Writer Poll: How Do You Find Community?

Freelancers’ Union recently unveiled a new feature on their site called Hives. The intent is to give freelancers a place to connect, support one another, and discuss every aspect of the freelancing life. Freelancers’ Union encourages members to use the Hives to “talk, form groups, organize events, share videos and photos, and meet up with hundreds of thousands of freelancers.”

This got us thinking. Writing is notoriously a lonely job, and freelance writing can be even more so. So we polled our writers to find out what they do to build community, and we got some ingenious responses.

Unions and Workshops
Robert Woodcox is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, as well as the Writers Guild, a writers’ labor union, which he finds is good for discussing political action, financial issues, and other writer-relevant topics that aren’t about the writing process itself.

Temma Ehrenfeld has run a monthly poetry workshop in her home for ten years, where she, a professional editor, and a grant writer read their own and others' poetry. She also has a friend who texts her most days telling her what creative projects he's worked on that day, and asking what she’s accomplished. She finds it’s good to be kept accountable: “Just having to report on what I've done helps,” she says.

Meet Ups
Sheila Lewis organizes “writing dates” with a buddy or two. “Barnes & Noble cafe is a favorite venue, and we reward ourselves with a break for novel browsing,” she says. Sometimes she’ll connect with others at a “destination writing” spot, like the Atrium near Lincoln Center. “Take it offline when you can—at the gym, the JCC, the Y, a school, church, synagogue, or weird hobby group. When you're with real people, something magical and synchronistic happens.”

Catherine Dold is part of a Colorado group called “Boulder Media Women,” which has been going strong for twenty-four years. The group, which started out as informal meetups of a few freelancers, has grown to more than 500 people who get together for Friday morning coffees, monthly potlucks, and Tuesday evening schmoozes.


Shared Space (Physical or Digital)
The Writers Room popped up several times, with several writers saying that the shared work space is where they go to find community.

Sarah Greesonbach stays in touch with other freelance writers and entrepreneurs through Facebook groups and blogs. “These groups give me a good opportunity to ‘check in’ with others throughout the day when I want to, and to not engage when I'm not in the mood.”

None of the Above
Alex Dwyer finds that he simply doesn’t interact with many other writers—and he’s fine with that. “Perhaps its the millennial work/life balancer in me, but I fully enjoy the four-hour blocks when I write in solitude. In non-writing hours, I do non-writing things and interact with all kinds of folks in other facets of life, but I relish and am protective of my solitary writing time.”

Do you have a different method for creating community? Let us know in the comments!

Guest Post: Why I Like Being a "Content Provider"

by Minda Zetlin

If you spend a lot of time around longtime journalists, you may have heard the term “content provider” used with something like a sneer—generally from what I think of as the old guard: venerable writers who built their careers writing great news stories for great news organizations and are aghast at the changes the Internet has wrought upon the world they thought they knew.

But “content provider” is a term many of us are embracing, because that old world of journalism is gone for good. I spent part of last week at a forward-looking conference where respected media guru Steve Rubel, executive vice president of global strategy and insights at PR giant Edelman, laid out, in a few minutes and a few slides, the forces that have changed media forever.

Content is infinite; time and attention are finite. We all know this as readers. I’ve often thought that I would like to read the New Yorker—if only it came out monthly instead of weekly. The days when people eagerly checked their mailboxes for that long-awaited magazine are over. These days, the magazine has a website where it publishes new articles or blog posts 20 times a day. All your friends have blogs they hope you’ll follow, and now that there are so many publishing venues, most have books out, too, that they’re waiting for you to get around to reading. Not to mention Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Digg, Flipboard, and StumbleUpon. There’s just too much good stuff out there for any of us to read everything we might like to.

Publishers can’t depend on subscription revenue. Right or wrong, most people assume that content on the Internet should be free, and very few companies have found a successful way to charge people for reading material online. As we’ve just seen, there’s enough good reading out there for free to make anyone wonder why they’d bother paying to read a website. As more and more people are turning away from paper, subscriptions just aren’t a great way for most publications to make money anymore.

Online ad revenues don’t amount to much. Advertising was supposed to be a viable business model for online publications, just as it’s always provided much of the revenue for print publications. Rubel notes that most online advertising is sold using automated networks rather than person-to-person, and at very low prices. Late least year, Forrester Research estimated the average cost per thousand page views of an online ad at just $2.66. The Atlantic reported that newspapers lost $16 in print ad revenue for every $1 they had gained in digital ad revenue in 2012, one reason why total newspaper employment in the United States fell below 40,000 for the first time since 1978.

This is all terrible news for traditional media, for the state of American journalism in general, and for writers determined to make their livings from pure journalism. When some of the biggest names in media are faltering, and all of them are scrambling to compete in an increasingly overloaded market for readers’ attention—well, that’s not a good thing.

I wish I could say that pay for good writing is going up, but it isn’t. I wish I could say that all the writing I do is meticulously researched and fact-checked, but it isn’t. I wish real news and media outlets were still willing and able to pay for serious investigative journalism, but they aren’t, which is why we need nonprofits like Pro Publica to support it instead.

Amid these grim developments, Rubel sees a big silver lining for public relations, because struggling media outlets are desperate for other revenue, and that’s created an opportunity for companies like Edelman to place “sponsored content” on their websites. Meantime, companies are more comfortable than ever creating their own content, because most have been doing it already, aiming for the content-rich, frequently updated websites that Google’s ranking algorithms favor.

That’s where we come in, those of us who make our livings writing—if we’re willing to be content providers as well as journalists. There’s an immense hunger for fresh material to be posted on traditional media sites, corporate sites, and hybrids of both. If you’re already full up with work or committed to never writing anything but purely journalistic stories, that may not much matter to you. But if you’re looking for ways to create easy revenue and gain regular clients, then the Web’s endless appetite for content is definitely a good thing.

Rubel stressed in his talk that effective custom content must be high quality and journalistic. This is one way custom content can offer an advantage over some of the low-rent Web-writing opportunities out there. Content mills may offer laughably low payments for laughably bad articles and have little to lose if what they publish is poorly researched or written. A company trying to build up its brand, however, will think twice about putting its name on pieces like those. It’s the brand-conscious companies that are more likely to hire professional writers and offer pay professionals will accept.

How do you get into the custom content market? One place to start is ASJA’s Content Connections conference taking place November 7 and 8 at Columbia College in Chicago. We’re bringing writers together with experts in content creation and also hosting an event called Client Connections. It’s similar to Personal Pitch (meetings with agents) that is a regular feature of our annual conference in April, with two big differences: the short meetings are with content buyers who may represent corporations, advertising, or PR agencies. And it’s open to all writers, not just ASJA members.

I, myself, have included sponsored or custom content in the mix of how I make my living for the past dozen years. Most (but not all) of the time, the material I write for these corporate clients is highly similar to what I’d be writing as a journalist. It’s always some of the easiest and best-paid work I do and usually provides regular income. And in the uncertain world of a freelance writer, regular, steady, easy, well-paid work is a very nice thing.

Minda Zetlin is president of ASJA, a columnist for the Inc. magazine website and author of several books, including The Geek Gap: Why Business and Technology Professionals Don’t Understand Each Other and Why They Need Each Other to Survive (Prometheus Books, 2006), co-authored with her husband, Bill Pfleging. Connect with her on twitter at @MindaZetlin.

This article original appeared in the November 2013 issue of the ASJA magazine, and online here.

Capturing Another's Voice

by Gwen Moran

When it comes to ghostwriting, one of the most challenging aspects of writing the manuscript is capturing another author’s voice. Writers typically have a cadence and style to their work that reflects certain word, construction, and other preferences. Sometimes those can be easily recognized. Developing a strong, recognizable voice is a work-in-progress for many writers. 


Ghostwriters, on the other hand, seek to be invisible. Our job is to capture and present the voice of the author. We are successful when someone says, “That sounds just like me!” And while that almost never happens in the first draft, there is a process I’ve found very effective when aiming to sound less like Gwen and more like the individual whose book I’m ghosting.


Listen. The way the individual speaks and tells his or her story, whether it’s a memoir or a nonfiction service book, tells you what’s most important. When you discuss the content, what are the areas that the author tells with enthusiasm and detail? What does he or she address more casually? These are important clues to what the author thinks matters. It may be your job to challenge that and get beneath the surface to richer material, but those initial conversations can give you strong insight into the author’s mindset.

Read. If the author has written other material, read it. Memoranda, email messages, newsletter articles, speeches, presentations—it doesn’t matter. Get a good collection of the author’s own written words. Of course, not everyone is a professional writer, and it’s your job to make the work sparkle. But notice the author’s style. Does she favor long, conversational sentences? Is he funny? Does she use numbers or bullet points to break up her correspondence? Are there style clues that you can incorporate into the writing you’ll do on this person’s behalf?

Record. A digital recorder is a ghostwriter’s best friend. I record my sessions with authors and note key sections of the audio file. I listen to the audio file while reviewing the transcription. This helps me relate the words on the page to the author’s voice, so when I’m writing, I can hear in my head the way my author turns a phrase. I’ll ask the author to present the material as if he or she was pitching a client or explaining something to a friend. In those familiar monologues, I look for well-worn terms and favored anecdotes. Words prefaced by “I always say…” or “I usually tell people…” are gold to be woven into the copy, bringing the author’s voice to life.


Revise. In most of my ghostwriting relationships, I manage expectations upfront: It’s very rare that I will nail the author’s voice on the first round. That’s where revisions come in. When we discuss the work, I record those conversations. Often, the author does much of the voice transformation as we talk about changes and additions. When she looks at a passage and tells me, “I like that, but I would say it another way,” the next words give me the infusion of her voice that makes the work uniquely hers. When he shares an additional fact or two he forgot in the first discussion, suddenly I have his voice to insert into the copy. And I know I have done my job well when the client says, “You made me sound like me—only better!”


Gwen Moran is a Jersey Shore–based freelance writer and ghostwriter specializing in business and finance topics. She has collaborated on more than 20 books and ebooks, and is the founder of Biziversity.com, an online information resource for small businesses.

This piece originally appeared on ASJA's The Word.

Tips to Die for. . . from Our "Killer Book Proposal" Workshop

In today’s competitive publishing world, you not only have to be a fantastic writer, you also have to learn to think like a marketing and PR executive. That was the key takeaway from the workshop we presented last week in conjunction with ASJA: “How to Write a Killer Book Proposal… For a Dead Tough Market.” Leading the conversation were veteran literary agent Marilyn Allen, bestselling author and freelance editor Bev West, and Gotham President Dan Gerstein.

Marilyn and Bev both agreed that the book market isn’t dead, but it is in a state of flux. Although it seems like advances are shrinking, editors are getting laid off by the score, and acquisitions are stalling all around, the truth is, if you know how to properly navigate the new publishing climate, there are more opportunities than ever to get your voice heard and back up your book ideas with solid market research that commands top dollar. The best news? Marilyn reported that last fall and spring she sold more books than ever.

So how do make sure your proposal gets to the top of the pile? Here are some tips from our panelists.

Before you type your first line…
Do your research and gather the data that you need to prove your market. Bev emphasized that one of the most important decisions to make before you ever set pen to paper is to clarify your brand message and define your target audience. Who are you writing for? What is the central message you’re trying to convey, and why will it appeal to your target audience? What’s already selling in your space, and what’s fresh about your project that those books don’t offer? Marilyn suggested reading the reviews of competitive titles to see if there are needs that aren’t being met. If you want to write a book about honey and you learn that readers of the bestselling honey books complained that they all lacked recipes, that’s your cue to write a book that includes honey recipes.

Be the whole package: “hook, book, and cook”
Marilyn said that when she’s considering taking on a project or client, she’s not just looking at the quality of the writing, she’s looking at the whole package. The hook: Why is this book about trees different than all the hundreds of other books about trees? The book: What is in this book that we a haven’t read before? The cook: What makes you the right person to write this book? Bev and Marilyn both agreed that building a platform that illustrates your unique expertise and your connections with your target audience is more important than ever in today’s market.

Get to know social media make the internet your BFF
We’re living in an internet-driven world. If you don’t have a social media presence, you might as well forget about getting a nonfiction project published. Bev said that agents and publishers look for a platform first. Before they even read a proposal, they check out your blog, your social media following, and how large your online footprint is. Marilyn suggested approaching your target community as if you’re networking at a cocktail party. Start by posting your content—and make sure you have something to say—and then mingle with your audience. Don’t neglect SEO when tagging blog posts—you want your audience to be able to find you. And remember: the internet is dynamic, not static, so you need to update your content and engage your audience regularly. Marilyn described how she found one of her latest projects, a book about Pinterest, by seeking out the “expert” who was blogging about it the most and the loudest. This level of audience engagement is very labor-intensive and can seem overwhelming. Dan suggested that one way to save time and energy is to tap into the glut of under-employed twenty-somethings and outsource the job of generating content to them.

Finally, here are ten tips for a pitch that packs a punch:
1. Start with a bang. Jump right in and keep them wanting more.
2. Provide a market overview with strong ad copy. Make it smart, funny, and relevant.
3. Describe your target audience: What are they like, what are they looking for, how are you connected to them already, and what’s your plan to engage them further?
4. Show that you already have a platform and access to your audience.
5. Sell yourself as part of your book package.
6. Do your competitive title analysis right. Don’t ever compare your project to Eat Pray Love or Marley and Me—name-dropping bestsellers is a sure sign of an amateur. Choose perennial favorites and align yourself with books that have staying power.
7. Make sure your chapter outline demonstrates the shape and arc of your book. Include sound bites and emphasize the hook.
8. Make sure your sample chapter(s) show off your voice and give a sense of what differentiates your content from the rest.
9. Be succinct and efficient: engage, educate, and entertain. Have empathy for the person who’ll be reading your proposal, and remember that yours isn’t the only proposal in the world.
10. Be professional. Make absolutely sure your proposal is proofread and typo-free. Avoid unnecessary bells, whistles, and nontraditional formatting.

***

The whole workshop is available as a streaming webcast over on the ASJA portal site. Check it out!

Our Next Free Workshop: May 31

In conjunction with ASJA, Gotham is proud to present our latest free workshop for writers: How to Create a Killer Book Proposal . . . For a Dead Tough Market

If you’ve tried selling a nonfiction book to a publisher lately, you’ve probably read the same writing on the wall we have—it’s a bear out there. Submissions are booming, but deals are shrinking and advances are shriveling. Editors and agents are focused if not fixated on projects that come with a built-in platform, today’s magic password for publishing. For those of us not named Oprah or Madonna, that means there is more pressure than ever to offer an indelible proposal. One that gets your story or idea to stand out, break through, and ultimately tickle a buyer’s sales bone.

To help make this challenge a little less daunting and a little more digestible, we have pulled together another panel of industry experts to walk you through the key elements of crafting a killer proposal to maximize your book’s chances of selling. We will cover a number of tips and tricks to keep your or your client’s project from going directly into the slush pile and instead keep your reader riveted to the pitch, including: 1) how to position your book in the marketplace; 2) how to identify your target audience; 3) how to create a brand message; and 4) how to create a powerful marketing statement.


Leading the discussion will be:

Marilyn Allen
Founder of the Allen O’Shea Literary Agency and author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Book Proposals & Query Letters

Beverly West
Author of the bestselling Cinematherapy series and President of Kitchen Table Media, which specializes in branding experts to succeed in the publishing marketplace

Dan Gerstein
President of Gotham Ghostwriters

WHEN
Thursday, May 31st
6–7:30 p.m.

WHERE
ASJA’s Office, Times Square
1501 Broadway, Suite 403


please register at

www.asja.org/calendar