When it comes to the media business, the world is flat – and I don’t mean the screens replacing print for reading everything from newspapers to books, though that’s happening too.

I’m talking about flat in the sense that with so many newspaper and magazine staff jobs going by the wayside, publications don’t have as many middle managers or mid-level editors as there used to be. As a result, many publications are farming work out to independent contractors, editors and writers.

With so much in flux, at any given time the hierarchy of who’s working for whom could change, and the editor you wrote for yesterday maybe the writer you edit tomorrow.

It’s happened to me in the past couple months, as I’ve taken on a new editing project. I’ve found myself assigning stories to not one, not two but three freelance writer/editors who at one time or another I’ve written for while they were either staff or freelance editors. Another writer I’m working with is also a freelance editor who may eventually throw some assignments my way.

If it’s happening to me, it’s got to be happening to other writers too.

So how do you act when your boss today may be the person reporting to you tomorrow?

1. Quit thinking of writer-editor relationships as ‘us v. them.’ Constantly pitting yourself against editors because of perceived bad treatment – lousy contract language, unreasonable deadlines, crummy editing or late payments -  makes you a victim. If you’re not happy about aspects of a writing opportunity you have the power to make a choice: negotiate new terms, walk away, or accept the fact that the terms are lousy but you’re taking the assignment anyway. Yes, sometimes the editor you’re dealing with is disorganized, mean or incompetent. But in many situations, problems you encounter may be beyond their control. If you run into trouble the best thing to do is talk, via email or better yet, by phone.

2. Approach the editor-writer relationship as one of equals. One’s not better than the other, just responsible for different things. Editors translate ideas into stories suitable for their audience, sit through a lot of meetings, buffer writers from demands – reasonable or otherwise – of editors and other publication staff higher up the food chain and prep articles for prime time. Writers are editors’ eyes and ears on the front lines, keeping tabs on what’s happening out in the world to come up with interesting, relevant stories. If you think of what editors and writers do as being different parts of the same enterprise, you’ll have more appreciation for what the other does, and it’ll show in your working relationships.

3. If you’re a writer, think like an editor. Editors keep track of multiple details for multiple projects for multiple issues simultaneously. Some go so far as to use Excel spreadsheets or project management apps to keep things straight. If you’re a writer, you can help them and yourself by thinking like an editor. Don’t turn in stories until you’ve gone over them with the eyes of a copyeditor. If you’re responsible for turning in elements that run with the story such as headlines, decks, inks, file art, sidebars, subheads, etc., send everything with your original draft – along with your invoice – instead of waiting for an editor to remind you. If you have aspirations to work as an editor, being organized about those types of details is good practice, gets you noticed, and it could pay off if you ever want to ask for a recommendation.

4. If you’re an editor, think like a writer. As an editor, if you say yes to a query, talk through what your expectations are of the writer and for the story at the very beginning so everyone’s expectations are the same. Because of their status, editors often have access to people and information writers might not. Sharing that information with a writer could help them with a story they’re working on, which helps you in the long run.

5. Be considerate in all your business relationships. I write a lot about workplace issues and in the last couple months have done a few pieces of employee rewards and recognition programs. My take away – you don’t have to give people money or stuff to make them feel good about doing their job, or about working with you. A small amount of courtesy goes a long way – an email to say thanks for an assignment, or a Twitter status update on how awesome someone is to work with. When the holidays roll around, you don’t necessarily need to send gifts to editors you work for – though last Christmas I did send something small to editors I’d worked with over the year.

Do you work as an editor and writer? What advice do you have for getting along in a flatter media world?

Stop what you’re doing and listen.

Do you hear it?

That quiet noise in the background?

It’s almost imperceptible, but it’s there. That little buzz.

It’s the sound of innovation.

Everywhere I turn these days, I’m running into writers quietly working on projects. In their home offices. At the coffee shop with their laptops. In the group that’s huddled at the back of the regional journalism conference.

If I had to pick an indicator of whether or not the media business is bouncing back, this would be it. I’m not talking about newspapers and magazines going back to their glory days. That’s not going to happen. But something is happening. My evidence:

• A former wire service colleague is researching a website project for a consumer-oriented organization.
• Another colleague just pitched a blogging-related start up to a tech venture group in her area.
• Here in Portland journalists and ex-journalists are involved in at least two efforts to form non-profit news organizations.
• A similar effort is in the works in Colorado.
• Another Portland journalist is working on a web-based news aggregator.
• A few other Portland journalists are involved in so many different projects I can’t keep track, including one who dropped out of college because he had too many things going on.
• Several writers on a message board I frequent are investigating opportunities to create mobile apps, either with established publishers or on their own.
• Another freelancer I’m familiar with recently tweeted that she had a great idea for a mobile app, if only she could find the money to build it.

Writers are taking fate into their own hands because face, it, those newsroom jobs aren’t coming back any time soon. There’s something about a rough economy that brings the entrepreneur out in people in every field, and writers are no exception.

Because they’ve already figured out how to work for themselves, freelancers may have a leg up on newly displaced journalists when it comes to doing their own thing. Either way, there’s only so much rejection you can take from editors whose freelance budgets have been cut back to nothing before you start figuring out other ways to make a living.

I’m about to embark on a project of my own. It’s a start up of sorts, though it’s not my start up. But it is something new for me. When the time’s right I’ll be able to share more. For now, all I can say is it’s exciting to be doing something new.

What about you – got a project up your sleeve? If you could embark on something new right now, what would it be?

If you’re getting into freelancing these days, one option is writing for content aggregator sites like Helium, About.com, Associated Content or HubPages. These companies pay writers to create massive amounts of content to help the sites rise up to the top of Web searches and make more money on click throughs.

But for freelancers, there’s a huge debate happening over the merits of writing for a content aggregator to advance your career, a debate that last week spilled onto the pages of this blog. First long-time freelancer Tim Beyers examined the reasons why a writer shouldn’t bother with content aggregators. Then Helium’s new writer outreach manager Barbara Whitlock countered with her own detailed explanation of  why freelancers would want to write for a content aggregator, Helium in particular.

I say if you’re a writer looking for experience, there’s a better way.

Instead of writing for an aggregator, find out what hyperlocal news sites have popped up in your area, introduce yourself and ask if there’s anything you can do to help.

In case you’re not familiar with them, hyperlocal news sites are blogs that focus on what’s happening in a specific area, be it a neighborhood, town or city. You might also know them as community news blogs or citizen journalist sites. Some examples: NewzJunky in Watertown, New York; Hop Town in Hopkinsville, Massachusetts, and NeighborsGo.com in Dallas.

If you work for a hyperlocal news organization you’ll probably start out making about as much as you would at a content aggregator – which is to say not much. But if you really are just starting out, you could use the opportunity to go out and do some man-on-the-street reporting,  and pick up other valuable experience.

If you don’t think there are hyperlocal or citizen journalists operating in your city you’re wrong, you just haven’t looked hard enough. Here in Portland, there are at least four, including Neighborhood Notes and OurPDX, more if you count sites that focus on niches like tech, books or cycling.

If there really aren’t hyperlocal sites where you live, start one. By teaching yourself everything you need to know to run a hyperlocal or community news site, you’re teaching yourself everything you need to know in 2009 and going into the future to get hired as a staff writer or make it as a freelancer, things like using a content management system (a fancy term for blogging or blog-like software), HTML, linking, how to write for a blog, how to write straight news, how to take pictures, video and audio, etc.

When it comes down to it, as long as you’re going to the time and trouble of learning the craft, why give the fruits of your labors to another business when you could maximize the benefit and profit for the enterprise that matters most – you.

Yesterday, long-time freelancers Tim Beyers wrote a guest post here explaining why freelancers shouldn’t write for content aggregators, and he singled out Helium as an example.

His post prompted Barbara Whitlock, Helium’s new member outreach manager, to reply. Instead of burying what Whitlock had to say in the comments under Beyers’ post (where you can still find them), I thought I’d keep the debate going by posting them here.

Freelancers considering user-generated content sites like Helium often begin with a healthy skepticism. Those who have earned well previously, as full-time freelancers or journalists, sometimes come with some added baggage: frustration at watching their livelihood shrink and anxiety about what the future will hold for their craft.

Some approach new opportunities on the Internet like Luddites of old, and want to bash against everything they see. Others are more open to adapt to new technologies, and try to hone their craft to new approaches. Economic necessity and a love of writing drive most to take a peek or try out sites like Helium. Many are thriving in this new world of freelance writing.

What’s to be gained and what is at risk in joining sites like Helium.com?

Gains:

• Unlimited opportunities to write on topics which interest you.
• Added revenue streams for writing income.
• Wider exposure and name recognition on the web. Helium has a Google page rank of 7, which means you can use Helium to get your name out there and link to your blog or other writing venues.
• Recognition for your professional credentials, which lifts you above the anonymity of the web.
• Opportunities to connect to gig opportunities for 100s of magazine, website and – increasingly – newspaper publishers.
• Contests, journalism prizes and other seasonal opportunities.
• A supportive writing community, with structures and a unique online culture that make Helium’s expansive writing community personal too.

Risks:

• Non-exclusive articles remain on Helium. You are free to republish on other non-exclusive sites, but you cannot delete or try to use those as exclusive for another publisher.
• Exclusive articles in Marketplace are often ghost-written, and do not usually provide you with clips, just money.
• Addiction – most Helium members have a lot of fun writing with abandon, editing and supporting other writers.

Tim Beyers made some thoughtful comments, through the lens of the traditional publishing world. He got one major point wrong: Helium has paid out over $1 million to writers thus far. Here’s some added information to address his other points:

1. Tim suggested Helium lacks editor support. In fact, Helium has a fleet of editors who help writers. These editors review every newly posted article (this is relatively new). We also have subject matter experts overseeing content areas who have a high sense of ownership over the content there. Finally, we have an open email system where any writer can provide editorial suggestions to writers. Someone sent me one yesterday letting me know that I had a typo and needed to improve the look of my links. Those looking for one-to-one editorial help can write to mentor@helium.com. Many layers of editorial support are available. Some members who dip in but do not participate more expansively at Helium may not know of all these layers of editorial support.

2. Tim mentions a lack of incentive to improve Helium articles once published. However, incentive to improve is built into the competitive model. Leapfrog revisions are not limited, and what encourages writers to improve varies. Many want to improve their rank placement in title groups, and increase writing stars for higher upfront earnings per article. Many learn more tricks of the trade for web writing, and turn back to improve their leads, add more SEO value to their article, add metacontent subheaders, etc. Others just enjoy improving their work.

3. Tim adds concern about writer clips. All the non-exclusive articles writers publish on Helium become part of their visible portfolio, and can be used as clips. If you are selected by a newspaper partner for print publication, these are regular print clips (full byline credit). Our newspapers often provide pdf version in addition to news clips you can cut out yourself from the Sunday editions. With exclusive Marketplace content, it is not guaranteed that you’ll be able to use clips, but sometimes you can find them through search queries.

From a traditional freelance perspective skepticism about writer’s sites like Helium makes sense. But in a world of shrinking traditional freelance gigs, most writers have found they need to grab all the opportunities they can, and through that aggregate they can keep up with their income needs.

Helium isn’t a substitute for a full-time job, but it can be combined with other freelance gigs to provide additional revenue. Plus, the freedom to also write what you want is appealing for many. Often writers want to demonstrate their expertise in an area, and writing a body of articles helps give weight to that.

Lots of options, but realize Helium has additive value for writers who freelance full-time. It’s one revenue stream that can help — and it’s fun.

I’d welcome further discussion on this if anyone is interested: bwhitlock@helium.com.

At 21, Steven Walling has accomplished what some writers twice his age are still trying to figure out: how to make a living as a digital freelancer.

Despite his youth, Walling took a very old fashioned path to get where he is today. Fresh out of high school, he took whatever paid writing work he could get, then followed his bliss and became so good at what he really loved doing someone paid him to do it.

In Walling’s case, that passion was wikis, the communally edited online encyclopedias. He started contributing to Wikipedia, the mother of all wikis, as a volunteer and became so proficient he turned pro upon landing a steady freelance gig with AboutUs.org, a Portland, Oregon, outfit that aims to create an editable, curated guide to the Web.

In the course of creating a career path, Walling has become a mainstay in Portland’s burgeoning tech scene, a funky brew of computer geeks and creative types, many digital natives like Walling with no technophobias to overcome to feel comfortable working entirely online. Walling helped start started Wiki Wednesday, a monthly user group meeting for wiki enthusiasts, and helps out with WikiProject Oregon and other local wiki groups.

Here’s what he has to say about his career, wikis and what digital natives can teach older freelancers looking to transform their own writing businesses.

What’s your background as a writer?
Most of my experience and training was in creative writing, poetry, short stories, it wasn’t journalistic writing. I was doing traditional freelance performing arts criticism: film, dance, literary, a little bit of food writing. I grew up in Vancouver, (Wash.) and early on freelanced for publications there, then moved across the river to Portland and did theater and film criticism for Willamette Week and a few others publications. I went straight from high school to writing.

You didn’t go to college. How did you get your first assignments?
My brother is also a writer and he was writing for a now defunct alt-weekly in Vancouver. He knew the editor needed freelancers and I had extensive theater knowledge and could write. It was start up and they didn’t want to use Portland writers. I became a regular writer for them. Then I moved into the normal world of pitching editors and writing queries.

How did you get involved with wikis?
A teacher introduced me to Wikipedia in an AP History class. I sort of worked with it as a consumer. Then I saw the ‘Edit’ button and felt the compulsion to do things like add citations. I’ve always been passionate about encyclopedic subjects like history. I’ll read The Omnivore’s Dilemma and become interested in food.

How did you pick what you wanted to write about?
Whatever I wanted, that’s the beauty of Wikipedia. It’s very ad hoc.

Isn’t there already a lot of material?
It depends on the subject. On a Columbia River article, there was material there already, but after having become a wikipedian, I could tell there were gaps in the coverage and it needed citations. There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit: on certain topics, articles don’t exist or only have a few sentences that would be easy to improve. Or you care about a subject and you tackle it and build up the quality.

Did anyone check your work?
It’s a constant system of live peer review. Every change on a project is logged in several places. So if you make an edit, the old version and current version are saved in a history you can access easily from that page.  There’s also what’s called recent changes stream, where every edit on the site gets logged into a long stream. Wikipedia is a pretty diverse place, it’s not just people interested in writing encyclopedia articles, but mundane tasks like checking for vandalism and checking the stream.

How did your volunteer work lead to paid gigs?
I met AboutUs.org at Wiki Wednesdays. I had no intention of pitching them for a job, I was happy with my regular freelance work. But they had one writer on staff and he was desperate to get someone else in to help. As Wikipedia is to encyclopedia articles, AboutUs wants to be to domain names and websites. So for Google, you’d have editable wiki pages things about Google’s domain, contact info, a summary of what the website is, a tag system to describe it. If you’re familiar with Whois, AboutUs aims to create a what is, a basic, user editable layer that tells you who a website is and what they’re related to. AboutUs is based in Portland and has been around for about 3 years. I joined in December 2007. I was and still am a contract employee, but spending the bulk of my work time writing for them. I have other freelance gigs, but they’re strategic consulting projects that grew out of my wiki work.

What kind of writing do you do?
If you search AboutUs for a website and it doesn’t exist in our system, the system automatically creates a page that becomes an editable wiki page. We have about 14 million pages in our database but only several hundred thousand have been actively edited by people. That’s growing 2,000 or 3,000 every day, minimum. If someone’s interested in having a richer AboutUs page but doesn’t want to learn the wiki technology, they can pay us to write the article and have it featured on the front page of our site one time, which is an SEO benefit. So I write articles about businesses. The articles are a middle ground between a Wikipedia entry and a press release. I also have other more technical duties, patrolling changes and that sort of thing. And I write posts for the company’s blog.

Where do you work?
Anywhere I happen to be, but I mainly work from AboutUs because it’s a pleasant office and even though I’m a contract writer I do a lot of work for them. We have about 30 to 35 full- or part-time employees and probably a half dozen freelancers.

How much do freelancers make for wiki work?
I can’t talk about the exact dollar amount.** AboutUs is different in the sense that we don’t act like a marketplace for freelancers. We don’t take pitches. We tell writers to write rich detailed content that makes the customers happy. They email back and forth with the customer to see if the article meets their needs. SEO is one of those needs but not the only one. We don’t penalize articles based solely on lack of keyword density. **(NOTE: AboutUs pays freelancers per article and not based on traffic; although Walling wouldn’t publicly discuss rates, my take based on his off-the-record comments is that their rates are somewhat to significantly higher than those paid by sites such as Associated Content or Helium. – MVR)

What kind of wiki consulting work do you do?
I work with businesses that have set up a wiki for their internal use and then realize wiki software isn’t just a new technology, it’s a new way of working and that challenges the norms of corporate life and the way people work together. People see the benefit to how it changes work flow – you don’t have to email documents all the time – but it can be slightly jarring. So businesses come to me to learn how to do it better and create a comprehensive strategy for doing that.

What’s your take on Portland’s media business?
Portland has a really vibrant community of freelance designers and programmers and start ups. It’s become much more diverse and we’re deeply interested in cultivating community as a group. There have always been the writer-tech hybrids, but now more writers who wouldn’t be interested in that sort of thing have been pushed by economic reasons into dipping a toe into the tech world. A lot of them out of necessity are developing a digital literacy to move into the next phase of how they’ll work.

What advice do you have for those writers?
Don’t be scared by the technology. Being a digital native made it easier, but I had to hack at it and work and spend my hours doing the legwork like any other job. The deeper I get into this as a creative person, the more I discover what I thought was intimidating wasn’t that hard. HTML or wiki mark up can sound scary to a traditional freelancer. But if you give it a try and are open minded you’ll discover it’s not as intimidating as you thought it would be. Also, it’s easier to grasp a new way of freelancing or writing if you get support from the community. As a freelancer it comes naturally to plug away at something by yourself. But the thing that’s helped me is plugging into this vibrant community and finding mentors who’d taken these steps already. So maybe you’ll have to change the way you’re working, but you won’t be alone.

Here’s what I’m reading this week. First, from my fellow bloggers participating in the 2nd Annual WordCount Blogathon:

• Organization. It’s an art, really. – Tips for work and life from freelance writer Danielle Buffardi’s blog, Horrible Sanity.
• Partner with others – Nobody said writing had to be a solitary pursuit. Sometimes it helps to have partners on the journey. From Jackie Dishner’s blog, Bike with Jackie.
• Deciding whether to capitalize ‘how’ in a title – Grammar debates while co-authoring a grant introduced Zazou Marketing’s Heather Holliday to the APA Style Book.
• The ebook writing process – From Sara Lancaster’s No. 2 Pen blog.
• How to pick a gravatar – In case you don’t know what that is, it’s an image – photo, drawing, icon, etc. – that serves as your online persona and follows you from place to place or blog to blog online. Read Kate Reilly’s explanation of how to get one on her Polka Dot Suitcase blog.

Here’s what else I’m reading this week:

• How Kindle lets you steal this blog – TechCrunch explains an apparent flaw in a new blog publishing program for Amazon’s popular e-book reader.
• Red Room is soliciting writers – To join its online community, which includes free accounts and member pages, a newsletter, blogs and other goodies.
• 10 Twitter mythconceptions – From Technologizer’s Harry McCracken, starting with No. 1, Twitter is something utterly new (it’s not).
• Top 10 obscure Google search tricks – Cool things you never knew Google could do, care of LifeHacker’s Gina Trapani.

The week’s highlights from the freelance world and digital media business:

Standing up for writers – Today is the 2nd Annual Writers Worth Day. Lori Widmer, a Valley Forge, Pa., writer, dreamed up the campaign to help writers and other freelancers do a better job negotiating fees and standing up themselves. I’m down with that. As I’ve said here before, writing for free is not a business model.

Write On! Query contest – The southern California-based Write On! writers’ support group led by veteran freelancer Debra Eckerling is sponsoring a query contest with winners in screenplay, teleplay, fiction and non-fiction categories. First prize in each category is the opportunity to have a literary agent read your query, plus an iScript recording of the project and Save the Cat software.  Second and third prizes will be given in each category too. Entries are due by June 22 and winners will be announced July 7. Visit the website for more details.

Reporters go online, bloggers go to class – Membership in the Online News Association is up by a third this year as more old-school journalists retrain themselves in News 2.0, according to this Poynter Online report. Meanwhile, traditional journalism groups are changing their policies to allow bloggers and citizen journalists working in non-traditional media outlets to become members or take part in conventions and seminars.

Micropayments anyone? The Wall Street Journal will introduce a micropayment system this fall for individual articles and premium subscribes to its website, according to this Reuters piece. Good thing it’s the WSJ doing the experimenting. According to PaidContent.org, a new study on what news readers will pay for says beyond financial info, it ain’t much.

2009 Loeb Award finalists announced – UCLA Anderson School of Management’s Gerald Loeb Awards are awarded to the year’s best business news stories. Winners will be announced June 29. The bad economy, real estate industry meltdown and collapse of prestigious Wall Street firms figured heavily in this year’s competition.

Emailing in your blog posts – WordPress bloggers can now post new material to their blogs via email. The blogging software company rolled out a new feature this week that lets people post new material from an iPhone, Microsoft Outlook or anywhere else you can send email.

Twitter tools for journalists and writers:

• Tinker - This app claims to let you follow events people are talking about on Twitter or Facebook.
• 7 tips on using hash tags – From Erik Sherman’s WriterBiz blog.

The week’s highlights from the digital media business:

Imprisioned U.S. freelancer ends hunger strike – Roxana Saberi, the freelance broadcast convicted of spying in Iran ended a two-week hunger strike after Iranian authorities agreed to hold an appeal hearing for her next week. The Iranian-American freelance broadcast reporter was arrested in January and convicted of spying in a closed-door trial in April. Saberi’s supporters have created a website, Free Roxana Saberi.

Congress holds U.S. newspaper industry hearings – Plenty of big names held forth on the future of the news business at a May 6 Congresssional hearing. As could be expected, presenters’ POVs varied. HuffPost founder Arianna Huffington was the optimist, declaring, “Despite all the current hand wringing about the dire state of the newspaper industry – well-warranted hand wringing, I might add – we are actually in the midst of a Golden Age for news consumers.” Ex-newspaperman turned Hollywood writer (“The Wire”) David Simon was much more downbeat, saying “High-end journalism is dying in America and unless a new economic model is achieved it will not be reborn on the web or anywhere else.” Replay the entire Webcast here.

Is this what they had in mind? – The Chicago Tribune is working on a new Website called Chicago Now that could be a blueprint for the 21st century news ventures discussed at this week’s Congressional hearings. According to news reports, Chicago Now will combine elements of traditional news coverage with e-commerce, blogs, advertorials and social media. The new site is distinct from RedEye, the Tribune’s free daily paper for “young, urban professionals.” The Tribune and other Tribune publishing holdings filed for federal bankruptcy protection last December.

Other stories, items and websites of interest -

• 2009 Online News Association Awards categories – 14 categories, including four paying a total of $28,000 in cash prizes. Deadline for entries is June 30, 2009.
• The Center for Investigative Journalism is hiring reporters to staff a California investigative reporting initiative funded by $2.4 million in grants.
• The Boston Globe, Las Vegas Sun, ESPN.com and CNN.com each won two 2009 Editor & Publisher EPpy awards for outstanding news industry websites and blogs. See the full list here.
• Neighborlogs – a free service/website template for creating hyperlocal community news sites.
• 17 statistics for monitoring your blog – From ProBlogger.

Twitter tools -

• Tweetmeme – Like a Digg for Twitter, this service finds the hottest stories on the service based on the number of retweets.
• How to integrate Twitter into WordPress – A Web Designer Magazine tutorial that explains in 16 very code-y steps how to weave Twitter into a WordPress.com blog.
• Twitter Secrets – An entire blog dedicated to Twitter apps and tools.

Got Websites, news or tips about the digital media business to share? Send them to me: michellerafter (at) comcast (dot) net.

Leah Ingram takes a no nonsense approach to her freelance writing business. So it comes as no surprise that when the Pennsylvania writer got the contract for her latest book, “Suddenly Frugal: How to Live Happier & Healthier for Less,” she went straight to work. Eight weeks later, Ingram had the book written and delivered – while continuing her regular magazine writing and Suddenly Frugal blog and without neglecting her husband and kids. How’d she do it? Read on.

Briefly describe your background as a freelance writer.
I have been a full-time, freelance writer since 1993. However, I started querying magazines when I was still in high school (about 10 years earlier), and knew from a very young age that I wanted to be a writer. I got a degree in journalism from NYU, then a job working on staff as a magazine editor, and quickly realized that I’d be happier and likely more successful if I was working for myself as a freelancer. I haven’t looked back since going out on my own some 16 years ago. Since going freelance I’ve published 13 books – soon to be 14- and written for many regional, national and custom magazines.

How did your book deal come about?
My agent Adam Chromy of Artists and Artisans pulled for me and promoted the heck out of me, and I continued to feed my Suddenly Frugal blog so that I had the platform and chops to prove that I could turn a blog into a book.

What role did your blog play in getting a book deal?
It was the whole reason for the book deal. I’d proven to Adams Media, my publisher, that I had a sustainable topic to write about, the media chops to promote the book and a built-in audience who would want to read the book. I get about 15,000 unique visitors a month at the blog. Wish it were 15,000 a day but I’m working on that.

How much of a head start did the blog give you in researching and writing the book? What material did you reuse?
I started the blog in May 2007. I got my book deal in January 2009. I’ve written, on average, five posts a week for the past 18 months. That meant I had plenty of material to get started. However, I did not reuse much from the blog. If all I was doing was cutting and pasting blog posts into a book, where’s the incentive to buy the book when readers could get my content for free on the blog? I did revisit a lot of the same topics I’d covered on the blog in new and different ways. For example, most of my blog postings are 400 to 600 words long. But the chapters were about 4,000 words long. So I was able to expand on many topics and bring in new information I hadn’t suggested in blog posts. Probably the only items I reused verbatim were a couple of my Suddenly Frugal Seal of Approval award winners, which I’d highlighted in the blog first.

You had 8 weeks after your book proposal was approved to turn in a finished manuscript. That’s amazingly fast. How did you do it?
Discipline, plain and simple. Truth is I’ve written books in six weeks before. I am a very fast writer and hard worker. Right before I got the book deal, I decided to write a young-adult novel. My goal was to bang out a 50,000 words before the month of January was over. To do so, I had to write 1,667 words every day. I ended up with a 58,000-word novel by the end of January.
I applied a similar word-count rule to writing Suddenly Frugal. My book was due to the publisher April 1, and my goal was to finish it by March 15 so I would have plenty of time to proof and edit it. I made all of my goals, including handing the book in on April 1. I just got word that the manuscript was officially accepted. The cover is now up on my blog and I made it my Twitter avatar for the time being.

You continued working on magazine stories while you wrote the book. How did you juggle both?
I have a very regimented work schedule that I adhere to. Though I tend to procrastinate at times like many writers do, I’m actually more productive when I’m juggling multiple assignments. Since I only have five to six hours a day to work – I work when my children are at school – I carve out specific periods of time during my work day and assign different tasks to them. If I’m working on a magazine article or three, plus the book, I’ll assign 30 or 60 minute slots of time devoted to a specific project. When that time is up, I move on to the next task in the time slot. I don’t always finish entire projects in a day, but I’m always making progress. I’ve used this time-block system since I was in college and was juggling a full course load, an internship and a part-time job.

You’re married and have kids. How did you work on a book and freelance work without sacrificing family time – or did you?
Here’s where that regimented work schedule helps me out. Also, I exercise every morning, right after my kids leave for school, and that is my “me” time. I’m up at 6:30, have time in the morning with my husband and two daughters before they all leave at 7:30, then by 7:45 I’m out the door to walk the dog. We walk for an hour, then it’s home to shower, get dressed and be at my desk by 9:30 or 10 . And it’s right to work, with time, of course, in between to email, go on Twitter, work on my blog, etc. In fact, I make working on my blog part of my regimented work day. Though I don’t get paid to write my blog posts, they have become an important part of my work portfolio. So those posts have a priority standing on my to-do list just like paying gigs do.

What advice do you have for other freelancers who’d like to write a book?
These days you really have to develop a specialty that gives you a solid platform. Also, you have to promote yourself constantly and get the media to pick up on what you’re doing so you have those kinds of clips to show publishers that you’re media worthy. If you aren’t already subscribing to HARO that’s a must. It’s thanks to HARO that my family and I ended up as the lead story in a BusinessWeek cover piece on the New Frugality, and I’ve also been able to promote my unique sense of frugality on TV, in newspapers like the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Christian Science Monitor, and many other places as well. If you’re camera shy or don’t like being the subject of interviews, I’m not sure you can be a successful author.

Given how the economy’s changing traditional freelance markets, is this a good time to market book proposals and other types of work?
If you want to write a book and you don’t have a TV show, I don’t think that you can expect to get a big advance. My advance for Suddenly Frugal was the smallest I’d received for any of my 14 books but that’s OK – I’ve got a feeling that with this down economy, people are going to snap up a book on living more on less. I know publishers are buying fewer books these days so if you want your proposal to stand out, you’ve really got to find a topic that stands out. Originally, back in 2007, we were going to sell Suddenly Frugal with a green bent, because, you know, green is the new black. Although the mainstream media is just jumping on the green bandwagon now, back in 2007 publishers were telling my agent and me we’d totally missed the green gravy train. So we started back at square one, and then when the economy started to tank in mid-2008, we revamped the book proposal to be all frugal, all the time, and that worked for us.

Anything else you’d like to add?
I treat my freelance writing like a business. I know many other writers are amazed at my discipline and work structure. But if I were running any other kind of business that was perhaps more visible and not so virtual, I would be open for business and producing just as much as I am now with my words. I hate to be cliche but you know that old saying ‘Find something you love and you’ll never work another day in your life’? Well, I love what I do, and I can’t imagine doing anything else to earn a living – expect maybe hosting a TV show, I love being on camera. But the bottom line is this: I’ve worked my ass off to get where I am professionally. I do work every day, but that’s OK with me, because I truly love what I’m doing so sometimes it really doesn’t feel like work at all.

MIT Sloan Management Review just published this story about employees who  work well outside of the office and used the term “nanobots” to describe them:

There’s a new class of worker out there: Nearly Autonomous, Not in the Office, doing Business in their Own Time Staff. Or nanobots, for short. Empowered by their mobile devices and remote access to the corporate network, nanobots put in long hours, sometimes seven days a week—just not at their desks. Different from mobile workers, who usually stay in close contact with managers, nanobots thrive on their driven natures and on the personal freedom with which they are entrusted. Found at many levels of an organization, from sales managers to senior executives, they are self-starting high achievers who produce strong results with a minimum of supervision. Allowed to find their own equilibrium between work and private lives, they tend to put work first.

The story isn’t about freelancers but it could be. Although we’re independently employed, most of us fit the descriptions I highlighted.

The article raises a few interesting points:

As more enlightened companies come to appreciate the type of characteristics nanobots exhibit – self discipline, internal drive, etc. -  they’ll look for the same in the contractors they use – so freelancers should play these traits up when negotiating with editors or corporate clients.

When looking for new clients, freelancers should be on the lookout for companies that appreciate nanobots – if you have to pick between working with editor A or editor B or corporate client A or corporate client B, besides thinking about assignments, fees, etc., consider whether they “get” this.

Finally, the nanobot’s natural traits and type A work habits and tendency toward perfectionism could also explain why there are so many frustrating editor-freelancer experiences like the ones I read on the writers’ message boards I hang out on. IMHO, it’s a management thing, with editors being asked to manage a group of independent-minded workers and some, especially junior level associates, not having the right experience, temperament or training to do it.

Freelancers, editors, your thoughts?