Starting Your Career as a Freelance Writer: Second Edition - Softcover

This book walks you through the process of launching your career, step-by-step. It tells you what supplies and equipment you'll need, how to develop ideas and decide what to write about, how to locate markets, how to write queries, how to research and structure your articles, how to conduct interviews, and how to handle the business side of writing. It demystifies the process of negotiating contracts, helps you understand your rights as a writer, and shows you how to protect yourself and your writing. Finally, it gives tips on expanding your career -- including what you need to know before deciding to go "full time."

In writing this book, I've drawn not only on my own experience both as a freelancer and a magazine editor, but also on the hundreds of questions that I've been asked by other writers. It's based not only on what I think beginning writers need to know, but on what those writers have said they want to know, based on the questions they ask.

Part One deals with the issues of getting started: Understanding what it takes to become a freelancer, setting up one's office and basic supplies, learning how to "make time to write" (and teaching others to respect that time), setting effective goals, and learning how to understand and cope with rejection.

Part Two looks at the tasks involved in starting that first article: Finding ideas (including understanding what editors want), moving from category to subject to topic to slant, creating outlines and dealing with "word budgets," conducting research and interviews, starting (and refining) that first draft, using sidebars, and writing personal experience articles.

Part Three explains how to market your work, including how to locate sample magazines, whether to write for free, how to write for special-interest publications, writing for magazines, and writing for newspapers (a special chapter by Sue Fagalde Lick).

Part Four carries the marketing question to the next level, by discussing how to develop a query, how to format a manuscript, and what actually happens when your query arrives at the editor's office. It looks at e-mail queries, multiple-pitch queies, and cover letters -- and whether or not to send simultaneous submissions. It also addresses a common fear of beginning writers: Whether or not editors will "steal your ideas."

Part Five demystifies the issues of copyright, rights and contracts, including what constitutes a "use" of rights (whether or not you're paid), how to negotiate a contract or (if necessary) write your own, how to set your fees, how to make sure that you get paid, when to ask for a raise, whether to work for "pay on publication" markets, and how to handle your writing business expenses, income and taxes (including how to survive an audit).

Part Six explores ways to expand your writing business, including how to sell reprints, include photos with your articles, write and self-syndicate a column, write and sell a nonfiction book, write for businesses (a special chapter by Peter Bowerman, author of The Well-Fed Writer), and decide whether (or when) to "take the plunge" and become a full-time freelancer.

If you've ever said to yourself, "I wish I could become a writer, but I just don't know how to get started!" this is the book for you!

You can read excerpts and get more information at writing-world.com