See Jane. See Jane write. See Jane turn an average freelance writing career into a full-blown entertainment journalism enterprise.
Jane is Jane Boursaw, and she’s the creative force behind a package of entertainment industry writing ventures that includes weekly and monthly syndicated columns, blogs and her Website, Reel Life with Jane. She’s such a hit, this week Mediabistro.com ran a profile of Boursaw*, calling her a “blogging blockbuster.” (*You need to be a Mediabistro AvantGuild member to read the entire profile.)
One thing novice freelancers hear a lot is how important it is to find a niche or establish a beat. Boursaw is an excellent example of someone who’s done that – and then some.
Five years ago, Boursaw had a typical freelance career writing stories on a piecemeal basis. According to the Mediabistro Q&A written by E. B. Boyd, Boursaw had an “aha” moment and decided to focus her writing efforts on her life-long passion for movies and TV. She started writing family-friendly movie reviews and slowly built up a stable of publications that bought them on a weekly or monthly basis. Today, Boursaw’s reviews are syndicated in more than 300 publications nationwide. She also maintains five blogs, including Film Gecko, which she writes for B5 Media, a Toronto new media network that operates more than 325 paid blogs.
If that’s not enough, Boursaw writes celebrity profiles for in-flights and other magazines, including a recent profile of Hayden Panettiere for Latitudes.
Boursaw’s secrets: she works hard, markets constantly, has a professionally designed Website that she updates constantly. She’s a regular on a variety of freelance writer message boards, including Freelance Success. And she lives about as far away from Hollywood as you can get, in Traverse City, Michigan, with her husband and two kids.
Bravo Jane!
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Holy Cow! I’m a celebrity! Thanks for all the kind words, Michelle. So maybe all my nights of working til 3 a.m. are finally paying off?!
It’s so touching and meaningful to have writer-pals like you who “get” what this business is all about. More power to us!
Jane:
You’re very welcome. And now we know your true secret: you never sleep!
I’d be interested in hearing more about the professionals whose services you use to keep your business going. In addition to a Website designer, do you use a bookkeeper to help keep track invoices and payments from all your syndicate customers, or an attorney to look over contracts?
Michelle R.
Michelle – I would LOVE to hire a bookkeeper, and think that’s definitely somewhere down the line. At the moment, I do all the invoicing and keep track of everything in QuickBooks, which does a good job, but is also very time-consuming. I need to hire it out!
Regarding contracts, most of the regional parenting publications don’t have contracts, and I’ve never had a problem with anything along those lines. That would definitely be overwhelming keeping track of both invoices and contracts. With the larger pubs, I just review contracts myself and have been able to keep up with it.
But I will say that hiring a professional web designer was the best thing I’ve done to further my career in recent years. Her name is Reese Spykerman, DesignbyReese.com, style@designbyreese.com. You can see her work here: http://www.reellifewithjane.com
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