Is it OK to friend your editor on Facebook?
Social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have created all kinds of new work-related etiquette questions: Is it OK to post a link to that killer story you wrote for Ladies Home Journal on Twitter more than once – an hour? Does memorizing the LinkedIn profile of an editor you’d like to pitch constitute stalking? [...]
5 easy ways to add value to your freelance business
Right now the freelance market is crammed with laid off writers, editors and other creative types trying their hand at self employment. With so much supply, it’s important to stand out. One way to do that is by offering some added value to work you perform for existing and new clients. What’s added value? It’s [...]
I love editors who…
* Leave a job and contact you from the next one – with assignments and higher per-word rate. * Tell you they’re reining in freelance budgets due to the economy but are keeping you on their freelance short list. * Reward one fast-turnaround assignment with two more – in as many weeks. * Freelance for [...]
Best of WordCount – Make editors fight over you
While I’m on vacation this week, I’ll be rerunning some of the best WordCount posts of the year. Look for new posts, including my predictions for the top digital media personalities to watch in 2009, starting January 5. Happy New Year! Today’s reruns: Make yourself so irresistible editors will fight over you. What editors want [...]
MIT Mgt. Review on "nanobots" and why freelancers should care
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 [...]
Road trip
I’m on the road today, visiting editors in southern California and then taking a few days off. While I’m gone, please enjoy this rerun of some popular WordCount posts about visiting and working with editors. What editors want from freelance writers 4 ways to bring good karma to your freelance writing business Top 10 qualities [...]
You may be desperate for work, just don't act like it
It’s one thing to be desperate for work. It’s another to act like it. You may have just lost a big client, or even more than one, so you’re scrambling to add some new writing assignments to your calendar. You send out letters of introduction and query like crazy. A few nibbles come in as [...]
How to handle rewrites without wanting to kill yourself, or your editor
Rewrites aren’t high on my list of favorite work-related activities. The fact is, I hate them. Especially when an editor sits on something for a couple weeks then ships it back with questions. It makes me want to fire off an email saying “That was so five stories ago!” But rewrites are a fact of [...]
What editors want from freelance writers
If you hang around freelance writers enough, you know one of the biggest topics of conversation is editors: how to find them, pitch to them, work with them, get them to return your emails and phone calls and love you so much they call you with assignments. Editors have the same kinds of discussions about [...]
Click here for the RSS feed
