These are edgy days for print journalism. An onslaught of cuts has shrunk news holes, slashed budgets, dismembered bureaus, curtailed ad revenue and whacked personnel with Sopranos-esque efficiency. Broadsheets have been trimmed to the point of irony. Swords of Damocles dangle from newsrooms’ ceiling tiles.
The industry’s problems notwithstanding, I believe there has never been a better time to be a writer for hire. I know what you’re thinking and, no, I wasn’t recently released from involuntary confinement. I’m the guy who disembarked the Titanic moments before it left port.
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In 2006, I departed the presumed safety of a staff editorial position with The Chronicle of Higher Education, the self-proclaimed Wall Street Journal of the egghead set. Suffice to say that we parted company on a timetable not of my choosing. Loath to take another newsroom job, I declined offers of full-time employment, shut my eyes and plunged into full-time freelance writing.
Go figure: Freelance economics can pay off
In 2007, my first full year of working at home alone, I grossed $95,000 — more than I had earned as a staff writer and editor. I eliminated annual commuting time equivalent to more than six 40-hour work weeks and saved money on dry cleaning costs, parking garage fees, automobile expenses and restaurant tabs. I took a two-week vacation in Italy, spent a week on a North Carolina beach and barely lifted my pen between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. I haven’t attended a mindless staff meeting in quite a while.
My leap of faith and its aftermath belie Hunter S. Thompson’s maxim that “writing is a hard dollar.” (Apropos of nothing, Thompson further noted that stringing together words for a living “is a lot better than reaching up inside a maddened cow and grabbing a breached calf by the legs.” Who knew?)
Moreover, I’ve succeeded without benefit of a Web site, business cards, query letters, blogs or LinkedFaceSpaceTwitter. My secret? Economics 101. I’ve found that market demand for editorial professionals outstrips supply — by a mile. If you write well and can meet deadlines, you can earn a good living working at home in your underwear. Meanwhile, my former employer continues to throw people overboard like so much human ballast. Sound familiar? In my experience, making it as an editorial mercenary is a four-step process — Step one: Recruit and retain a handful of good clients. Step two: Do great work. Step 3: Cash the checks. Step 4: Repeat steps two and three. In making the leap from newsroom to home office, I’ve picked up a few tricks and tips for smoothing the transition.
Are you well-suited to go freelance?
Ernest Hemingway, an accomplished freelancer in his own right, advised would-be writers to “develop a built-in bullshit detector.” Assuming you possess such an apparatus, use it to check your motives and assess your suitability for freelancing, preferably before you ditch the paid vacation and employer-matched 401(k). Are you comfortable with a certain amount of uncertainty? Can you function in the absence of cubicle-d colleagues? Are you adventurous? Can you distinguish a gerund from a gerbil? Can you identify and report on compelling stories? Do editors compliment you on your writing? Are you a multitasker? Self-motivated? Does the idea of being your own boss cause you to smile?
Be honest. If your answers are overwhelmingly affirmative, you may be suited for freelancing. If, however, you thrive on rigidity, demanding bosses and the consequences of not falling in line, the U.S. Marine Corps is looking for a few good men.
Don’t be afraid to take the plunge
Every few months I get a call from a friend, an accomplished and independent-minded staff writer who desperately wants to go solo. Immobilized by fear, however, he can’t pull the trigger. Like many of us, he has a hard-wired aversion to the unknown. (Consider that the most chilling aspect of horror movies — Jaws, Alien, Psycho –is often the unseen monster.)
Speaking of little monsters, the decision to become a freelancer — and following through on it — is akin to planning and starting a family. In both cases, putting it off until you’re ready means that it probably won’t happen — unless there’s a fortuitous accident. Overcoming inertia sometimes requires what might euphemistically be called the gift of desperation. If you’re among the legions of journalists who have lost or will lose a job, this is your chance to make a change.
Don’t let your ego get in the way
Lurking at the other end of the emotional spectrum is ego. If your definition of freelance success is contributing regularly to The New Yorker, you’ll be disappointed to learn that David Remnick isn’t awaiting your call. Nothing will cut short a freelance career more cleanly than a stubborn insistence on publishing in million-circulation mags or not at all. As in war, amateurs do it for the glory, mercenaries for the money. (Call me, David.)
Recruit a client base
How do you find clients? It’s the question most often asked of me by people mulling the freelance option. If you’ve been around for a while and haven’t recently awakened from an extended coma, you probably know a lot of people. Call them. Text them. Reconnect. Let them know what you’re up to.
As a newly liberated staff writer and neophyte freelancer, your job is to have lunch. Pastrami on rye has catalyzed more freelance writing assignments than all the resumes in Manhattan. If you’re enthusiastic about what you’re doing, people will want to help. For many nine-to-fivers, there is something alluring about the crazy, courageous colleague who works without a net. They might not have the stones to go it alone, but they want in on the action — if only vicariously.
Keep your clients, and keep them happy
Tapping your network is a start, not a destination. If you fail to transform first-time clients into loyal customers, your progress will falter. An old hand told me that it’s a lot easier to keep a customer than it is to get a new one. Neglect the care and feeding of clients, and you’ll go hungry.
The successful freelancer understands that customers want what they want, when they want it. Your job is to give it to them — on time, on topic and written to the agreed-upon length. (Getting a 2,000-word piece instead of the agreed-upon 1,500 isn’t likely to be viewed by most editors as a 500-word bonus.) Make your copy clean, accurate, compelling and well-reported. Try not to libel anyone.
How much quality should you give a client? More then they expect. A quick scan of any publication will reveal its quality benchmark. Having sized up the competition, make sure you’re better than the other guys. Do great work, yes, but don’t fall into the black hole of perfectionism. The law of diminishing returns will rob you blind. Besides, Oil and Gas doesn’t expect the same urbane wit demanded by, say, The New Yorker.
Work where the money is
A freelancer of another sort, Willie Sutton, when asked why he robbed banks, replied with unerring logic: “Because that’s where the money is.” Similarly, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, in the cinematic account of the Watergate investigation, were advised by uber-source Deep Throat to “Just… follow the money.”
Indeed, it pays to follow the money. As satisfying as it might be to write church bulletins or craft C.V.s for unemployed subprime mortgage lenders, those gigs don’t pay. Most of my freelance assignments have involved work in the areas of education, health and information technology, gazillion-dollar sectors all. I’d love to be a poet, but the pay for penning quatrains is too often comp copies of obscure literary journals.
Following the money can lead you to nonprofit institutions of all stripes, including colleges and universities that are among the wealthiest institutions around. Other destinations include companies, trade groups and membership associations whose internal and external publications frequently rely on freelance editorial professionals.
Cull the good customers from the bad
One of the great intangible benefits of being a solo practitioner is the gratitude of clients who rely on freelancers. And why shouldn’t they be grateful? They don’t pay benefits or provide office space, and they get access to a level of expertise that in many cases would be prohibitively expensive if paid for on a per annum basis. It’s a good deal all around.
Unfortunately, a small number of clients aren’t worth the trouble. They come in different varieties. Some refuse to acknowledge the line between freelance workers and employees, paying for the former and demanding the latter. There are slow payers and nonpayers and flat-out difficult clients. Fortunately, they are rare.
If you have a diversified base of clients, excising the occasional bad apple can be done with little or no financial harm. Not that it’s easy to break off a lucrative relationship: I dropped a client worth almost $20,000 annually because its lack of organization compromised the work I did for other customers. I second-guessed my decision more than once, but it was the right thing to do. If the customer is always right, fire him!
Know what to charge
When it comes to freelance remuneration, there is a tendency to get hung up on per-word rates. Granted, there are cases that justify obsessive attention to those numbers, such as speculation on the blogosphere that Portfolio paid Michael Lewis a saliva-inducing $12 per word. Moneyball, indeed.
For the rest of us, per-word rates are something of a red herring. (That last sentence would have netted Lewis either $156 or $168, depending on the definition of “per-word” as it applies to hyphenated terms.) What matters is how well you’re compensated for your time, the most nonrenewable of nonrenewable resources.
At $1 per word, a 1,000-word assignment that requires listening to a one-hour Web conference and writing for four hours is worth $200 per hour. A seemingly more lucrative $3-per-word assignment of the same length that requires two weeks of reporting, writing and editing is, at $37.50 per hour, a poorer deal. You learn these things the hard way. Early on, I was thrilled to get an $8,000 assignment to write a long magazine piece. Only later did I realize the extent to which overnight reporting trips to Syracuse, Chattanooga and Albuquerque had cut into my hourly compensation.
Of course, money isn’t everything. It makes sense sometimes to take an assignment that will serve a higher purpose, such as reaching a broader audience or a more sophisticated reader, someone like, I don’t know, David Remnick. (Call me.)
John Pulley is writing a guide for freelancers.
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