Category — Marketing

If you’re looking to get published, make sure you’re submitting your work to a reputable market. If someone offers to help you get published, do your homework and make sure you know who you’re dealing with.

All writers should make Preditors and Editors their first stop before submitting anything or making any agreement with a market you’re not sure about. Their web site could be a lot easier to use, but it’s still the best place to go for this critical information.

It’s your work, and you poured your creativity and sweat into it. Protect yourself!

While just getting something published – even in a non-paying market – can be fun and rewarding, neither you nor I are going to turn down some cold, hard cash for our writing.

While something like Writer’s Market is an invaluable resource for breaking into paying markets, it’s also intimidating. There are plenty of smaller, friendlier-feeling, new-writer-welcoming markets out there far too numerous to make it into Writer’s Market. Keeping up with these opportunities requires a personal touch and a passion for helping all writers succeed.

That’s where C. Hope Clark’s FundsforWriters.com comes in. Every two weeks, Hope sends out a newsletter that lists grant opportunities and well-paying markets and contests only. At a ridiculously cheap $12/year, you can’t beat it.

I heard her in an interview a while back and love her spirit and commitment to her work and to writers everywhere. She has a ton of material on her site, so go have a look.

I recently discovered the FreelanceSwitch blog, and it easily made it onto my daily reading list. Their purpose is to offer advice, share their wisdom, and create a community atmosphere for freelancers everywhere. It’s a place where freelancers can work together to overcome the challenges of freelancing and find ways to improve their chances of success.

Definitely check out their recent article “How Much is Your Time Worth?”, the ever-present issue that freelancers everywhere wrestle with.

I’ve only explored a fraction of their extensive site so far. Go now and check it out!

I’ve read a lot of advice over the years that writers should focus on getting the words right and leave the graphic designers to deal with fonts and the other pretty stuff. Employed writers often work as part of a diverse team where everyone has a specific role. Writers who work at ‘non-writing jobs’ and write stories and poems in between the nooks and crannies of their day often don’t have time to worry about anything else.

With the proliferation of self-employment and self-publishing, it’s getting harder and harder for writers to just write copy or stories. Competition for freelance work can be fierce. The more writing and design services you can (legitimately) offer, the more likely you are to get work. The more design work you can do on your book, the better it’s going to sell. If you rely on self-publishing houses to do your design work for you, expect much more often than not to be disappointed.

What I find fascinating is that graphic designers are typically much more willing to write copy for the pieces they create – such as brochures – than copywriters are to offer a design to go with their copy. Traditionally, these have been two separate fields and remain so in many places. A great designer who can write adequate copy or a great writer who can at least do adequate design are instantly more marketable.

Does this mean you should punt outside help from anyone? Of course not. But if you seek outside design help, you should know enough to know the right questions to ask and to evaluate how good that help is.

I feel that the days of just providing straight copy to a client are quickly waning. In talking with prospective clients, I discover that many of them have received bids for just writing the text for their project leaving them to wonder, “you mean I have to find somebody else to do the design and printing?”

I think if you bid on a job to produce an e-mail newsletter, you ought to know how to actually create and lay one out in HTML as well as how to use a couple of online services who help companies distribute those newsletters. The copy in those newsletters is still the most important part, but most clients I’ve talked to or worked with want more than a Word document with the copy in it. They want the project done so all they have to do is click Send.

That said, there are still plenty of places that want the copy and then want you to go away. That’s fine. They’re set up for that kind of process. I think, though, that there are ten orders of magnitude more places that would hire you if you could take them from beginning to “click Send”.

If you dread learning the skills needed to do that, then don’t. Aim for places that just want the copy. I’ve just found that I have a lot more options if I can provide more services. It helps tremendously that I love learning this stuff, and it gives me a place to express my creativity in those areas.

It feels good when talking to clients to say, “I write and…” Your “and” should be something you love, or are at least fascinated by, that also adds value to your writing services. That “and” will get you work.

So, what’s your “and”?

This Top 10 Blogs for Writers list comes from Michael Stelzner at the Writing White Papers site. This is a fantastic list and definitely worth your time. He also has links to his other Top 10 lists immediately after this one.

He was interviewed on The Writing Show (direct link to that podcast) a few weeks before I was, which made the honor of being on that show that much greater given the quality of Michael’s work. His interview was about – not surprisingly – writing white papers. Even if that’s not your cup of tea, you’ll still learn some useful writing tips by listen to his interview.

(Cross-posted at my other blog. Warning: May contain excessive amounts of language geekery.)

My wife and I were watching TV one night when a string of prescription drug ads filled the entire commercial break. I finally noticed something I should have seen before. The vast majority of drug names have three syllables, and many of those have an accent on the second one.

The obvious next question is, why?

It didn’t take me long to find this article, which provides some insight into how the whole process works and some of the linguistic science behind it.

The article doesn’t completely address my question, so here’s my guess for whatever it’s worth. As the article says, two or three syllables make it easier to remember. My theory about the accent on the middle syllable is that it creates an alternating ‘down-up-down’ pattern (for lack of a better term) that feels more poetic than the alternatives. It can stick in your head like a piece of song lyric.

Warning: serious geekery ahead. I just looked this up. This pattern of a stressed syllable surrounded by two unstressed ones is called an amphibrach. The real insight – it’s the primary pattern used in limericks. Makes sense now!

I was particularly fascinated by the article’s discussion of phonemes, which are basically the smallest pronounced units that make up any given word. (like c in car or f in far) I noticed the other day that an inordinate number of words that begin with sl (another example of a phoneme) have unpleasant connotations: slime, slink, slap, slam, slob, sloth, slum, etc.

From the above article:

“Research shows letters with a hard edge, like P, T or K, convey effectiveness. X seems scientific. L, R or S provide a calming or relaxing feel. Z means speed.”

Something to keep in mind next time you write something.

I didn’t do any research into this, but I think the name of a prescription drug has to be the most expensive word you’ll ever pay someone to write. A freelance magazine writer feels ecstatic to get $1/word. The name of a drug, however, goes for a couple million per word.

I’m in the wrong line of work.

I know trillions of dollars have changed hands over the generations through direct mail and various kinds of cold-calling and telemarketing. It’s my opinion, for whatever that’s worth, that we’re quickly approaching a tipping point where these kinds of marketing will be more expense and frustration than they are worth in most cases.

Most books on earning a living as a freelance writer encourage these as critical pieces of your marketing. My opinion is that many of them paint this in strokes that are too broad to be cost-effective for most of us.

For a view on marketing from the complete opposite end of the spectrum, read Seth Godin. The rules of marketing and business growth are shifting by the minute. It behooves all of us who freelance to keep generating fresh ideas and constantly evaluate how our marketing and business plans are working.

Do I think contacts to hot leads, referrals, and people who hint at interest in your services are a good thing. Absolutely and without question. Do I think mailing 500 or 1,000 pieces – or making that many cold-calls – to a list of prospects is going to help you, even though you get a high-quality, targeted list to mail to? My answer to that is a resounding ‘eh’. If you’re even a decent writer with average sales skills, you’ll very likely make a profit from such a marketing campaign. I doubt you’ll be inspired by how much profit you get out of it, though.

The 80/20 rule of business works almost without fail. You’ll get 80% of your business from 20% of your clients. This means repeat business, and referrals from your happy clients, will make or break you. If you can get your happy clients to spread the word about you to others, the effectiveness of this kind of marketing is infinitely better than mailings, cold-calling, and the like. If you make it easier for happy clients to spread the word about you, that’s even better.

Personally, I think it’s a much better investment of your time and money to work your existing network of contacts, do great work for anyone who hires you, and be interesting enough and good enough and easy enough for those clients to want to spread the word about you.

There are a bazillion freelancers in the world. What makes you so great? What makes me so great for that matter?

My goal here is to explore the answer to that question and look for other writers and designers on the same path. Ideas? Questions? Comments? Chime in!