Entering into the field of freelance writing doesn’t require a degree in English, per se, for most publishers won’t even ask to see your college credentials; what matters to publishers is that the articles they receive are well-written. In their acclaimed book The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing Success, freelancers Linda Formichelli and Diana Burrell stressed how “the difference between a great freelance writer and an editor’s nightmare” is that the former knows more than a thing or two about good grammar and spelling (Formichelli and Burrell 15). True, the task of checking articles for spelling and grammatical mistakes is usually reserved for the copy editors of a given publication, but expectations are still in order for the writers themselves to neatly organize and carefully proofread their articles before submitting them to the publisher. Therefore, Formichelli and Burrell recommend that you always keep some grammar books and a dictionary on hand (I use answers.com for quick checks on spelling and etymology) and to make note of recurrent mistakes that show up in your writing in order to isolate and remedy your bad habits.
While freelance writing is not generally the world’s highest-earning profession, it does have its financial perks. In his estimable book of advice, Get Paid to Write!: The No-Nonsense Guide to Freelance Writing, noted freelancer Thomas Andrew Williams highlighted the advantage of ‘chunk money’, in which the publication gives you the entire pay all at once; a huge reward when the pay scale amounts to a dollar per word or more. Another perk is tax deductions, which can be claimed on work expenses ranging from the piles of magazines that you buy to keep abreast of the field, to the office space in which you do your work. The pay rates of magazines can be generalized according to topicality and distribution: nationals which contain serious features, such as The Sun and Playboy, will pay around $3,000 for a 2,500 word article, whereas a regional publication like Miami Monthly Magazine might pay only $1,500 for the same article; these same figures can be reduced from twenty-five to forty percent for publications of a lower writing caliber, such as Entrepreneur (Williams 15).
Those who earn upwards of six-figures annually in the field of freelance writing tend to develop relations with the publications that will ultimately make regular use of their work. Additionally, such high-earning freelancers will author books and parlay their writing credentials into teaching posts and consultation gigs (Yudkin). But regardless of the heights that a freelance writer aspires to, one should never give their talent away. A budding freelancer might take the misstep of accepting an assignment for little or nothing, thinking that such a deal will help them break into the writing industry. Experienced freelancers object to this on the ecological grounds stated thusly by Thomas Andrew Williams: when freelance writers sell themselves short, it “makes it possible for many publishers to build their businesses on the backs of writers who work for a pittance just to get recognition” (Williams 17).
Other freelance professionals will not just tell you to refuse non-paying gigs; they’ll advise that you talk you fees up, way up. As six-figure freelancer Robert W. Bly exclaimed in his insightful book of strategies, Getting Started as a Freelance Writer, “STOP HAGGLING OVER NICKELS AND DIMES” (Bly 48). In other words, don’t work for peanuts; shop around until you get the offer for at least a four figure fee, and then talk it up double. To get those fatter fees, freelancers are advised to think in terms of various publishing formats. Speaking as someone who yawns at the prospect of a $2,000 fee, Bly reveals that the big bucks aren’t to be made so much in the fields of magazine, newspaper and online writing, but in TV, movies, annual reports, advertising copy and speechwriting. Having absconded a grueling Fortune 500 managerial career for a comfy life in freelance, Bly insists that a skilled and driven writer can not only make a living out of freelance, but that he or she can catapult themselves into the high life. Simply put, if you want to make it in the field of freelancing, you need to put a high price on yourself as a writer.
Most freelance writers need to open themselves to a breadth of topicality, for steady work in specialist areas is a rarity in this field. By the same token, freelancers need to have a plentiful list of potential story ideas from which they can pitch to various publications, for only a handful of those ideas will meet the specific demands of a given publication at any time. Therefore, in addition to taking note on all the topics which pique your curiosity, you as a budding freelancer are encouraged to write down thoughts that come to mind on topics outside of your general interest range, in order to broaden your overall range of ideas. It is also wise for the freelancer to double-down on sources, whereby elements of research for one assignment can be funneled into other pieces looming in the cupboard (Tice).
Ideas do not have to spring directly from the mind, however, for they can be culled from preexisting articles. Putting things bluntly in their chapter entitled “Cranking Up the Idea Factory: Bold Thinking Leads to Countless Ideas”, Formichelli and Burrell state that since “ideas can’t be copyrighted, ideas can’t be stolen” (Formichelli and Burrell 39). For those into pop culture, collectibles, and memorabilia, various trade and consumer magazines can offer a goldmine of inspiration; Formichelli and Burrell suggest raiding volumes of music and movie magazines from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s for articles on unknown bands and forgotten films of yore, to be written about anew and pitched to nostalgia-themed publications. For the politically-minded, government reports can be plundered for articles on everything from foreign trade to agriculture, and best of all the articles are copyright-free and thus fair game for content looting. Additional sources include local publications from adjacent cities, from which someone else’s unique feature in a Boise monthly can form the basis for your unique feature in a Eugene quarterly. Furthermore, upcoming books can be an ideal source for articles on more than just the book itself; for magazines appreciate how new books facilitate the timeliness of a given idea.
Freelance writers are basically entrepreneurs who sell themselves for a living. But unlike proprietors of small businesses, the customer base will tend to develop not locally, but from afar. Many initial clients of a freelancer will be based in other cities, and sometimes even in other parts of the world. Writing geared towards city or regional publications can make for lucrative resell items to other, non-competing markets, so long as the piece itself isn’t specifically geared to the initial locale, or the stipulated property of the initial publication upon payment (Tice). Ideas can also be duplicated, with minor adjustment, for similar publications, so long as the contents are modified as well. An article on dog rearing for a canine publication can be morphed into an article on cat rearing for a feline publication, whilst an article about hiking in Forest Park for an Oregon-based magazine can be transported – with all forehand knowledge on hiking left intact – to the Redwoods for a Californian publication.
Unless a freelancer writes for hobby as much as livelihood, an idea for an article should remain a mere idea until a pitch on that idea is accepted by a publication. Often times, the topical and aesthetic aspects of a given article will need to be tailored to the guidelines of a certain publication, and thus an article written without forehand knowledge of those specific guidelines might just render the article, no matter how brilliant and topically appropriate, unusable by the very publication most hospitable to such a topic (Yudkin). Formichelli and Burrell suggest sending pitches on a given idea en mass to all the applicable magazines at large, with each letter personalized to suit the particulars of the different magazines, from the exact name of each editorial department, to varying propositions on word count. Advisably, you leave yourself open to the earliest and highest bidders on each new idea; priority is granted only when and if a certain publication has proven to be a reliable source of income for you as a freelancer.
In the sport of pitching ideas, persistency is a virtue. Timid freelancers often place magazines into the recycling bin of prospect in much the same way that floundering pick-up artists do with the phone numbers of unenthused female targets. To writers like Linda Formichelli and Diana Burrell, whose sustenance in this field was achieved through perseverance and gumption, timidity is the fatal flaw of the freelancer. Unbeknownst to many writers, a non-return of the self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) which they enclose with a given pitch does not necessarily equate a rejection. Often times, a publication will get too busy to sort through the many pitch letters they receive, and thus accumulate hundreds of unopened pitches in their queue file. When the going gets tough, they might be understaffed in their mail room, and thus no one ultimately sees your pitch. With some publications, the SASE protocol is simply a put-on: a dead end by which to weed out the submissions of writers who lack the ingenuity to contact the editor in person. Such a circumstance has recurrently befallen to one Eric, whom Formichelli and Burrell reference for his stream of assignments with GAMES, which have often been secured through phone calls with that publication’s editor at some point in time ‘following’ the non-return of one of his pitch letters. Therefore, repeated attempts to pitch an idea to a magazine must be intermixed with various forms of contact with that magazine in order to confirm the outcome of your approach.
Ironically, the understaffing referred to above is often endemic of a condition in the magazine industry which ultimately serves as a boon to the freelance writer: smartsizing, in which companies cut their staff down to the barest of necessity. Many magazines smartsize their in-house team and turn to freelancers for content because the latter are preferable in that they don’t require the fringe benefits of a salaried staff. Smartsizing, of course, extends to the editorial departments, within which magazines generally employ just enough editors to assemble the amount of articles necessary to fill their next issue. What this all means is that the content of magazines is by and large dependent on an abundance of talented freelancers, which Williams refers to as an editors “stock in trade” (Williams 13). Magazines simply can’t afford to hire enough writers to produce all the content needed on a monthly basis. And even if they could, there aren’t many writers out there with a broad enough expertise to write competently about the range of topics that a given publication will need to cover in order to stay rounded. Invoking Occam’s razor, Williams stated it bluntly when he said that “[t]here’s just so much that any one person can know and write about” (Williams 13). Therefore, a surplus of available freelance writers is the lifeblood of the magazine industry.
References
Ragland, Margit. Get A Freelance Life. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press, 2006.
Formichelli, Linda and Diana Burrell. The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing Success. Oak Park., Ill: Marion Street Press, 2005.
Williams, Thomas Andrew. Get Paid to Write!: The No-Nonsense Guide to Freelance Writing.
Boulder, CO: Sentient Publications, 2004.
Yudkin, Marcia. “The Freelance Writing FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions about Writing for Newspapers & Magazines.” 2007. Creative Marketing Solutions.
Bly, Robert W. Getting Started as a Freelance Writer. Boulder, CO: Sentient Publications, 2004.
Tice, Carol. “How to Earn Well Writing Reported Articles.” April 8, 2010. The WM Freelance Writers Connection.
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