Oh, it's never too early to worry about taxes! It's always April 14 as far as freelancers are concerned. Jessica Ramirez at About Freelance Writing chats with tax specialist Julian Block:

If a person decides to file as a business, should they incorporate?

For most people, it's unnecessary to incorporate. If you're the type of business where there's a question of personal liability then by incorporating you shield your personal assets from lawsuits. That's the generally rule. From a tax standpoint, it's not going to do much [to incorporate].

More fun time here.

You never know what you can get just by asking. If you receive a contract, don't assumg you're supposed to shut up and not question it. Miss Snark doles out advice to a writer who has questions about his representation contract but is too afraid to ask.

I got the following email from reader Susan Kirkland, who needed to vent a little bit on the differences between Canadian and US fair use laws:

Your bit on fair use is an opportunity to highlight the irritating differences between US and Canadian law. Those Canadians are a PITA when it comes to fair use. Even though I am in the US, my Canadian publisher insisted I get a usage license from Bob Dylan to simply quote a stanza of lyrics at the beginning of my book--a stanza, mind you. US law says I can, no worries, as long as I'm not putting it to music; it falls under the fair use rule. But, Noooooooo (Steve Martin style, please) not in Canada. No reproduction in any way without a signed contract, music or not.

And it was a royal PITA, too, because apparently this is one of the few songs Bobbie holds the license to personally.

The same was true of a passage I quoted from Ms. Manners, where I credited the author, the publisher, even cited the page and edition. Noooooo, not in Canada.

I had to find Judith Martin's agent and get a written permission to abide with Canadian Fair Use Law. And something I couldn't use at all, which removed any summary from an entire chapter on cold calling for freelancers was a quote on Truman. My source, Bartleby's Quotation section, listed the source as probably from but unverifiable. WHY can't that be the source? Does that invalidate the entire quote? I don't think so . . . but Noooooooo, it does in CANADA.

tongue in cheek,
SDK

There are those of us who are too shy to submit taxi receipts to our editors, and those of us brazen enough to write off an entire as a business expense after talking about an assignment for approximately 10 seconds. Not sure which is correct? The helpful Joel Keller sent me the link to this article from Writers Digest on what travel writers should pay for and what should get reimbursed.

Victoria Groves is an instructor at mb who will be dropping some knowledge on fee negotiation in Boston in a few weeks. She's sharing some of her tips with you today, so if you want to learn more, sign up!

Whether you write on the side for a little extra cash,or write to put food on your table, you must:

1. Know what your writing is worth
2. Demand this from your editors
3. Ensure that the terms of your agreements are always
met in full

While most editors respect writers, some may try to lowball you, or haggle with you over your fee, and this is to be expected. But ultimately, they know that\ it is our content that brings readers back for more and puts money in their (and their advertisers)
pockets.

Typically, publications calculate their freelance payments in one of two ways:

- Per word. Rates can range from a cent a word to over $1.25 a word at some well-known publications. In almost all cases, this rate will be calculated after the editor (or copy editor) edits your article. So, if your rate is .10/word and you turn in a 1,000-word article, you may expect payment of $100. But if that article got edited down to 800 words for clarity, space, etc., you might only see a check for $80.

- Flat fee. A publication may decide that since all of their feature stories range between 1,200-1,500 words, that they will pay $650 (or in some cases, a range like $650-800) per feature story. If there is a range, you'll of course want to convince the editor that you deserve the higher end even though it's often reserved for writers who have already contributed multiple articles to the publication. We'll talk more about this kind of negotiation later in the course.

Remember, you should be negotiating no matter what. Always ask for more for two reasons:

1. You might get it

2. It will give you practice in negotiation

Even if you only increase your compensation by .02/word, for a 1,000 word story, that extra $20 could pay your Internet bill for a month.

Richard Frisbie in the Society for Midland Authors newsletter discusses what the SMA learned from a meeting wiht intellectual property specialist William T. McGrath: that courts are still struggling to make a distinction between fair use and copyright infringement. More on that here (scroll down).

No stranger to the hard sell, Secret Sales Guy still has morals enough to question a rep who trades on her looks to land a big sale:

When it comes down to it, I really enjoy my profession. I get up in the morning, shower, put on a collared shirt and crack open my Wall Street Journal, secure in the knowledge that I am doing my small part for the American economy. Even on a bad day, some commerce will be transacted. Big Media Company will make a few bucks, an electronics company will sell a few more devices, our beloved and faithful readers will have another issue to peruse at their desks, and I will make a few bucks myself. Happiness all around.

Media sales can be complicated, though. There are existing clients to stay on top of, new business to hustle up, agencies and PR firms that need attention, publishers to please, and salespeople and editors to manage. Every month, a million things have to come together seamlessly so a nice, profitable, ad-filled issue can hit the mail. Invariably, things get complicated between the publication of the month-by-month editorial calendar and the actual time the issue appears in readers' hands.

More here!

I don't write for free as much as I used to. I used to mostly because nobody was paying me to write. Now they do, so I don't give it away for free as much as I used to (except for my personal website.) When I do do it, often it's a favor for a friend, or a place that pays maybe in recognition but not in actual money. Some of you out there are probably writing more for free than for pay, and some of you are adamantly against nonpaying work. There's a little miin-debate about when it's a good idea and when not over here at Writers-World that might be of interest for those of you on the fence on the issue.

Nobody has written in lately recommending any tools or programs or systems that have been improving their freelancing/editing/writing lives, but I did find this recommendation for Scrivener from Apple Matters:

If you are a writer, there's no shortage of applications to help the creative juices flow from mind to pen to paper - or should I say, to keyboard to screen. Be you a novelist, script writer, journalist and so on, there is an application for you to help your writing process. One I've taken a shine to lately is Scrivener.

Some of Scrivener's features that stand out are:
- Full screen editing. This is not a new invention by any means, but Scrivener has it and has a very good implementation of it. When I'm writing, as an article grows I need to see as much of it on the screen as possible, especially when I'm editing. Scrivener presents a totally clean screen but does show a scroll bar if you move your mouse to the right edge of the screen, and an information if you move to the bottom of the screen. The colors for the full screen are customizable - I've changed mine to black text on an off-white background.

More here on what Chris Howard likes so much about Scrivener. In the meantime, if you have a recommendation for other readers--whether it's a new software or filing system or ergonomic keyboard, don't keep it to yourself!

Speaking of people new to the full-time freelancing life, Steve Pavlina has tips for those just starting out--espeically those of you considering dropping several hundred on a fancy office chair:

2. Spending too much money.

Until you have a steady cashflow coming in, don't spend your precious start-up cash unless it's absolutely necessary. I started my computer games business with about $20,000 cash (my own money), and it went fast; shortly thereafter I was using debt to finance the business. Unfortunately, the original business model didn't work, and it took five years before the business was generating a positive cashflow. I soon learned that every dollar invested in the business was another dollar that eventually had to be recouped from sales.

In 2004 I started this personal development business with only $9 cash even though I could have spent much more on it. No fancy logo, no snazzy web design, no business cards or stationary. I paid to register the domain name, and that was it. That's as much as I was willing to spend before I started generating a positive cashflow. All other business expenditures came out of that cashflow.

Your business should put cash into your pocket, so before you "invest" money into it, be clear on how you're going to pull that cash back out again.

Obviously some businesses require lots of cash to start, but in the age of the Internet business, you can very easily start a lucrative business for pocket change.

More here.