Poor Mistreated Ancient Roman Authors

This is just a link to a piece that should bring a wry smile to your face if you've ever complained about the publishing industry. It's at least as old as ancient Rome:

Like Martial, most Roman writers knew that the profits of their writing ended up in the pockets of the booksellers, who often combined retail trade with a copying business — and so were, in effect, publishers and distributors too. At best, the author received only a lump sum from the seller for the rights to copy his work (though once the text was “out,” there was no way of stopping pirated copies). Horace, the tame poet of the emperor Augustus, made the obvious comparison: booksellers were the rich pimps of Roman publishing and authors, or even the books themselves, were the hard-working but humiliated prostitutes. He refers to his slim volume of poetry being “on the game, all tarted up with the cosmetics of Sosius & Co.,” his publishers. Not that Horace did so badly from his writing. In the absence of royalties he was, like most of the best-known authors in Rome, taken under the wing of a patron. In fact, Maecenas, Augustus’ unofficial minister of culture, set him up in a house.

Definitely worth a read.

Are Print Ads More Valuable Than Online? It Depends

Given the number of "studies" I've seen that claim to show the "superiority" of print over online, I've gotten a sense of desperation on the part of publishers. (And given their financial results and dropping ad revenue, no wonder.) The latest has some interesting data:

Among Web users, nearly two-thirds (63%) of banner ads were not seen. Respondents' eyes "passed over" 37% of the Internet ads and "stopped" on slightly less than a third, McPheters & Co. found.

In contrast to online ads, TV and magazine ads generated a strong propensity to be seen and recalled. Full-page, four-color magazine ads were determined to have 83% of the value of a 30-second television commercial, while a typical Internet banner ad has 16% of the value.

Here are the major findings from the press release issued by the market research firm that undertook the study:

• Within a half hour, magazines effectively delivered more than twice the number of ad impressions as TV and more than 6 times those delivered online.
  
• Though TV doesn't deliver as many ads per half hour as do magazines, net recall of TV ads was almost twice that of magazine ads; magazines in turn had ad recall almost three times that of Internet banner ads.


• 85% of Internet ads served appeared on-screen and could be identified by brand.


• Among web users, 63% of banner ads were not seen. Respondents' eyes passed over 37% of the Internet ads and stopped on slightly less than a third.


• For Internet ads, almost all net recall could be attributed to ads that were seen.


• Internet video ads appeared much less frequently than banner ads, and their exposure skewed heavily towards young men. When they did appear they were twice as likely to be seen as banner ads.

In my experience I definitely avoid looking at banner ads. But there are some enormous suppositions and biases here:

• The report does mention online vehicles other than banner ads, but only mentions video ads as appearing less frequently than banner ads and skewing heavily toward young men. But that is one of the most desired demographics for marketers. And, apparently, it didn't seem to measure text ads, which are surely the most prevelant form of online marketing today.


• Recalling an ad is not necessarily the same as ad effectiveness. Consider the famous example of the hilarious Alka Seltzer ad series from the sixties. They had huge recall, but the company dropped them because no one remembered the product, just the humor. Also, if you find an ad irritating, is there any transference of that feeling toward the manufacturer?


• Although it may be in the study, I don't see any mention of the intent of the ad. Was it meant to sell product? Recall doesn't show whether people buy, or even if they become more inclined to favor the mentioned brand.


• Where is the audience spending its time? Even if magazine and television ads are more effective in a more extensive way than recall, is that the medium that consumers prefer to consume? If they read news and watch video online, then placing ads in print and on television starts reaching a smaller audience.


• That last point has another implication: cost. Print and television ads cost more to run than online ads. So how much does it cost to acquire and maintain a customer? That must be part of the equation, particularly when budgets are constrained.

And now for the really big point, in my opinion. Conde Nast and CBS Vision (described by CBS as a new research initiative to explore changes and opportunities in the media marketplace) sponsored the study. I've generally found that sponsored studies almost always mean that the results are only released when they support the underlying goals of the corporate sponsors. For example, can you imagine a drug company backing a study showing that a cheap alternative to an expensive prescription medicine was superior?

But publishers and broadcasters all claim to be interested in online as a medium. (Disclosure: I cover high tech for BNET, which is owned by CBS Interactive.) But this clearly delivers the impression that the sponsors are interested in having older media -- which deliver more ad revenue and profit -- shown to be superior to online. In other words, it's the old dog at the media companies trying to kill off the upstart medium, with the Internet still a business toddler compared to print and broadcast. How are the media companies ever going to make the transition they say is coming if they do everything in their power to defeat it? This is why tech companies like Google and Amazon, which are big in online advertising and media, are likely to be the real winners in the media wars. They aren't spending significant resources and time trying to debunk the very businesses they say they are anxious to establish.

Using Twitter for Non-Hype Reasons

If you're a working writer and not already using Twitter, you should really consider trying it - not for the ooooh-I'm-gonna-get-famous reaction that many seem to have, but for some solid reasons:

• You can have useful conversations with peers. I just tried the weekly Twitter gathering called #editorchat and found it interesting, and noticed that Wall Street Journal senior technology editor Julia Angwin will be a guest host this coming week, 4/22, from 8:30pm to 10pm eastern. (Learn more about it at the Editorchat blog.) There is also a chat called #journ2journ for journalists and an occasional one called #queryday, during which book agents and editors (one of my favorite book editors, Michele Wells at McGraw-Hill, was active in the last one) will offer tips and answer general questions about what makes pitches and proposals successful. A little investment in time can deliver valuable information not easily garnered any other way. For example, do you know how comparisons between a proposed book and existing titles differ from how new/previous comparisons of scripts and concepts comparisons are used in the movie industry? I do, now.
• Promoting a Twitter presence seems to be much easier than promoting other types of online activity, like a blog, if you're interested in building an audience. For example, I find myself with 345 followers since mid-December -- not a remarkable number, but given that I haven't lifted a finger to gain attention other than putting my Twitter link (@ErikSherman) in a Twitter journalist directory and on my BNET profile, it's also not bad. Consider how long it might take for you to get 345 subscribers to a blog for perspective.
• Twitter does not have to be the time sink that many assume it automatically is. I spend a few minutes a day posting links to stories that I've written and that I think will have some wide interest, pointing to interesting tweets from people I follow, or simply posting some strange thought that comes to me, and occasionally check what others are posting. That isn't a reason to use it so much as an explanation that what may seem a barrier doesn't have to be.
• This becomes an easy way to keep in periodic touch with a number of colleagues and gain some of the interactivity you might have if working in a newsroom and tossing remarks over the walls.
• You can learn of things that otherwise might not have come to your attention. (Here's one that I had retweeted, meaning a link passed on from someone else: the financial reality of being a New York Times top 20 bestselling author.
• This I pass on from having heard it from other journalists, though I haven't used it myself: you can find sources by looking for people with particular backgrounds or in specific situations.
• Depending on who you follow, Twitter can be, as they say in my neck of the woods, wicked amusing. If you avoid the people overly intent on promoting themselves and focuses on those who let some of their personality and humor through, you can get see some great insights and get a few laughs in the process.

It's definitely worth trying, and free to boot. During this week I'll be posting a Twitter tip or two that I've learned -- and if you have any yourself, please email me, and I can put unique ones together into a separate post.

What Makes a Good PR Pitch

I got involved in an online discussion of PR pitches. Here's my take on what PR people ought to know about how to construct a pitch. For those who might come across this and don't know me, I’m a working freelance journalist, both blogging an in print, and used to work in marketing years ago. A good 90 to 95 percent of pitches I receive are atrocious and suffer immediate deletion. I almost never find something of value in a pitch because they are so rarely put together in a useful way. Here are some suggestions:

• Write no more than a paragraph. If you can’t get the basic idea across in that space, you either write badly or, more likely, don’t understand what you’re pitching. A journalist can always ask for more information. This also keeps a pitch from droning on.
• Try to put yourself in the journalist’s shoes and consider what is actually newsworthy, not what the client thinks is newsworthy. You work for the client, but you have to interest the reporter. If you don’t have an angle that I would actually consider as a story - an angle that focused on how I write and what my readers are looking for - then you’re wasting your time and mine. For me, at least, an effective news hook is almost never “my client wants to announce something.” Like any good marketing, it has to be all about the audience, not the sponsor.
• Cut the buzzwords. They are unnecessary.
• Only pitch when there’s something to pitch. Don’t ask me to read a release that you created as a billing exercise.
• Don’t send big attachments without asking first.
• If you write a release, use the old inverted pyramid construction from traditional newspaper and wire reporting. First graph has the basic news. Additional graphs expand it. Don’t try to come up with an enticing lead and leave the journalist in suspense for several graphs. I can’t tell you how many times I trash releases because someone is making me spend my time teasing out what is essentially a sales pitch. I generally don't have the patience to even follow long enough to find the actual message.
• Never call me unless you know me particularly well and I’ve said it’s OK. Don’t send me a tweet, don’t send surface mail (unless I know you and said it’s OK) - just a single graph in an email. You might be surprised at how effective it can be.
• If you’re sending something cold, simply don’t expect a response. I always respond when I’ve got a pitch out on Profnet or HARO, but often lack time to compose answers to all the pitches that I *haven’t* asked for.

Hope someone out there finds this useful.

Measuring Your Business II

I've written before about metrics, or the use of measurement to better run your business. If you already calculated your lowest hourly rate, track cash flow, and follow the other numbers to know what is happening, it may be time to start looking at less obvious but still useful things to measure. This is probably easiest to point out with an example.

In some recent online discussions with other writers, I've noticed that many point to soft benefits, or gut feel reasons they make given decisions. For example, with a nod to my minor rant yesterday about low pay, people give many reasons for taking such assignments. Aside from the see-how-much-I-make-an-hour argument, there are other common reasons that writers give:

• A client is "nice" to work with.
• The client brings me assignment topics and I don't have to query.
• I find the work interesting.
• I have a book out and am doing a free piece to promote myself.
• I'm building a reputation that will pay off in the future.
• I'm building an audience.
• I'm getting a foot in the door on a new area of work.

Any of these can certainly be a factor in your decision of whether to work with a given client or not, because I'd hope that a writing business would be about more than just money. However, it's possible to bring in numbers and analyze at least some of these rationales more carefully.

Take having a client come to you with an assignment, saving you from having to query. This is certainly a benefit, but one that can be calcualted. You know from experience that it would have taken X hours to get the work, between researching an idea, creating a query, and doing the assignment dance. (And if you've never calculated this, it might be worth your explicitly adding up all time. You might be surprised, either at it being less or more than you expected.)

If you multiple that time by your calcualted billing rate (the amount you need to bill to make the money you need), then there is a cost savings of $Y. That means you can coldbloodedly compare the cost of the time saved and the discount $D that a client wants. So long as $Y is greater than $D, you are making more money for your time than you otherwise would have and opening more time in your schedule for something else, like approaching prospects about work. In fact, if $Y is big enough compared to $D, you might be able to even discount off your normal billing rate and still come out ahead financially. On the other hand, if $D is greater than $Y, then you know you're making less money than you would have had you invested time into a query. This lets you make a more informed decision as to the client's value to you. Your gut decision might be smart, or you might be doing something that feels right but that doesn't pan out when examined dispassionately.

This is why smart business executives focus on getting the information they consider necessary to make decisions. It often is only 10 to 12 factors, but it helps them know where the company is going.

In a similar vein, if you are a book author, you can work with a publisher to track book sales and look for an obvious uptick after a free article. If you haven't sold enough books as a result so the royalty more than makes up the time you spent preparing the article, then your marketing tactic may not be paying off. I say "may not" because this gets complicated. The benefit of increased sales is partly the ability to get future book assignments, so more sales today might help you tomorrow. And some will argue that you don't that the article won't attract more sales over time. Nevertheless, if the sales are up enough to help with selling a publisher on you, you're probably going to also see a significant increase in royalties, as both are directly correlated to the number of copies sold. And if the article is to act as a direct response medium, then the bulk of sales will happen within a short amount of time. If you find yourself arguing that you can't know for months what the full impact might be, I'd point you to a story my mother told me of the Truman-Dewey election, and a television commentator who, in the face of mounting evidence that Truman would win, kept saying, "But we still have to hear from the rural districts."

When considering whether to take a low-paying assignment ($L) because you like the topic or the editor, you know what a normally paying assignment for you would run ($N). Look at the difference between $N and $L ($N - $L = $D); that is the amount of revenue that you would have received for a regular assignment, but that you are giving up. Now you can decide if the opportunity cost is worth the pleasure, because you're now paying $D, by lowering your revenue, to take it.

You take a low-paying assignment to gain expertise in a topic that is new to you. Again, you can look at $D, the difference between what you are getting and what you would ordinarily get. Only in this case, you are opening a door to new areas of work. If those new areas at least meet your normally billing, then you've increased the potential number of clients. That provides a number of benefits. One is spreading your income among more clients and reducing your reliance on any single one. Maybe the share of your revenue that the average client represents goes from 15 percent to 10 percent. Should a client go under, that's 5 percent less income you need to immediately make up, making the investment in the low-paying article a cheap form of insurance.

Is a client high maintenance? You can measure the amount of time you spend versus the revenue you see. Take all the revenue and divide it by all the time the client takes up (including your ranting about the client to online forums, your colleagues, or those ever patient four walls of your office) to find the effective hourly profitability. If that number is greater than or equal to your normal billing rates, then keeping the client makes financial sense. (Though replacing the client with one that is less enervating can keep the profit while increasing your satisfaction, which might be even smarter.) Time spent chasing down money and the time value lost in late payments are other numbers you can consider.

In short, although I agree that some aspects of a business, like measuring the long term effectiveness of a marketing tactic, may not easily reduce to figures, there are many times in running your business that using numbers can help. And those numbers can help you avoid assumption-based decisions that can, at times, end up hurting you.

Why Low Pay Is Bad Pay, No Matter What the Hourly Rate

I recently saw another discussion on a writers' board about pay rates and whether it matters for periodical writers how low the amount per word is so long as you can do the work fast enough. That argument may be fine for the occasional piece, but it doesn't hold up over the long run for a few reasons.

I've written about one of the reasons before, the overhead inherent to obtaining, scheduling, and managing assignments, comparing long assignments to shorts:

But say that you are accurately monitoring your time. Why not then do a lot of shorts to make your income? Because there's another consideration - the time for marketing, billing, and overhead. If you make $500 for a short, then four of them pay as much as one 2000 word article paying $1/word. The amount of writing time might even be comparable. However, figure that a 500 word piece really needs two to three sources to come across as sold. You're now booking 8 to 12 interviews, versus the 6 or 7 that might be all you need for the longer piece. That means more time interviewing and scheduling your time.

You're also going to spend about as much time writing a query for a short as you would for a longer piece, plus you have to generate the ideas and pitch editors. So your marketing and sales time has just quadrupled. If you make a lot of your income from shorts, then you're probably spending many more of your hours marketing, interviewing, managing your time, and billing (and collecting). Now you see the real drawback - not the hourly rate, but the time you must invest to do enough shorts to make a living.

Instead of shorts, substitute low-paying assignment and the point is even more applicable. Not only is there the overhead, but, presumably, you still have to do a credible job on what might be running 1,500, 2,000, or more words.

That leads me to my other major point, which, I'm sure, will tick off some people. To make money at a low rate, you generally have to cut corners. You don't undertake the extra interviews and research, put in the extra draft and polishing, nor do the other things that let you create better pieces. I know this because much of the language I hear from those who tout the high hourly figures of their low pay rates is how they "knock these assignments off."

If you're depending on speed to make a good hourly rate to make up a bad word rate, then you'll have to cut corners eventually. That's because the client doesn't value the higher level of work enough to pay for it, and you can't provide it without subsidizing that work out of your own earnings pocket. But if you do too much of this, then all of your clips are of those 1,000 word pieces with one or two sources, which are probably not going to get you the higher paying work because it's not just about how well you write, but how well and how thoroughly you research and report. On those occasions when I assign and edit, I wouldn't consider someone whose samples were filled with pieces like that, because I assume that the person isn't willing to make the effort to do something better. In the past, I've found that when someone has spent time wanting to quickly get articles done and get out the door, they start to lose the work ethic necessary to produce higher quality results.

For those who want to disagree, start by asking yourself how many sources you use for a normally reported piece (not a Q&A). The lower the number, the less you bring to an article, and no amount of clever writing can make that up. And those who stress that they make money with low-paying assignments should look at two figures: their annual income and the percentage that these low-paying assignments represent of their total assignments. All the writers I know who make reasonable amounts of money (enough to support you and your family if necessary) focus on higher paying work and not rationalizing why low pay is really not that bad.

Don't Bet on Those Online Royalties

I've argued in the past that riding the long tail to success would likely be a myth because the numbers don't add up. Now it seems that riding a massively popular online wave doesn't mean you're going to get any further. A British song writer with many hits and a reputed £47 million to his name had co-written a song that became part of a YouTube craze. After 154 million viewings, his take was less than stellar:

At a press conference to mark the launch of a website campaigning for a fairer deal for songwriters whose work is featured on YouTube - which is owned by Google - Waterman said local radio was more profitable for him than the internet.

"There was I sitting at Christmas thinking, 'I must have made a few bob this year with the old Rickrolling'," he said.

"I rang my publisher and they said 'You'll be all right', until I saw the royalty statement. £11.

"If 154 million plays means £11, I get more from Radio Stoke playing Never Gonna Give You Up than I do from YouTube."

Yup, 154 million plays, and about $20 or so to one of the writers. Those who are still letting dreaming of the big online killing had better realize whose head can end up on the chopping block. Now, maybe his royalty agreement was bad. Maybe there were no ads tied to the viewing. But this seems wrong in a big way, particularly since you can be sure that someone was making money on this.

The Tyranny of the Going Rate

When it comes to work or markets that are new to them, many writers cast about for the "going rate." This is the magical average number that is supposed to inform them on how to price their labor. Although I do agree that, when used wisely, market information is a great help. But wise use is difficult and often overlooked by writers. And then, going rates do more harm than good.

There are a few ways in which going rates can hurt the marketing and business planning of writers. The first is that without a number of qualifications, they are illusory because there is no single market. Here are some of the questions you would need to ask before knowing whether the money one writer received was applicable to your situation:

• What is the level of experience or specialized knowledge necessary to do an assignment?
• What are the expectations of the clients?
• What are the demands of the work?
• How large is the client and what will it demand in working processes?
• What is the industry?

In answering the questions, you cut the market down to a more specific segment. When you can accurately describe the work and the circumstances, a market rate may exist, but that's rarely what you get from other writers, who also may not be considering whether their experiences and circumstances match yours. In the end, you could have a situation in which you're effectively comparing a local lunch counter with the largest fast food chains as clients.

Focusing on a going rate can take writers out of the necessary consideration of their own personal rates. Do they have the experience to charge higher numbers that more seasoned colleagues might command? Have they even calculated their own bottom-line hourly figures to know the smallest amount they can accept while adequately funding their own businesses? If the going rate for a type of work is smaller, then it won't matter unless you're already making the money you need and you're taking the assignment for other reasons, like getting clips on a new-to-you topic.

Immediate attention to the going rate can also play havoc with your negotiation. In negotiation theory, you first look at what you need and want. By starting with prevailing rates, you assume that the rates are as universal as you think, allow others to set your business model, and put yourself at the mercy of a general atmosphere in which supply has so outstripped demand that the average pay is ridiculous. This can subconsciously bias your negotiation strategy, even when you're absolutely sure that you're a clever negotiator and that you wouldn't be adversely affected. Not only could you, in all likelihood, you will because it changes your emotional state.

One major reason that people ask about a going rate is that they don't want to leave money on the table. In a well-conducted negotiation, you look at what I call the value equation -- what you want, what the other person wants, what each of you can offer, and the value you each hold for what the other has. No seasoned businessperson is going to pay you more because others are getting more. That line of argument is no more useful today than it was when you said to your parents, "But everyone else gets to do it!" You can only get more by showing enough value that the client is motivated to pay to get it.

Finally, even if you do get answers from writers, it's generally two or three, and they may be repeating some numeric mantra that they have heard in the past. That does not make a representative sample, so you still don't know the going rate.

Can you use going rates? Absolutely, but only when you can precisely determine them, your negotiation practice is solid, and you are confident in your abilities to ultimately please a client. Ironically, at that point you have far less need of market rates because you know your own worth and are confident in asking for it.

Old Media Companies Try to Sabotage New Media Efforts

I had posted something on my BizBlast blog that I thought might be of interest to freelance writers. Although it nominally addresses a recent study of the effectiveness of different advertising media (online, print, television), it's really about the resistance that so-called old media companies have to the new formats, suggesting that many of the attempts to convert print properties to Web will fail because the publishers actually want them to fail -- subconsciously, perhaps, but still that's what they seem to desire if you look at what they do.

Warnings on Outside Magazine and Web Site

Mediabistro's FishbowlNY has a story about the alleged bad financial condition of Outside. According to the story, not only have people been laid off, but the magazine has taken months to pay freelancers.

To be fair, and the article does mention this, Outside has long had the reputation of being slow to pay. According to the article, as well as contributors to the magazine that I've spoken with over the years when reviewing contracts and counseling on negotiating, that includes expense reimbursement, which can be painful because a writer having to travel for research will generally front the money and get it afterwards. (Hint, if you're still planning to pitch Outside, consider negotiating for front money on expenses, with any extra something you will either reimburse or that will be counted against a fee.)Keyes assured FBNY that Outside is in good financial standing. "I feel really good about our longterm viability," he said. "This April's issue is 140 pages, while last year's was 136."

Some people we spoke with question the continued publication of Go earlier this year, especially given the battered market. (Best Life, a similarly themed book, folded earlier this March.) Ironically, Go is reportedly paying its writers more quickly than parent Outside -- although still months late -- but many within the company wonder why the money-hemorrhaging magazine still exists.

It may be that there are no problems financially, but then you have an even thornier question for a freelancer: If they have enough money, why do they think so little of their writers that they are unwilling to pay invoices in a timely fashion? It suggests an enormous degree of disrespect, and if they're going to act that way over money, how many other needless hoops are you likely to be asked to leap through? If they don't have enough money, why trust them? Woudln't that make them liars? In fact, if a magazine says it's going to pay in a given timeframe and consistently doesn't, for whatever reason, isn't it already lying?