Blog posts, stories and other good stuff I’ve seen this week on writing, freelancing and the digital media business:
Elance: Cash is King – The freelance marketplace’s monthly index shows demand is up for article writing (+2) and way up for online writing (+12).
Amazon introduces the Kindle DX – The newest version of the bookseller’s electronic reading tablet out this summer will have a 9.7″ making it well-suited, according to Amazon, for magazines, newspapers and textbooks.
Tweetsurfing: what it is and why all writers should do it – Motley Fool writer Tim Beyers explains the finer points of trolling Twitter for interesting tidbits that could turn into story ideas.
Twitter is down: 15 alternative things to do – The techies at Twitter took down the service for scheduled maintenance on Friday afternoon, leaving a lot of people with a lot of extra time on their hands, including the writers and readers at TechCrunch, who came up with a hilarious list of other things to do (many of which centered around bitching about Twitter being down).
Retraining wire and feature editors to be web curabors – Call it the copy editor’s full employment act. If editors can teach themselves SEO and link out to related material, Publishing 2.0 argues, they’ll never be out of a job.
Finding the fun in querying – Freelance writer and fellow WordCount Blogathoner Heather Boerner is doing a 30-day series on persistence, which includes this installment on getting over query angst.
When freelancers flake we all suffer – Almost too painful to read, this post from writer and editor KT Hinderer on freelance foul ups is a good reminder that if you ever get in a jam on a story, don’t think your editor won’t notice. Better to fess up and suffer the consequences than to “burn bridges before you can even finish building them.”