It’s one thing to read a laundry list of actions that freelance writers could take to keep their writing business afloat during the current weak economy, which has hit the publishing industry especially hard.

It’s another thing to read what people are actually doing. Here’s first-person advice from a handful of freelancers who answered a question I posed on LinkedIn asking what they’d recommend doing to beat the bad economy.

Utah freelance writer and editor Melissa Mayntz suggests using free resources whenever and wherever you can find them, including checking out the library for newspapers, magazines and book. She also advises conducting interviews by phone or email to avoid travel time and the cost of gas, and sending queries via email to save paper – something many if not all freelancers probably already do. Some of Mayntz’s suggestions are downright frugal: “Go outside the home to work,” she says. “Use the free Internet access, heat and other facilities at a library, college lounge or other space where you can work.”

If you love books and don’t want to stop buying them, Joy Matkowski, a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, copyeditor and proofreader, suggests selling old books online and making enough profit “to order all the books you crave.”

David Gargaro, a self-employed consulting editor in Toronto suggests reviewing your cell phone plan. “Discuss it with the customer service people to find a better plan based on your actual needs,” Gargaro says. “By switching to a new plan, I now save $20 per month, and I get the same service.”

Bill Bucy is using research and reporting skills learned from years spent as a reporter and editor to supplement his income working for a private investigation firm. On the pro side, you can do it from anywhere. On the con side, it’s often drudgery and “demands greater precision than required for 95 percent of honest journalism,” he says. “That’s because our clients (law firms) must rely on what we send them 100 percent and their clients (large corporations) have tens- or hundreds – of millions on the line.” On the other hand, it can be fun. “A multimillionaire was ducking me so I looked up his family members and started calling them, politely, but persistently,” Bucy says. “Eventually, he called me because his mother wanted me off her back.”

Linda Formichelli is dealing with the economy by spending more on her business, not less. Formichelli, a Boston freelance writer and book author who blogs at The Renegade Writer, recently started paying a service to transcribe her phone interviews. “I paid $350 last month, but I also used the saved time to write a query that brought in more than $2,000,” Formichelli says. And she hasn’t foregone her daily mocha at Borders. “Not to say I waste money, but I consider frivolities like transcribing services and coffee to be essential to helping me work better and make more money,” she says. To add to her income, Formichelli recently started a phone mentoring service for writers.

You can read a complete transcript of the Q&A here.

What are some of the more creative things you’re doing to maintain or build your writing business in the face of the weak economy?

The publishing industry is in tumult. Publications are trying to do more with less – less advertising revenue, editorial staff and readers. Throw worries about a recession into the mix, and it means trouble for freelance writers who depend on magazines, newspapers and customer publishers for their livelihoods. Or does it?

Not necessarily. Hard times don’t have to be bad times, at least not for freelancers who have a plan for marketing themselves during a shaky economy. That’s the view of Keven Malkewitz, a marketing expert and assistant business professor at Oregon State University in Corvallis. Malkewitz earned his marketing chops as a brand manager and business unit manager at Adidas, before getting a doctorate and helping consumer and technology companies with their marketing programs.

I asked Malkewitz recently what independent contractors such as freelance writers can do to keep clients and paychecks rolling in during a bad economy. Here’s what he said:

If times are tough, should freelancers hang onto current clients or go after new work?

During bad times, companies hunker down, they put stuff on hold and they don’t do new projects. In that case, you’ve got to work with the hand you have, so work on building stronger relationships with existing clients.

What could freelancers do to make themselves more attractive?

The thing that makes people like writers and designers most attractive is having some type of core competency that most people who do what they do don’t have. New skills are always helpful. For instance, we have an active design community in Portland, so instead of doing general design, a designer could stand out by doing branding or another specialty.

Should freelancers increase their marketing efforts in bad times?

There are fewer marketing efforts in down times, so for the companies that do it, marketing can be more effective. Studies have shown that companies that advertise in down times rebound higher. So invest in yourself. Marketing efforts do make sense.

Any other suggestions?

It’s all about networking, people you talk to and the quality of your work over time. It’s a good time to re-evaluate what you’re doing, to think about new ways of doing things. Really, that’s good to do anytime. We’re creatures of habit. We do things the way we’ve always done then. But bad times provide a positive opportunity to change.