can make possible whole lines of separate income, and what the writer has is the ability to let someone pursue those businesses. The writer licenses an opportunity for a suitable fee.


• Many question why Hollywood writers should keep getting a cut of revenue. That's easy. When you sell copyright, you no longer retain control. However, Hollywood writers are in an odd situation. The only way they generally get to do business is to sell copyright, and yet the industry has long recognized that the writers have a right to ask for continued payments as part of the price of that copyright. In other words, they learned from the vaudeville performers of the early 20th century who allowed their acts to be filmed, receiving a single payment, and then found that no one was willing to pay them to do the same act. They had put themselves out of business. If the studios are not willing to pay the price that the writers think is fair for giving up all control, then the writers have the right to refuse to provide the material.


• If someone brings up the idea of a painting and how the buyer might sell it for more money down the line, you can agree that the painter doesn't get a cut of that money - because in this case, there are two things in question. One is the painting, which is a "product." It's a physical thing and once sold, the painter has no claim on it. But selling a painting does not convey the underlying copyright of the image. The painting's buyer cannot license the use of the image, but the painter still can, because the painter owns the copyright of the image. Similarly, a publisher only buys the use of a piece of writing for a given use. But that doesn't convey - and should not convey - underlying ownership and control of the writing. If that were true, then virtually no publishing venture of any type could exist. The only thing a company could sell would be some supporting services or simple delivery. While this has worked with Linux, given that much creation doesn't come out of groups of people who have full-time jobs, much of the content would be unavailable, because few people would have the resources to spend their time doing something that would pay nothing.

Danger of Hourly Rates

I'm a big fan of smartly using hourly rates. You must know how much you need to make per hour, and viewing assignments in the light of your hourly minimums can be a good analysis of whether they are economically worth your time.

However, when it comes to financial business planning, looking only at hourly income can be limiting. Many writers grossly under estimate and misattribute the time they spend on assignments. You can't count just the writing. Time includes all the research. Maybe you did some interviews before and you think you can easily spin off another version of a story. The hourly rate on the new version may only seem good because you're pretending that there wasn't time and, so, cost associated with it. Those interviews took time to land, set up, and conduct. To not count that time is to literally subsidize the cost of producing the assignment out of your own pocket.

Another problem with looking only at hourly rates is that you forget that you're interested in making a certain amount of money each month. (You have done your basic financial planning, haven't you?) But if each of the assignments is relatively small, you'll need more volume to reach the income you need. For example, you might argue that 25 cent a word assignments are acceptable because you can do them quickly, making the hourly amount attractive. Yet, if you have to write 6K words at $1 per word to meet your monthly goal, you'd have to churn out 24K words at 25 cents a word - and that's a significant amount of work to nail down and complete in 30 days.

I've found that to do a good job of a given type of article at a certain length takes about the same amount of time, no matter what the pay level is. You could cut corners, but that affects the quality of what you do, which, in turn, affects the chance of your getting into better paying markets, because now your clips won't support what those markets want. Overall, the most efficient way to make more money is to get paid more per assignment, not to add on more assignments.

Passing on (Most) Low Paying Assignments

Writers often debate whether low paying assignments ever make sense. When you sort through the arguments made for possibly taking a low paying assignment, they usually fall into the following camps:

• good exposure for future work


• Foot in the door with a client


• Still offers acceptable hourly rate


• Chance to place a story you can't place elsewhere


• Creative opportunity you can't get elsewhere


• Chance to do a type of work you haven't before


• Chance to plug a book or other project


• Perks make it worthwhile


• Need the clip to break into a higher paying market


• Nothing else you could do with some writing


• It's good exposure


• Can use as paid research for other stories


• Money comes quickly and at a good time


• It will make me an expert on the topic

There is some potential value in any of theses reasons - on rare occasions. But before jumping into a low paying assignment, consider whether you are talking yourself into a bad idea. I've seen a lot of writers given reasons from here to Sunday and back why low-paying pubs made sense. But sometimes this is simply rationalization from people who are afraid to go after larger markets. So be sure to take a big dose of self-honesty and of realism to see if your reasoning really does hold up. Here are some questions to ask:

• Foot in the door with a client What are the chances that you'll actually be able to move up to better assignments from the client? Or will you be seen as a certain type of writer not suited to the quality needed for more lucrative work?


• Still offers acceptable hourly rate Will this distract you from better paying work that you need to meet your monthly goals?


• Chance to place a story you can't place elsewhere How important is it to write this particular story? Can this publication really offer the impact that you tell yourself you want?


• Creative opportunity you can't get elsewhere Will you be able to invest the time necessary to do a good job? Are you diverting your creative energies from more realistic projects?


• Chance to do a type of work you haven't before Are you getting diverted from the work you should be doing? Are you building a skill or knowledge area that actually will serve your business?


• Chance to plug a book or other project Are the readers the potential audience for this other project?


• Perks make it worthwhile If you did higher paying work, could you afford to pay for the perks yourself?


• Need the clip to break into a higher paying market Are there intermediate markets that might pay better and provide a more recognized clip?


• Nothing else you could do with some writing Might there be a better market worth waiting for? Are you spending time writing things that have little financial value?


• It's good exposure Will your potential clients actually see this writing?


• Can use as paid research for other stories How likely is it that you will sell other, better-paying stories on this topic? If there is a market, why not start with better paying publications?


• Money comes quickly and at a good time Are you getting distracted for the real issues of whether your overall client mix and financial processes are good?


• It will make me an expert on the topic Will you gain large amounts of specialized knowledge from writing one or two articles? How many clips do you need to write about the subject in higher-paying publications? (Hint on the last one - you shoudln't need more than two or three.)

I'm not suggesting that lower paying assignments never make sense. Just be skeptical when you're listening to a sales pitch - whether it's coming from someone else, or from inside your own head.

Contract Review: The New York Times

A current NYT contract crossed my desk the other day (not for an assignment), and as it had been a bit since I've seen one, I thought I'd review it. As usual, I'm not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. The numbers of the points refer to the numbered graphs in the contract:

1. This is a pay on publication contract, so if an editor holds the story, the paper can hold your pay. It does pay "reasonable and necessary expenses" so long as they are pre-approved, which seems reasonable enough unless you're on a breaking story and cannot get pre-approval. You have 60 days from incurring the expenses to "submit documentation acceptable to The Times." It's not as bad as some contracts I've seen that offer a 30 day window, and I can understand the time limit - if you wait months, it starts getting pretty hard to match up approved expenses to assignments.


2. This is the deal-killer, so far as I'm concerned - not only does the paper own the copyright, so you can't do anything with the story without permission, but they also get a wide range of non-exclusive rights to anything you've ever written for them before without an agreement. Interestingly, it does not seem to cover any story that was done under a written agreement, even if the agreement was far more favorable to you. If they syndicate the article, you get 50% of net receipts, after "syndication expenses" (whatever, and how much ever, those are). But putting the article on the NYT News Service doesn't count. Also, there is no provision for being able to see if the paper did, indeed, syndicate your work in any other manner, so you have to trust that they'll tell you.


3. You have to "cooperate in the normal editing process." If they don't publish the article for whatever reason, "you will be paid a kill fee in an amount to be agreed upon by you and the assigning editor." In other words, there is no minimum amount they are contractually obligated to pay. You can even have done exactly what they wanted and they are not obligated to pay you the full amount. It may be that editors are reasonable there - or not. But you are dependent on their generosity.


4. They can use your name, likeness, and by-line, not only to promote the piece, but to promote the paper. Realistically, if you have a name so big that its use could really help sell the paper, then I'd think there would be a chance that you could get a significantly different contract. But that's just a guess, and there are probably few people in the country who would fall into this category.


5. There are some broad warranties. An interesting one is that you will not "plagiarize another's work." Now, I'm generally OK with publishers wanting an absolute promise of not infringing copyright. But plagiarism is a far more slippery term. Under whose definition? At what point could you commit plagiary but not copyright infringement? That's a bit of a head scratcher, and would be a clause that would make me uncomfortable. You also promise not to violate anyone's rights, which is broad, but as we'll see later, is probably construed under New York state law. You also agree not to include "libelous or otherwise unlawful or misleading material." Misleading? OK, what's the legal definition of misleading? Nothing easy to state or understand? That means, sign this and you leave a lot of room for interpretation as to whether you might have breached the contract or not. Although you have to "cooperate fully" in the case of a third party suit, you aren't required to provide indemnification, which is good.


6. You have to review the paper's ethical journalism policies and say that you will comply with them. That means the contract is effectively making them part of the agreement, and you'd better read carefully, as there are many ways you could unknowingly go wrong. For example, you cannot accept "free transportation." Could a ride in a source's car count? Who knows? Maybe that's covered in their document, so have fun reading - and being careful. Also, you cannot accept "commissions/assignments from current or potential news sources." So, even if you aren't using someone as a source, if they could be a source, you can't accept work from that person or entity. Extending that to potential makes it enormously open-ended. And there is something snuck in: "To the extent the Article is syndicated for use in an advertisement or promotion, there will be a maximum Syndication Fee." So nice of them to drop it in here instead of where you discuss such issues higher up in the contract. What is the maximum? Apparently they can change it at will. And you cannot mention any association with the paper in speaking engagements or public appearance.


7. For two weeks, you cannot allow any article you've write on "similar subject matter" to go into print if it's going into something the Times considers competitive - which includes any newspaper, magazine, or any other publication, no matter what the form of the media (think web) "whose editorial focus is either New York City or general interest news and information." In other words, unless the paper gives you permission, forget doing other versions of the story if it's time sensitive and you have to get it into print quickly.


8. You agree that you aren't an employee - it's pretty standard looking.


9. This supersedes any other agreement you might have had with the paper.


10. The contract is construed under New York state law, which is good for issues like determining libel. But if you have any legal beef with the NYT over this story, you'd have to take it to New York county to get satisfaction. However, as my publishing lawyer has pointed out to me, the courts there understand the issues and if you're owed money, the awards can be larger than elsewhere.

Striking Writers Talk to Venture Capitalists

Thanks to reader Debra Cash for pointing out this LA Times story: writers are talking to sources of money to see if they can create their own web site outlets:

At least seven groups, composed of members of the striking Writers Guild of America, are planning to form Internet-based businesses that, if successful, could create an alternative economic model to the one at the heart of the walkout, now in its seventh week.

Three of the groups are working on ventures that would function much like United Artists, the production company created 80 years ago by Charlie Chaplin and other top stars who wanted to break free from the studios.

Oh, this is smart on two levels. At the most basic, writers need to find ways to lessen their dependence on studios. That means going into business and developing their own production outlets for their scripts. Although venture capital firms have shied from pure entertainment plays in the past because of their risk, the money plunked down for YouTube has got them reconsidering. Their business model is fund something to get it going and then either take it public or sell it off to make their profit. And theater has often gone to wealthy individuals to bankroll shows on Broadway and other places. When the backers have enough money, they don't miss it much if it doesn't pan out, and, oh, the parties they get invited to. So now is the time for all writers to be considering how they can take what they have and make a "product" out of it. For the purists among us, don't forget that at one time, virtually all art and music was possible because of the generosity of patrons.

The other reason this is a smart move is purely negotiation. Studios stall on talks when they think they will get more leverage that way. But when they see that someone might be making money without their getting a cut, the situation becomes a powerful inducement for a rapprochement.

Safely Storing Digital Files

I wrote an article for PopPhoto.com about how to develop a storage strategy for digital photos, but the same principles can work for virtually any type of file. Here's the link, if you're interested.

House Attempts to Change Copyright Protection

There's a bill in the U.S. House, sponsored by John Conyers of Michigan (D) and Lamar Smith of Texas (R), that, according to PC Magazine:

would further crack down on intellectual property violations, and create several new government positions with the power to enforce the new law.

Bill H.R. 4279 would create a special section in the Justice Department to deal with copyright violation and some provisions would add substantial powers to punish copyright violators, like seizing:

"any property used, or intended to be used, to commit or facilitate the commission of a violation … that is owned or predominantly controlled by the violator or by a person conspiring with or aiding and abetting the violator in committing the violation."

The DOJ is not fond of the measure, as it would force how they handled copyright infringement prosecution, though many business groups, particularly in movies and music, are soiling themselves in their collective excitement. But I'm not sure if the squeals of delight would continue if they thought through the problem and considered whether their own property might be impounded if they were violating copyright. Can you say massive numbers of web and database servers? But I suspect it's an issue of the sheerest optimism to think that any writer could get the powers that be to turn these penalties onto the business forces that lobby so heavily.

I also find it interesting that Conyers is involved. Could this be his mea culpa for sponsoring that bill, at the behest of the NWU/UAW, that would have allowed writers to take part in collective bargaining?

Contract Review: Wired

Someone sent a copy of a current Wired contract. It is not, by any means, the worst contract I've seen - the writer even retains most rights - but there are some sticky points. Please remember that I'm not a lawyer and that this isn't legal advice:

• They can reject a piece and pay a 25 percent kill fee. Unfortunately, there is no cure period and no set amount of time in which they have to make a decision. So they can keep you dangling and then say, "We've decided to kill it." They don't have to give you an opportunity to learn what they think is wrong and to see if you can fix it.


• You have to get expenses approved, and because of the phrasing, it looks as though they could make you ask for each expense. You have only a month to get the expense info into them with receipts - though you need copies of them yourself for your own tax records. If you get them in after a month, they could technically refuse to reimburse you.


• Regarding rights, they have the piece for 90 days before you can do anything else with it, and that's from the on-sale date of when it's first published. It might be worth negotiating for an absolute date as well so they don't screw you around (at least next time).


• Even if they publish on the web first, they keep the exclusivity until it hits print. So what happens if they put it on the web and then decide to not put it into print? You effectively don't get to use it again.


• They can reuse the piece without paying you and can authorize others to reprint the article. They distinguish between reprints (generally a standalone version) and standalone versions, which makes me think they're looking for the right to syndicate the piece, but they mention that later, so it's unclear exactly what distinction they're making. Anything they have the ability to do they can do , and they can do that in the three months of exclusivity - or between that period and when it first appears on the web.


• Regarding movies and television use, they have the right to allow a movie or television show to use it within the show. So, someone might pick up and mention a mention of your article, or an an editor could be interviewed about the article. I don't read this as them having the right to make a movie or television program out of an article, which is good.


• They get syndication rights, both direct and they can authorize others to do so. You get 40% of "net", and that means - who knows? What expenses come out before you get a share? Quite a bit could. Generally 50% of gross is the traditionally fair split. Having warranties apply to syndication could be a problem - what if it's in another country and you now have to deal with a suit under laws and standards you don't know or understand?


• If you resell the piece, you have to require the other publisher to contractually include credit to them, which is ridiculous. That will cut down on your ability to sell, which is probalby part of what they're trying to do. And if you could get the permission, why should they get advertising? Try to get this stricken, or at least modified by a more reasonable statement that you'll try to get this. But you shoudln't have to forgo your revenue to suit their marketing purposes.


• The editing clause sounds harmless enough, but they can ask you to supply any and all research materials. Who's paying for photocopying and shipping anything that you can't email? Best to have that sorted out if it looks like you'll be using lots of paper-based sources.


• The sixth clause lets them put the article in the databases, and some number of the databases then actually sell individual copies (think of the article sales that Amazon does).


• If they do a foreign language version of the article in the US, that ties up the same language rights in another country with the same language. In other words, if there is a Spanish-language version in the US, that pretty much cuts out Spanish-language publications around the world. That seems unfair if the magazine isn't being sold in those countries.


• Technically, the non-disclosure clause could prevent you from mentioning the details of the contract to anyone. Personally, I find that a bit sticky. Writers should be able to talk to each other about assignments and clients. The part about limiting what you tell sources, et. al. about the details of an assignment seems completely reasonable, so perhaps they should word the section to do that and not include the other.


• The non-compete ends up being sticky. You cannot do any additional sales for 90 days after the on-sale date of the print publication. What if they delay publication? It could keep you from writing about the same topic with a different focus for a different and even non-competing audience. That's why you need a definite time-out on such things.


• You should limit the warranties by adding "knowingly." Any personal or property rights without restriction is very broad (I could see copyright infringement). And then to say that it won't give rise to *any* claim by *any* third party? That's ridiculously broad. On the plus side, there isn't an indemnification clause.


• There is a termination with 30 days notice clause for either side. That means if you have the assignment and a few months to do it, they can kill it and not owe you anything. It also means you can walk away from it with notice, as well.


• The contract provides for construing the contract under NY law, which is actually good. You could argue that any claim of infringement of someone's rights would have to take place under NY law, rather than some other country. But if you have any legal problem with them, you actually have to go to court in NY to take care of it, which isn't so good if you don't live in NYC.

Tallying Your Yearly Financial Results, Part IV

Once you've completed your end of year review, it's time to look foward. As you look at what has worked and what hasn't, you want to consider what you need to change for next year:

• Do you need different clients?



• Should you consider more aggressive pricing?



• Would more efficient business processes help you make your goals more easily?



• Have you been too easy when planning annual goals?

Don't let the review be something that makes you feel good or bad. Make it useful and let it guide you to better business next year.

Tallying Your Yearly Financial Results, Part III

Once you've considered income and expenses, you can consider profit. This can be a tricky area. Although from one view your profit is revenue minus expenses, that's not entirely true. Ideally, a business creates a profit over and above the regular income requirements of its owner. If you've made at least your bottom line goals that cover all business, personal, and tax expenses, then congratulations - you can consider yourself in the realm of business profit. Anything above that is gravy that the business brings in. Consider keeping at least some of this out as working capital so that, if clients are late, you can float your needs without trouble.

Another area of profitability is the per client view. You should review how long it takes to do assignments overall and then on the average for each individual client, and multiple the revenue for those assignments by the time it took to do them. That will let you know what you actually make per hour, and not what you think you make per hour. Then, as part of your end of year planning, you can review how your clients stack up and see which ones might be worth replacing with ones that either are more profitable or that offer a chance for personal or professional expansion that might offset a lower than optimum level of profitability.

Tomorrow, looking forward.

Freelancers Striking - More News

The situation between the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) is bad. The two hit an impasse, with the latter demanding that the former withdraw some demands if negotiation was going to continue at all, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The hard line stance of the WGA apparently isn't only about Web rights, but about getting jurisdiction over reality tv and animation writing, two areas that have been beyond its pervue. This may be a key negotiating blunder. Broadening jurisdiction is contentious. Getting online residuals is contentious. Trying for both of them at the same time may have been enough for the producers to say, "Fine, we're going to take our ball and go home." Both sides are butting heads, trading heated news releases, and it's unclear when they might go back to talking.

I support the WGA, but do wonder whether the approach is the most practical and effective in the long term. They might have used one thing as a trade for another. Yes, they'd like to cover reality tv and animation, but so far as I know, they never have before. On the other hand, the online issues are facing their current membership now, and would seem to be far more important in the short and long run. Standing on principle is important, and it's important to know the difference between a principle and a wish list. I wish both sides good luck in coming to some agreement and getting everyone back to work.

The other news on the freelance strike front comes from MTV Networks, where freelance workers walked off the job because of changes in health and dental benefits. I don't think these people are writers, but I can imagine readers of this blog scratching their heads. Health? Dental? Yup - it's called permalancing. The company categorizes people as freelance workers, and yet provides benefits, controls their hours, and otherwise treats them as employees. This could turn out to be a much bigger problem than MTV and parent Viacom are expecting. This story ran in the New York Times, and my guess is that members of the IRS and New York's department of revenue are all reading it. They don't like when companies try to get out of managing withholding, their share of FICA, and other niceties of corporate existence. The IRS went after Microsoft on similar issues and won, and I wonder just how much more than the price of benefits this might run Viacom.

Some Info On Group Copyright Registration

I've found it frustrating to get the information needed for back copyright registration of published pieces. Even when you group them together (see the Writer Resource I have on this blog), the forms call for the volume and issue number. I recently wrote the Copyright Office about this, and here is the response

You need to provide a month day and year date of publication and volume and issue numbers (even if it is an estimate and to the best of your knowledge) in order to register the work.

In other words, even if you don't know, find out what the volume info is for this year, count back, and make an estimate on the number of issues that year and which one your piece was in. This doesn't take all the drudgery out, but it should make life easier if you don't have clips that included the volume and issue numbers.

Electronic Copyright Registration - Early Impressions

As I mentioned some time back, I am in the beta test group for the new online copyright registration pilot program. Here are some early impressions:

• The user interface is clunky. There are different sections in a copyright registration and you need to proceed through them all to register - reasonably enough. You can also save at any point, which is good. However, when you've saved, you don't get returned to the last section you were working on when you open the application; you get dumped to the end and have to go back, section by section, to where you were.


• There are things you pick up from trying to register that would be nice to know at the start. For example, you can at times get dumped out of an application - not unusual, as this is beta software, so you can't expect it to be ready to go. But I found out by accident that where you were gets saved in a category of Working applications. That is separate from Open applications, which means you've done what you need to do and are waiting to hear back.


• You can deposit electronic versions of documents. I think this is one of the most exciting features. I recently registered my web site and blogs - went onto each page and saved it into PDF form, did the application, and then uploaded the files. I had a hard time from my home machine, as we're far enough in the boondocks that we can't get cable or phone broadband. So the upload kept timing out. However, when I took the files to a wireless hotspot, they were up in a couple of minutes and I had a completed application.


• Online payment is easy - credit card using a federal government secured system, or an account that you can establish with the Copyright Office. Plus, the fee is only $35 for online registration, instead of $45. That may change, as it might be an enticement to be a guinea pig. But, hey, I'm happy with saving $10 a shot.


• Unfortunately, group registrations are not yet available, as they're working the kinks out. So if you have a number of previously published articles, you'll have to go the paper route.


• When things are running normally, they expect you to know that the registration is done (although you won't have the certificate at that point) within one to two weeks.

All in all, the system has some bugs, but a great deal of promise, and I've found myself more easily registering materials, both the web site and blogs as well as a number of unpublished plays that I put into a collection.

An added bonus that I just though of is that the Working applications stick around until you're done with them. So, when group registration becomes available, you should be able to enter information for published clips bit at a time, upload a PDF of the web site, and then close out the registration at the end of a quarter, pay your fee, and have everything set. This should make ongoing protection of your intellectual property a whole lot easier.

Tallying Your Yearly Financial Results, Part II

Yesterday we talked about revenue. Now it's time to bring in expenses. You may have created a budget for the year - and certainly you should have done so if your financial goals were to have any meaning. If not, you're simply making up numbers, and the could as easily be wrong and misleading as they could be right.

Now it's time to take those numbers and see how they added up. You aren't just interested in the grand total, but how your individual categories came out. Say that your cost of food was significantly higher than you had expected. Overall, you could still get things to work out by cutting back in other areas. But if you take away from a non-discretionary area - like retirement savings - then you might be taking a problem and making it appear to go away, but actually causing it to ultimately be worse, though at a later time.

If, in general, you find yourself under-estimating expenses, then you're actually under-estimating the amount of revenue you need, throwing off your markenig and sales planning. I think writers are best off treating expenses on an accrual basis - that is, treat them as though you have to pull the money out when the expense comes in, and not at a later time if you can delay payment. It's a bit more pessimistic than looking at them only when you pay, because that can provide some breathing room. But in planning, you're not interested in being comfortable. Instead, you want to be more conservative and know that you can cover what you need, not depending on the ability to procrastinate.

Tomorrow, some words on profit, and profitability.

Tallying Your Yearly Financial Results, Part I

There have been some online discussions about reviewing your results versus your annual goals. I think it's important to take periodic stock of your goals and progress during the year, and I keep a monthly eye on both assignments and cash coming in. But if you're doing an annual look, you might keep the following things in mind. On the revenue side, there are actually three basic numbers you can consider:

1. the value of the assignments you receive during the year
   
2. the amount of money that publishers become obligated to pay you because of assignments you turn in


3. the amount you actually get in cash from payments

The first number gives you an idea of how well you are selling - the total response to your marketing. The second lets you know how much revenue you actually generate and are owed, and so whether your attempt to make money is doing well. The third says how much cash came in, which generally controls how easily you can meet your financial obligations.

Success on one area isn't enough - you really need success in all three. For example, you might be pleased because you have enough work booked, but if some of that came from a continuing contract, or was carried over from the previous year, then you have to see whether you are, indeed, selling effectively. Maybe you didn't care if you could have made any more, maybe you were maxed out for your work days, or maybe your sales efforts weren't as effective as they should have been.

Another analysis is whether you are completing enough assignments, and so, technically, earning enough money. It doesn't matter whether you've sold enough; your revenue is only what you could actually do and bill. That lets you know whether you are working efficiently enough and/or making enough per assignments. If it takes too many assignments to meet your goals, something is wrong and you need to consider how to change that so you can hit your revenue target in the time you have available.

A third, important, analysis is the third point: cash flow. It doesn't matter how much you book if you don't bring in enough cash to pay all your obligations. It's easy to whitewash this number by looking at the work completed, or even booked but not completed. However, don't get distracted. If you calculate that you need to bring in $50,000 for what you need for the year, it doesn't matter if you technically make $50,000, but only get paid for $40,000. That leaves you $10,000 in the hole, and is an example of why you generally need to complete more work than your economic goals, because you want enough cash to come in when you need it, and not afterward.

Tomorrow, I'll look at expenses and profitability.

A Source of Off-Beat Gifts

As I was fielding PR responses to my queries about holiday gift, I received something from the people representing Anne Taintor, and thought I should pass on the existence of annetaintor.com. If you're not familiar with her work, it combines retro/vintage graphics and images with pretty witty verbal counterpoint. I first came across the work indirectly, when my wife found a collection of Taintor cards and decided to send them to an old friend every now and then. The humor was clearly focused on and for women, but I found them a howl. To give you an indication, here are some of the sayings on products that Taintor sells:

• she kind of enjoyed working for an idiot


• someone called ... about something ...


• why, yes, I am overqualified


• it would, of course, have to look like an accident


• WOW! I get to give birth and change diapers!

The real smile comes from the juxtaposition of these secret thoughts with traditional images of female stereotypes.

Also, I was contacted by CoolComputerBags, which has some very upscale computer bags - quite different from what you'll find in the local Staples - along with some office products with off-beat designs. I haven't tried any of the products, but it seemed like an interesting source to investigate if you needed to find something off the beaten track.

Review: Inka Pen - Gift Idea

Here's another potential gift for a writer - even yourself. The Inka is a short pen about the size of a keyring - and, in fact, it has a ring built onto the sheath. The pen's case is made out of either stainless steel ($20 model) or titanium ($50), which means strong and light. The ink cartridge ($4 for a replacement) is pressurized, so it writes upside down (I tried it), in extreme cold (sorry, but I don't want to stand outside in this New England winter scribbling), and under water (nice thought, and I guess I could put on my scuba gear, but I don't know where my supply of waterproof paper is, and without that, writing underwater is pretty academic). For those of you who remember, this may sound like that old "Space Pen" - and it's a similar concept.

You can pull the pen out of the metal sleeve and write, though it's really short, even if it is fast access. If you have a bit more time, you can take off the end cap (exposing a stylus for use with a PDA, if you lose the normal one), unscrew the barrel from the key ring, and reassemble everything together for something that is easy to use. This is a little time consuming, and you have the extra cap and the key ring to keep in a pocket while you write, but this isn't a pen that you'd use all the time. Instead, I see it as a spare that happens to work under unpleasant conditions that might sideline a regular pen.

Technique: Getting Outlook to Display All Email in Text Form

I really dislike reading HTML-formatted email, because it tends to take longer to load and rarely does the layout do anything for me. The other day I stumbled on a way to have it all display as text:

1. Click on Tools->Options.


2. Click on the Preferences tab, if it isn't on display.


3. Click the E-mail Options button.


4. Check box next to "Read all standard mail in plain text."


5. Check box next to "Read all digitally signed mail in plain text."


6. Click OK.


7. Click OK.

Now everything should display as plain text.

An Interesting View on E-Books

Tim O'Reilly is a smart book publisher, and he took a look at some of the numbers that e-book enthusiasts tossed around with the advent of Amazon's Kindle. His argument is that even if prices do tumble for e-books, it will likely be only temporary. It's worth the read.

I'll add an additional angle. Let's assume that he's wrong and prices do drop and stay at $5 a title. What publisher and author combination can make money that way? Reading hasn't reduced in volume because the prices are too high - books just aren't that expensive. If you have a current business model under which most titles don't even make back the pitiful advances that authors get, and where the cost of the actual paper is only about $1.50 a copy, then dropping the price by 60 to 80 percent is going to mean that publishers won't be able to afford to print anything that isn't going to be wildly successful.

Current backlists may stay around (if the publishers have acquired the necessary rights), but forget the variety of titles coming out now. You'll be down to a handful of authors who can generate the necessary sales. Some individual authors might be able to self publish, but if they're getting 35 percent of $5, that's $1.75. Take out costs of design and production, and maybe they're at $1 a book if they're lucky, which is the inadequate stream of money they made from publishers - too low to support self-publishing. So $5a copy, if really gutting the paper model, would actually leave book publishing virtually dead. Then supply and demand will kick back in, because there are those massive infrastructures to feed, and prices will head back up anyway.

Review: Docupen Handheld Scanner - Gift Suggestion

If you're a journalist that travels, the idea of having a portable scanner is enticing. Instead of shelling out for photocopies, you could move information from pages right into a laptop and cut the weight of dragging paper around. You could also email the files back home so should something happen to the computer, you have the information you need. (When on the road, I do this with interview files and any material I've written.) And the Docupen offers a good deal of promise.

I've used handheld scanners years ago, and the results were terrible. You'd have to practice a lot to get even scans and keep from having erratic hand motion stretch images and text in some cases and squash them in another. And then they took up some space. But when I received the test unit of the Docupen, I found these problems largely vanishing. Oh, you need some practice with it, but not much more than a few minutes. At that point I could get a fairly good scan. The unit itself is just over 11 inches long, as it lets you scan a full page, yet it's only a bit thicker than a pen. It comes with 8MB of memory onboard, which is completely inadequate if you're scanning in color (which the pen does). The company claims "up to 200 pages," but one page would take up at least a third of the memory. You can buy a small type of standard flash memory to greatly boost the amount, and I'd strongly suggest it. You connect the Docupen through a USB cable to your PC to charge it.

At $349 for the current special price, it's not cheap, but it's the best potential solution I've seen for the writer who needs to keep research without making his or her arms any longer from carrying a lot of paper.

If you don't want to spend the money but have a digital camera with high resolution, you can try bringing along a page-sized sheet of clear plastic. Put it on top of a page you need and, making sure no lights are reflecting off it, take a high resolution picture of the page. It's clumsier, but probably better than carrying paper.

Hold the Response

When you're pitching yourself - which, if you're a working writer, is virtually every day in some way or another - you'll find times when someone doesn't seem interested, or doesn't seem to get what you're saying. There will be days when the temptation to snap back and the ignorant putz will be great. Refrain, as you'll only do yourself ill.

The other day I had a couple of Profnet queries out, and I got a response from someone whose pitch didn't grab me for the particular story I was writing. When I replied, he asked why, and I told him. "You've got me laughing," he said, going on to explain how I was wrong. And the guy was promoting a book on marketing. My reaction? Who the hell are you to say whether something is actually a fit or not? I replied in a rather terse and sarcastic way, and he was smart enough to apologize. He said that he had meant it humorously - and maybe he did. Maybe he didn't. It wasn't for me to judge, but I did appreciate the gesture, and he saved a potential future relationship, or at least opportunity.

Not all do. Sometimes you'll find someone, usually not a PR professional, react. The minute that happens, the person cuts himself or herself dead. It doesn't matter whether you're talking to a journalist, editor, or corporate buyer; the mechanism is the same. When you feel that urge rise, fight it down and substitute something more useful, like, "Thanks, maybe next time."

That doesn't mean there's never a situation in which you answer back, but it's rare. There are only two circumstances I can see it happening. One is when people are so outrageously abusive that for the good of society you must make them understand that they cannot walk over people with impunity. I've seen many writers talk about abusive contacts, and personally I suspect that perception is exaggerated. Abusive isn't someone being short or even insensitive - it's a level of harangue or attack that is hard to miss.

The other situation is when you are absolutely sure that an idea you have would be a fit for someone. Under these circumstances, you go back, apologizing and indicating that if it's really not of interest, you'll drop it, but you're sure that you failed in your description, because you see a clear connection, and that you'd appreciate another chance. This also should be extremely rare. If you find yourself doing it more than a couple of times a year, there is something wrong - either you are pushing your ideas into places that really are not a fit, or you're dropping the ball in your initial explanations.

Except for these rare times, learn to lose the battle so that you might come back to the same field another day.

NBC Show Crosses WGA Strike "Line" - Looks for Scabs

From the oops-thought-I-had-posted-this department comes an entry that was written in a timely manner, if not posted in the same vein...

Carson Daly's show on NBC is going back into production, sans writers, according to the Associated Press. Daly isn't a member of the WGA, and apparently has asked pretty much anyone to send in jokes as a "fun collage" not meant to "make fun" of striking writers, according to the Smoking Gun. Given that he needs the help, maybe he should wait to go back on until the strike is over so professionals might have a chance to make him sound amusing.

Two Dozen Literary Blogs

Book blogs have become a significant tool in book marketing. Get major bloggers to look at your book and review it, and you could start reaching a bigger audience than most major book review sections of newspaper (the ones still left). Here are a few that I picked up from a variety of sources. All had to be mentioned in at least one other high profile place, so if you have a book blog, don't take offense - mine certainly didn't make the cut.

• Beatrice


• Bookdwarf


• Bookslut


• Booksquare


• Buzz Girl


• Chekhov's Mistress


• Conversational Reading


• Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant


• Elegant Variation


• Emerging Writers Network


• Fantastic Metropolis


• Golden Rule Jones


• Literary Saloon


• MadInkBeard


• MoorishGirl


• OGIC - Courtesy of ArtsJournal: About Last Night


• Old Hag


• Rake's Progress


• Shaken & Stirred


• The Happy Booker


• The Millions (A Blog About Books)


• The Mumpsimus


• The Reading Experience


• Tingle Alley

Finding Balance

Writers often find themselves either feeling strung-out over lack of work or drowning and not having the time they'd like for other things - the stereotypical feast or famine situation. Someone on a discussion board asked if it was possible to find a balance between work and live, and I think it is, although running your own business generally requires more hours than punching a clock.

Part of the answer is to realize that there will be an ebb and flow. There are times I'm flat out with work and can't do anything else. Then there are times I goof off, hang out with my family, cook dinner, work on personal projects, and generally enjoy myself. The question is where things are on the average, and not having what I want at every minute, which is unrealistic.

But if you find that you feel overwhelmed too often, you might want to consider a few ways of analyzing your situation a bit more:

1. Be harshly honest with yourself. Generally when you find yourself in a situation over and over again, there is something you like about it. Now, there may be stretches where one thing tips into another and upsets what you'd really like for months, or even a year or more. But if you've been in the business for a number of years and still find that you end up in the same situation, you have to realize that you're probably trying to solve a problem doing more of the same, and you have to ask why you're so attached to what you have always done.



2. Really look at the trade-offs. What is it that you get from the business? Do you really need the amount of work/money you're bringing in? If you do need it, then maybe you have to reevaluate the balance you might reach. Or it may be that you're driving yourself to meet a requirement that actually isn't there.



3. If you're working too long and too hard, then you should reconsider the statement that you love the mix of clients. Sounds like it's time to do a profitability analysis - not just revenue, but dollars per hour - on your clients to see how they really stack up. If there is any way to quantify a PIA factor, then do that as well. Maybe, without thinking about it too much, give a ranking from 1 to 10 of each in terms of how much of a pain it is. Then you could find the average PIA number and see how far each deviates from that average, or maybe divide profitability by the PIA number. It might be that you need to get some different clients that are less demanding, or that pay so much more for the demands that you can afford to do less work overall.