Myth of the Long Tail?

A study in the Harvard Business Review looked at some data in the light of Chris Anderson's "long tail" theory and concluded that while the tail is getting a bit thicker, the head - the "popular stuff" - is really what is growing. Or in the words of that great business philosopher, Ira Gershwin, "Them that's got shall get, them that's not shall lose. So the Bible says, and it still is news." I've written about this on BNET (the new business arm of CNET), and that has links to the study as well as to Anderson's reply (which I found essentially unsatisfactory).

But enough of them; let's talk about us. Does the long tail hold any hope for individual writers? Yes and no. The upside is that if you have some writing that will interest a large enough community, and you market hard, then you can make money. You can, that is, if you put in the work and don't sit passively, assuming that the long tail is going to bring your income to you.

I get the sense that many writers look to the long tail concept as a silver bullet that will bring money in without them having to do anything else. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Say that an Amazon sees 20 percent of its 2007 sales of about $14.8 billion in the long tail (though the study would suggest more like 10 percent). According to Anderson, the tail should be everything that you wouldn't find in a Borders or Barnes & Nobel physical location. That means every one of the estimate million book SKUs the 10 or 20 thousand you might find in a store. So be generous and call the remainder 9.8 million. Divide and you get ... $285 per year per SKU.

Even if there is an average of 2 SKUs per book (each SKU representing a specific version of the book you could buy), that's annual revenue of $570 from Amazon. Even if that is only part of what you get (and remember, physical book outlets won't even have your title, by definition of tail), what are you going to make total? Maybe $1100, and that's in total sales. The cut going back to the publisher is half, so you're back to your royalties on $570 a year, or maybe $60. Self-publish and you could get the number higher, but that's hardly the passive approach to the long tail.

The only hope the "long tail" offers the individual author is the old concept of niche audiences, marketing to them, and making money. Nothing new there, and nothing easy. In fact, I'd argue that the only writer who is really making money off the long tail is Anderson himself.

What Your Hourly Rate Isn't

Many writers misuse hourly rates and, as a result, end up damaging the smooth and profitable operation of their businesses. Here are points to check when you consider what you make per hour:

• Double-check your calculation of a minimum hourly rate. I've seen writers assume that they will bill a much higher percentage of their time than is realistic. Calculating a minimum hourly charge involves tallying all the money you need to make for a given time period, say a year, and then dividing it by the billable hours for that period. Most consultants and freelance businesspeople will do reasonably well if they can charge for half of their time. However, I've seen writers assuming that they would be able to charge for 70 percent or more. That is great if it can happen, but it's a terrible idea to assume it will. The higher your number of billable hours, the less money you have to make per hour to hit your financial goals. The problem comes when you find that you don't bill that many hours but have been charging as though you would. Suddenly you wind up with less money than you need. Do yourself a favor and figure that at best only half of your time is billable.


• Don't focus on the hour and forget to look at the bigger picture. If you want a sobering number, take all the money you actually make, not need to make, for a year and then divide that by the total number of working hours, not just the amount you can bill, in that year. Taking two weeks vacation, holidays, weekends, sick time/personal days out of the picture, but leaving in marketing and administration time, that should leave you with 1,840 hours. So divide a year of income by 1,840 to find out what you actually made per hour for a typical 40 hour work week. Here's a hint: if you grossed $100,000, that would be just over $54 per hour. If you're grossing $40,000, that would be under $22 per hour. When you think you're satisfied because you made $100 per hour on a given job, remember the big picture. You have to aim higher in revenue because you have to pay yourself for all those unbilled hours.


• Remember to aim high. The previous couple of calculations should suggest that it is all too common for writers not to be charging enough. Remember that when setting your pricing. If your current clients pay far lower than you need to make per hour, it is time to find some new ones.


• There is a fallacy of "market" hourly rates. There are too many variations on markets to come up with a number that is really representational; rates will vary by company size, industry, type of writing, needed expertise, and so on. You might ask another writer what he or she makes for a certain type of work, but is that what you can make? Do you offer enough value to match that number? Or is the writer charging too little, and will you leave yourself in someone else's economic hole? Focus on what you need to make as well as the value you can bring, because you can't get away with charging more than what clients perceive you to be worth.

Why Have a Web Site?

If you've been debating whether to spend the time and energy on a web site, or you have a site and wonder what more you can do with it, here are some suggestions of business advantages you can get from your site:

• Show a range of writing that you do or topic ares you understand.


• List special training, talents, certifications, or expertise that might not be immediately clear from the writing.


• Keep a page of links to recent work so editors don't have to track everything down or deal with attachments.


• Offer a range of informative articles that provide value to clients and prospects while demonstrating your professional abilities.


• Show a client list and a set of testimonials so it's not just you talking about you.- Set out the nature of your business and the types of work you tend to do.


• Show speaking engagements that can communicate a more robust sense of your expertise.


• Provide a frequently asked questions section that can offload the more rote and time-consuming questions that you get.


• Convey the idea to prospects or even editorial sources that you are "real."

Book Promotion 2.0

Author Dennis Cass has a funny video on Youtube.com about an author hopelessly trying to get with internet promotion of his work. So smartly depressing that you can only laugh.

Fear of Phoning: 5 Techniques to Reduce It

From time to time I see writers posting online messages about feeling afraid to call clients. Personally, I think it's a mistake to simply avoid the situation by using email for several reasons:

• Constantly avoiding what you fear only strengthens the emotion's grip on you.
• Editors often ignore email, or the messages get pushed into a spam filter, leaving the writer wondering why there is no answer.
• Sometimes the phone is the best form of communication, next to being in-person, and to avoid it is to give up an important marketing and sales tool.

I often see another writer answer something to the extent of, "Oh, but you're great, so just call. Don't be worried about it." Tell that to the person in the middle of fear. It may sound good, but the results can be exactly the opposite of what the encourager might want. Instead, here are some approaches that can be helpful. None of them require you to directly confront the fear, as often the most effective approach is an indirect one that lets you focus on intellect or action, both of which offer you far more control:

• Write it down One of the ways the fear of phoning comes out is the sense that you're babbling and sound like a complete loon. So write down all the points you want to make in roughly the order you want to make them. When you're prepared and know what you have to say, then you can stick with that, rather than trying to wing it.
• Take your time There is no rule that all negotiations happen within one sentence, let alone one conversation. Take the time you need to make your points. If someone comes up with something you're not ready for, say that you have to give it some thought and plan a subsequent discussion on the issue.
• Schedule ahead It's tought to make yourself pick up the phone when you're in the middle of fear. But the entire situation is different when you've scheduled the call and you cannot simply not bother. Use the power of your own obligation to get you on the phone in the first place, when possible.
• You can always say no You tend to get on a call to conduct a negotiation, whether over a contract, an assignment, or even the attempt to get an assignment. Fear comes in part from the concern that you won't get what you want. When that happens, invoke the power of walking away. There is no single assignment that will make or break your career and no single job that will make or break your entire financial existence. There are always other clients and other work out there; remind yourself to reduce the pressure of how much you need this particular negotiation to go through.
• Do some marketing A variation on the previous point, you can become more confident when you have more prospects. Reduce your dependence by sending off a few queries before you get on the phone. The more choices you have in work, the more control you have and, as a result, the more confidence and less fear you will feel.

Work with every intellectual and physical tool you have in a way that increases the odds in your favor and reduces the power of fear.

Steady Clients: Passion or Passivity?

I had a couple of recent experiences that got me thinking about the nature of long-term clients and customer satisfaction. In one case, I had thanked a writer who had referred me to a client and got a pleasant note about the feedback being strongly positive and saying that it was likely we'd be working on the next project together. ON the other hand, I found myself on the other side of the writer/client relationship, being highly displeased with one writer, as I was editing a feature package for a magazine, and saying that I'd never work with the person again. When I talked to my editor, the real client, she said, "You know, you've inspired me. I've been putting up with that writer for a long time, but maybe I just won't use the person again."

Most people in business assume that a steady client is a good client. From some views, that is absolutely correct: you lower your cost of acquiring a new customer while increasing the customer's lifetime value, or the amount of money the entity spends with you over the span the two of you do business. In short, the more money you make over time from a customer, the more efficient your marketing becomes, the more time and resources you can invest in building the future of your business, and the greater return on your previous marketing time and money investment.

Not all steady customers are the same:

• Some like doing business with you. They will seek you out, at least for the types of work they perceive you as doing well.



• Another group does business out of convenience. They have experience with you, so you become the devil they know, rather than the one they don't. That's not to say that all clients in this category consider you a devil, but we all have our weaknesses. On the balance, they find that doing business with you is a reasonably move on their parts.



• Third comes clients that work with you out of habit or inertia. They may not particularly like your work, business model, or style, but it's not enough to drive them off immediately.



• Fourth is the captured group that does business with you because they feel that they have no other choice, but they are actively interested in finding a replacement.

As you go from top to bottom, the clients may still be steady, for now, but they are increasingly likely to find another writer as soon as is convenient. That means there are different levels of vulnerability in your business even when you think some of your income is from tried and true sources.

I know we'd all like to think that all of our clients love us, but it's simply untrue. Look back over your career with some honesty, and you'll remember companies that flushed you out, or that took some work but didn't seem overly interested in having you do anything additional. There may have been some companies that kept a relationship only to get through a project - they were captive at the time - and beat a hasty retreat at the first possible moment.

Looking at your clients this way isn't to enter the land of blame, but of assessment. It may be that you and a client were or are simply incompatible, and that further business would run counter to either of your interests. The client might have been so unrealistic that a reasonable business effort would never have sufficed, and that there would never be enough forthcoming compensation to justify the exertion. Or it could be that you need to improve something - writing, business practices, areas of knowledge, or so on.

It generally takes time to know yourself well enough to begin making these judgment calls. I remember many, many years ago screwing up royally on some work and trying to blame the other party, but in my heart I knew that I was at fault. In a case like that, all you can do is work like hell to get good at what you do. Over time, the better you are, the more business starts coming your way, and the more you are able to command in the market. If you can get better faster, more power to you. If you're behind, why not work at getting better? Over time you might be able to increase a client's enthusiasm, and the chance that it will be around tomorrow.

Dealing With Rejection

Heather Boerneris addressing hte topic of rejection on her blog. That got me thinking about the topic and sending her a reply to a LInkedIn message she had sent out. But I thought I'd also look at the topic here.

Rejection is a constant companion for the self-employed. In fact, ask a group of experienced freelancers about the most important qualities for success, and not getting bogged down by rejection is one of the answers you'll inevitably get. The reason is that success in freelance writing comes from reducing the inevitable amount of rejection you'll get.

It's easy enough to say, "Develop a thick skin," but that doesn't explain why it is necessary. If you've been writing for any period of time, imagine what would happen if everyone said yes to everything you proposed. You'd drown in work and have no life. Getting work depends on hitting the right person in the right company at the right time with the right idea and right background to carry it out. That's a lot of right. The odds of that happening each and every time you send out a letter of introduction or query - given how much is completely out of your control - is unrealistic.

To get down from rejection has three parts. One is normal disappointment. I'd really like to know that the work and money were coming in, but they're not, so I have to move on to the next prospect.

Another part is not so normal, because it involves taking rejection as personal failure when you don’t accomplish what literally cannot be done. One is when the freelancer takes everything personally. Do you agree with your significant other on everything? Probably not, and you’re far less close to your clients, so why expect that much acceptance? You may be involved in your business, but you are not the same as your business. Focus on your decisions and the efforts you make, not on others.

The third problem is when you view each rejection as a threat. It’s not. Rejection works two ways, and you constantly reject clients – by not pitching them, by turning down projects that don’t make sense for you, by negotiating different terms than they originally wanted. It’s a game of numbers, and you need to make enough efforts so that, on the whole, the numbers break your way.

There is enough heartache in the world; why needlessly manufacture more for yourself? Clients aren’t family, friends, or lovers. They’re people who pay you to do something. Keep some distance and save the bitter rejection tears for those times that they are really warranted.

Taking Low-Paying Work

In response to my post about tips for writers during fears of a recession, a reader responded with the following:

Your latest email is great. I think there’s a #10 issue to address: whether to take on work that pays less than your normal rate because some money coming in is better than none. This is an issue that we go around and around about online, I know, but it’s a very real one, especially in this economic climate. Yes, taking lower-paying work will take time away from my marketing for better gigs, but I need to pay the mortgage, too. I know I’ve seen you opposed to doing this, in general, but you might want to revisit the issue and examine it from both sides.

Happy to oblige. What I oppose is taking low-paying work when that becomes a reflex action to any business difficulty. The problem is that you set yourself up in a few ways:

• You generally have to work more with low-paying work to make a living, which means that you end up cutting down your marketing time and reducing the chance of getting something that pays reasonably.


• Often writers point to an effective per-hour rate that seems reasonable. That may be true for the off-piece, but those who do significant amounts of such work don't generally seem to do that well overall. That's because you still have to spend time getting the work in and managing the flow. Now your marketing needs increase, because an increased set of assignments means you must bring them in. So you're cutting down on the time available for that lower-paying work and putting a ceiling on what you can earn.


• It should take about the same amount of time to do a competent job on a given length assignment; it's independent of the pay. To decrease the time and increase the hourly rate, you cut corners. Read the writers' boards and you'll see how many people complain about having the do the extra interviews, concept planning, rewrites, etc. That means, to some extent, you must do less than your best, and certainly less than would be required with a higher-paying and more demanding client. You end up turning the writing into factory work. Those who want the commodity writing excuse their lower pay by lowering their expectations. However, if you do this all the time, you end up with a lot of work samples that, to a more discerning client, will speak of such factory work. To put it bluntly, when you skimp, you make yourself appear like a hack to the clients you really want to attract, who then are less likely to use you and you do more of the low-end work. It's like the old concept of company-provided housing and a company-owned store; you never get to make enough to get out from under.

All that said, the reader who emailed me is right. There may be times to take lower-paying work. If you have to send off the mortgage or rent, you need money to do that. But given the above discussion, I think there are a few principles to follow when taking lower rate work:

1. Don't discount. You want to preserve the ability to charge more, because that makes a living easier to get. So don't drop your rate with regular clients in a hope to attract more work. If they are regular clients, then they know what you're capable of doing. If you start taking less, you will continue to take less, because you've said through your action that what you do is actually worth less.


2. Limit the exposure. Treat lower-paying work as something literally to make your nut. Keep marketing fiercely to make it as unnecessary as possible. Continue focusing on getting better-paying work.


3. Balance the value equation. As I teach in my various classes, business is a value equation. You provide value and expect value in return. I don't believe in cutting corners. If you get paid less, still treat the assignment as seriously as you would any. But try to balance the equation to get enough value back in one form or other. Low paying assignments will have to turn around cash quickly enough, be limited in the rights they get, or possibly sit on research you've already done. If you can't make it a naturally more acceptable assignment, then you should pass on it.


4. Incorporate it into your business model. Low-paying work can be a distraction when you just react to it. So don't. Make the lower paying work part of your business model, even if only while economic times seem tough. Have a strategy for it, set boundaries for how you deal with such work, and stick to them. That way you reduce the possibility of losing a grip on your higher-paying "real" work, and increase the chance that the two work streams will harmoniously co-exist.


5. Don't buy someone else's PR. Economic downturns are funny things. They don't affect everyone and everything evenly. Don't go into lower paying work from a panic. Instead, watch how things are going in your usual work. Are you sure that any problem isn't a result of your letting up on your usual marketing? (That can happen too easily to any of us.) Try doubling up on marketing first, unless you're in a cash crisis and the turnaround on such efforts will take longer than you have.


6. Don't buy someone's negotiating tactic. Sad as it is from a view of humanity, there are people who will try to use a recession as an excuse to reduce what they pay, even though they don't have to. But it's not as though you can find a way to work more cheaply as manufacturers often do. Maybe you can to some degree, but be wary of any client who tries to strong arm you into what is unwise for your business. Another way of putting it is that there are poorly-paying clients, and then there are cheap clients. The latter are generally ones to avoid, because they're not providing value in other ways. They just want something for nothing.


7. Don't panic. Douglas Adams had it right in the Hitcherhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The biggest mistake you can make is to freak out. Take a deep breath and consider all your options in dealing with an economic crisis. Some of those might include borrowing money, negotiating with creditors to spread out payments, or reduce expenditures. The more creative you can be on money, the more space you can make for smarter business decisions.

It may be that a recession will force you to consider lower-paying lines of work, and that can be part of life. But if you have to go there, do it with your eyes open.

Nine Tips for Writers During Recession Fears

What kills business isn't a recession so much as the fear of one. I don't just mean the overall economic effect, but the paralysis that can happen when you own a business and start thinking that you are the plaything of inevitability. You aren't. Here are nine tips you can use to strengthen your approach to doing business during a recession:

1. Market more - a lot more.


2. Don't be picky about topics. You can focus on the "but I *love* to write about XYZ" when you can afford to.


3. Look not just at the clients (and advertisers), but the industries. For example, the legal industry is often considered to be virtually recession proof, because companies need lawyers to do the deals when things are good, and bankruptcies/restructuring debt when things are bad.


4. Read trade press and talk to other writers to see if a given publication shows any of the signs of financial trouble. Ziff Davis just went into bankruptcy, but the signs were there for a while - one reason I didn't try to get work out of them.


5. Look for signs of trouble in your own clients. If checks start taking longer to get to you, start looking for other people to work for.


6. If you have a knowledge/experience niche that gives you a strong in with certain types of stories, strengthen it. If you don't, develop a niche. And keep adding niches as you can.


7. Don't put all your eggs in one client type basket. If you cover a topic for consumer pubs, see if there are things you can do for trade pubs as well, and vice versa.


8. Don't end up using a recession as an excuse: "I can't do any better because of the economy." When most everyone is marching in one direction, go in the other to find opportunities.


9. Look for companies that are more likely to keep producing written materials. An association magazine is one of the better examples, because if they're not sending something out to the members, it's probably because they're out of business. A custom publisher is a lesser example, because when companies feel the pinch, the custom publishing projects may be some of the first things to go, unless not having the publication is unthinkable for their businesses.

If it makes you feel any better, during the last major recession, right after the dot com bubble, there were writers who didn't see big drops in their income. Keep working away and, even if things aren't pretty, you can weather the storm.

Update

A reader emailed, asking me to address the issue of taking lower-paying writing to fill in cash needs. Here's my take on it.

Newspaper Publisher Facing Interesting Economic Times

Media General, claims to own more daily newspapers in the Southeast than any other company, is facing some potential economic shake-up. According to AP, the company is going to meet with a hedge fund that wants to nominate directors to the company's board:

Last week, [hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners] said it is nominating a slate of candidates for the company's board because Media General "has lost strategic, operational and geographic focus in recent years," according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

When a hedge fund wants to place directors on a board, it's generally because it doesn't see enough short term profits from the company, which could turn into return on its investment. The changes the directors might push for could run from smarter strategic directions to cost cutting and even selling off properties.

Media General owns The Tampa Tribune; the Richmond Times-Dispatch; the Winston-Salem Journal; 22 daily community newspapers in Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Alabama and South Carolina; and more than 100 weekly newspapers and other publications. If you are writing for a Media General paper, then I think it would be prudent to assume that there will be continued belt tightening, incluidng smaller freelance budgets and all the joys that brings to people like us.

Crossover Market Strategies

Someone on a writers' forum asked about strategies from moving from one topic area to another in which you have no expertise or experience. Here are four approaches you can use to get into new markets. The first is one that I teach in my online marketing class. You create a series of steps that get you from one subject to another, creating a trail that you can follow. For example, pretend that you write about classical music in specialty magazines and that you want to write business stories about retail. Here is a set of steps that could plausibly get you from one to the other:

1. Write music pieces for magazines devoted to classical music lovers.


2. Pitch and then write an article that looks at the business life and realities of a free-lance classical performer.


3. Pitch a story to a small business magazine about a small album label that is trying to go against the conventional wisdom that classical music is dying out.


4. For another business magazine, write a story about the economics of niche music at retail establishments, and how that affects what you can hear.


5. Pitch some retail stories.

It generally shouldn't take more than about five or six steps to make the transition, and if you're clever, you can sometimes combine steps to shorten the amount of time. In the above example, the writer could have turned the third step into writing a story about a retail store that was trying something interesting to increase sales of classical music. Suddenly you're into writing about retail stores almost immediately.

Another crossover strategy is to create a strong enough relationship with an editor that he or she has a level of trust in you. The editor may know that you don't have specific expertise in the area, but understands that you won't get involved in something where you can't deliver. The first assignment or two may be shorts, because that reduces the exposure for the editor; if something goes wrong, it's easy to recover.

You could do so much research up front that you demonstrate some expertise, even though you haven't officially had any. Infuse the query with insight that builds confidence on the part of the editor. Then you complement the research with compelling clips. There are a three major tactics, in general, for choosing clips. You can focus on writing technique, expertise, publication prestige. You can use any combination of them. Because you don't have the expertise (otherwise this wouldn't be a market crossover situation), you take a mix of clips with great writing from the biggest publications to which you've contributed. (This is difficult to pull off when you don't have good national clips.) Mix the topics of the clips so you convey the impression of being able to cover a lot of different things.

Entering a new market is one circumstance under which pitching poorly paying publications can make strategic sense. If you have strong clips in other areas and want to build a track record for a new one, the editor with little budget might jump at taking a chance on you. Then you start to get your legs underneath you, without asking a mainstream pub to underwrite your learning curve at its usual rates. You get a clip or two on the topic, then quickly start moving up to the level of publications that you want.

It's vital for writers to understand ways of moving from one market to another. Not only can an infusion of new material keep you flexible so you can respond to changes in the economics of the industry, but it can shake up your usual beats, adding depth and insight that comes from making the intellectual and emotional connections among apparently disparate topics.

Learn to Say No

Every writer knows that there are times to just say no. Sometimes pay or terms of a deal are far enough from your business model and practices that you can't afford to take on a given assignment or client.

And yet there is another circumstance under which many writers would do well to reply in the negative, even if their impulse is to agree almost before the question is asked. That's when someone approaches a writer with a potential assignment out of his or her experience and the writer relies on the theory that yes is always the right answer, with a scramble after to find a way to satisfy it.

I disagree that yes is always the smart thing to say, and would argue that the approach is often business disaster waiting to happen. There are areas that need specific experience and knowledge. For example, it's difficult to write about investor relations, whether in an article or as part of an annual report without some clear understanding about the regulatory nature of the field and what can and cannot be said. You could agree to cover semiconductor manufacturing without the right type of tech background, and things could blow up without your even realizing that they have at the time.

This isn't to say that you can't shift to new areas. Sometimes a topic unfamiliar to you has analogies in what you've already covered, making a transition smooth. It could be that something new, or the treatment of it, doesn't require anything that you don't already have. You might be able to develop expertise in a different field, if you invest the time.

Clients usually know when a general background will do, and when they need someone specialized. In the latter situation, making a promise and then assuming that you'll be able to cover the ground is not just taking a chance with your time, but with your client's business and money. Such cases are con games.

A business relationship is not just about you. If you find that you don't readily grasp the essentials of the topic, then you should not be covering it, or both you and the client should go into it with eyes open - and fees that reflect the fact you're on a learning curve.

Warning: VistaPrint

I've never used VistaPrint myself, but a writer in an online discussion mentioned that there have been reports of people getting unauthorized charges after placing an order with the company:

• Ripoff Report


• Random Thoughts Review


• Yahoo Finance Message Boards


• SmartMoney

These are just a few hits I got on a Google search on "VistaPrint" and "unauthorized charges." I've never used them and am not saying to avoid or use them. But if you're considering a purchase from them, doing some research before laying down your hard earned money would seem prudent.

Custom Publishing Becomes Custom Marketing

If you've ever done work in custom publishing, you know that it's really been about marketing - creating material whose value the client hopes to wear in the perception of its clients and prospects. According to this important article in AdAge, you can now put the emphasis on the marketing and take it away from the "publishing":

"We would rather call it custom marketing today," said Wendy Riches, exec VP at one of the biggest custom players, Meredith Publishing Group. That's because what used to be custom publishing now includes word-of-mouth, the internet, e-mail newsletters, mobile alerts, deeper database crunches and complex behavioral modeling.

The reason I emphasize the importance is that as custom publishers change their focus, they will look for writers with a broader set of experiences and competencies. If readership drops on magazines in general, chances are that it will, as well, with custom-published magazines. The publishers and their clients need to find new, productive outlets - and freelance writers need to find ways to show that they are the ones who can create the content for these new ventures.

Do not assume that a previous track record with the publisher will help. The client ultimately calls the tune, not the publisher. That is why the custom publishers often have the clients vet potential contributors. If you can't show that you've written for the web and email delivery, that you haven't produced any multimedia, that you don't understand the results of data modeling, it's likely the clients will say, "Please get us someone who knows these areas." You might argue that adapting to a new form isn't that hugely difficult, and I'd agree, if you are a versatile writer. But the client will perceive the world as it will, and will not want to foot the bill to let you get up to speed. Get the experience now, before you need to demonstrate it.

Don't Ignore Monthly Goals, Either

Earlier this week I discussed how you can put too much emphasis on monthly goals, wasting time and effort chasing something unnecessarily. But there is a flip side: complacency. Yes, it is possible to make up a month's revenue short-falling, but the possibility shifts with the circumstances.

Pushing additional revenue needs into a following month is fine if the amount is small. But the larger a deficit you try to cover, the more difficult your task becomes. Now you've committed yourself to longer hours and more work just to get back on track. The key is percentage by which you misss your goal. If you're down by a few percent, that probably isn't going to be impossibly difficult to attain. Hit 15 or 20 percent, and you're working some longer weeks; 50 percent, and you might be giving up sleep.

You might need to spread a large enough deficit over several months, but what happens if you have another off month? Or if you're crowding the end of the year and you want to hit your annual goal? You may have set yourself up to solve a problem that you cannot.

If you find yourself missing a monthly goal, don't panic, but do see what you can learn from it:

• Have you fallen short because of an unexpected event? Consider whether it really was a something that you could not have forseen, or if you might be essentially lying to yourself through overly optimistic estimations of the likelihood of closing business.


• Does your goal show unrealistic expectations for the markets and types of work that you've chosen to do? If so, you must revisit either your business model or your expectations.


• Are you working hard enough in marketing and selling? If not, the work won't come in. You should be pitching to get more business than you need, because not all of your marketing will turn into assignments.


• Are you working hard enough to finish the assignments? It doesn't matter if you've got an assignment; it won't help you meet a monthly goal if you don't finish in time to invoice during that month.


• In a similar vein, are you being realistic in the amount of work you can complete in a month, and how long it will take to do each assignment? If you find that important parts of your goal are going to be done right at the end of the month, assume that the schedule could slip and your revenue could slide out of one month and into another. That's not a big problem (assuming that the client is fine with the change) if you're finished at the beginning of the next month, but let it go too far and you'll be bumping revenue for that month as well, creating a situation where you cannot catch up by earning more than your goal.

Giving Away E-Books to Drive Sales

Author Paolo Coelho has apparently been giving away electronic versions of his books to great marketing effect. There's a quote on a site called TorrentFreak:

In 2001, I sold 10,000 hard copies. And everyone was puzzled. We came from zero, from 1000, to 10,000. And then the next year we were over 100,000. […]

I thought that this is fantastic. You give to the reader the possibility of reading your books and choosing whether to buy it or not. […]

So, I went to BitTorrent and I got all my pirate editions… And I created a site called The Pirate Coelho.

And here's something from his official blog discussing a talk he gave about the phenomenon. I'm not saying that every author should immediately run off and give away copies, but the success that some have with this method does give one pause to think. With so many book purchases happening online, maybe this is the online equivalent of going to a book store, having a title catch your eye, flipping through it, and deciding to buy it. Or perhaps this will only work with a few authors and eventually the whole approach will fall apart. Interestingly, the people I've heard of who have had success - Coelho; journalist, science fiction author, and co-publisher of the popular web site BoingBoing.net; and M.J. Rose - have all been giving fiction away.

It makes me wonder whether there has been any success with giving away non-fiction - at least the non-literary type. (If you've heard of a case, please email me and let me know.) It could be that it's an approach that only works with more "literary" works. Or perhaps it's just that non-fiction authors generally have an easier time to get commercially published, and aren't quite desperate enough to take big chances that could result in success.

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.

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.

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

Another WGA Lesson

Those who have heard me talk for, oh, five minutes and who haven't dozed as a result know that I've been beating the drum for how writers need to become their own publishers. Well, that's another lesson we all can learn from the Writers Guild strike. Check this LA Times piece. NBC has decided to air a show that started on the Internet. Why? Because it hasn't been on television yet. (Does that mean it hasn't existed any more than the tree out in the forest?) It's already produced, so isn't affected by the WGA strike - and probably won't be, because the writers own the damned stuff!

Read the LAT article carefully. A number of recent movies that have done well were financed by outside money people - and largely in control of the writers:

Being entrepreneurial isn't for the faint of heart. If you want a sweet upfront paycheck, you may not have the stomach for it. But after seeing studios bowdlerize their scripts, many writers will swap a big payday for more control. [Writer-director David] Twohy says that after Relativity read his script, "They told me, 'Script approved as-is.' I've never heard a studio ever say that."

I don't mean to be insulting or to belabor a point, but are you getting this yet? Writers can find ways to control their own work. The reins are slipping out of the fingers of those who traditionally controlled them.

What does this mean for the type of freelance writing you do? It's time to consider what you might create that a major publisher won't buy. No, you probably cannot afford to go off and do it full time without an investor. But what if someone did invest? Or what if you did it on the side, much the same way that some popular novelists who make boatloads now started by writing in the mornings, before heading to their 9-5 job?

Maybe you start with a blog and begin building an audience. Maybe you write something really good and go after book clubs to pick up your self-published title, sending free samples to those willing to consider it. Maybe you develop a site that will eventually support advertising. Don't expect that the money will roll in from day one. If you are going to be an entrepreneur - which, by the way, you already are, whether you realize it or not - then you have to start thinking like one. Real payoffs don't get offered up front. You invest your time and energy and take the compensation farther down the road. Some things you try will be a bust. Maybe some won't. But it's a hell of a lot better than passively griping about bad contracts, low pay, committee editing, and one-sided contracts.

Realistically, very few writers will start down this route. Most will look for safety. But it's the safety of a cage left on the beach, and the tide is coming in. The only safety in the long run is breaking out, building a boat, and learning to sail.

Shuttered Magazines and Their Running Web Sites

Yesterday it was looking at newspapers, and today an interesting piece in Folio about magazines closed by publishers that decided to leave the web sites up. As was true with the newspapers, the data is from Nielsen. This time we don't have the average time spent. The data below compares the date the magazine was shuttered (2007, unless otherwise stated) to the number of unique visitors for August 2007 (unless otherwise stated):

Site	Mag Gone	Visitors
NickJr.	February	3,260,000
Child.com	March	534,000
Cracked.com	February	365,000
ElleGirl.com	April 2006	358,000
InfoWorld	April	559,000
StuffMagazine.com	October	223,000 (July)

Without the time being spent, it's hard to determine whether people are seriously using these sites or just breezing through - the former meaning a better chance for the necessary advertising dollars. But it's interesting how many people some of these sites are bringing in even after the magazine itself closed. What would be really interesting to know is wht their revenues and profitability were compared to the print days. My guess would be that revenues are significantly down, but that profitability may not be - after all, why close the magazine and keep the web site open if you were a publisher and didn't think the site was adding to your bottom line?

The difficulty for writers is that the publishers have set an expectation of lower pay on the web, as they constantly complained about having to invest all this money into it. Well, of course they did, just as tradtiaional big consumer magazines can lose tens of millions - otherwise known as investment by the publishers - until finally turning a profit. Only, writers are getting suckered into underwriting what the publishers are doing. That can't last; if it does, we're all going to be out of the editorial business. Now is the time to push for treating the web and print as equals. Wait, and you'll contribute to the industry "standard" of paying web writers - a.k.a., you, in the future if not now - less than print writers.

Why You Need to Plan Your Business Today

In the middle of teaching one of my periodic online business planning classes, I've had some students saying that they're getting behind because they're too busy now. You may have said the same thing yourself - I'll start my business planning next week, or at the end of the year, and then you never get around to it. But planning isn't an affordable nicety.

I don't mean writing a formal business plan to shove into the drawer. Planning is the process of knowing where you need to go, where you are now, and how to get from point A to point B. It's a process, not a single activity, so there is no perfect answer. You might make some decisions only to find that they put you in a direction away from where you want to go. That's fine, so long as you keep looking at your client mix, the money you're making, the money you need to make, your pipeline of possibly work, level of marketing activity, cash flow, and other metrics critical to the running of any business. If you want to write for a living, then whether you like it or not, you have to treat this as a business.

Would you say you're too busy to send letters of introduction to prospects or queries to editors or proposals to corporate clients? You might, but you'd soon be in desperate financial straits, because only continued marketing keeps you solvent. Would you say you're too busy to send invoices? In that case, you could find yourself out of money, if not assignments, because you haven't kept up with what others owe you.

A process of business planning is just as important to your business as marketing and invoicing. The point isn't to come up with "the" answers. Instead, it's to start building a planning process, so you can move ahead over time. So, for example, if you can't analyze the profitability of all your clients, analyze that of the top few, to start. If you can't go through your entire old client list, at least examine a promising few.

Delaying planning to some future time offers no benefit, because you're still thinking in terms of a light switch: Today I'll plan and then everything will suddenly be OK. It won't, though. Only by continuously planning over time can you eventually make progress toward your goals. It's like hiking toward a mountain. You keep checking your progress, examining your direction, and noting the terrain and how you may have to adjust your gait to meet it. Eventually you get to the mountain, and every step brings you closer. If you wait to do the planning until you're there, you could end up tumbling down a ravine.