Kelly James-Enger - Goodbye Byline, Hello Big Bucks: Make Money Ghostwriting Books, Articles, Blogs and More

Ive always said that there are two kinds of writers. Those who want to write, and those who want to make money from their work.

Millions of us claim ourselves as writers, and give up free time to pen novels, short stories, memoirs, essays, and blog postsnot to mention clever Facebook statuses, and compelling, less-than-140-character Tweets. For these people, writing is a creative act, a compulsion, an enjoyable (at least sometimes) hobby.

Im not one of those writers. Not anymore, anyway. My days of writing for nothing more than creative satisfaction (and possible praise, if I showed my work to anyone) came to end when I decided I wanted to quit my job as an attorney and write full-time. Now my creative urge had to be sublimated my business sense, my need to make money, and my drive to succeed as a self-employed writer.

That was more than 16 years ago, and things have changed in the freelancing field. A lot. When I started writing fulltime, there were at least a thousand print marketsconsumer, trade, and custom magazinesthat paid freelancers pretty well, say $1/word and up. There were promising online markets, too, with plenty of websites paying fair rates. Sure, some publishers had all-rights, or work-for-hire contracts, for articles, but the work-for-hires hadnt become the norm. I found it relatively easy to make a living writing articles for magazines, and cracked the six-figure market my fifth year of fulltime freelancing.

Well, things have changedand many of those changes havent been positive ones for freelancers. Print magazines have shrunk, and average assignments have gotten shorter. Yet per-word rates have remained the same; many magazines still start at $1/word, the same rate they paid in the 1960s. While rates havent gone up, publishers now want more than ever before. The all-rights contract has now becoming pro forma for big publishers. That means for a set amount of money, the publisher has the right to do whatever it wants with your piecewhile you never see another penny from it.

In the meantime, content mills devalue writers work, promising so-called opportunities for fledgling writers. With these sites, you can make $5or even moreper article! (Please note my sarcasm.) The fact that so many newbies (clueless or not) are willing to write for next to nothing drives down the average pay rates and makes uninformed clients and editors think that they can get writing for nearly free. And they can. But good writing? Well-researched, compelling, accurate writing? Not so much.

Things have changed in the book world too. A decade and a half ago, if you wanted to become an author, you had two optionssell your book to a traditional publisher, or pay a vanity publisher to get your book in print. New authors had a decent chance of selling a book to a publishing house if they had a strong concept and a unique take on a subject. Advances for first-time authors of nonfiction hovered around the $10,000 range, but plenty of authors made much more than that.

Today? Traditional publishers care about one thing, and its called platform, which encapsulates your ability to sell a book. If you dont have strong social media numbers (think tens of thousands of Twitter followers), youre going to have a hard time selling your book, even if the idea is unique and your writing, stellar. And if you do, expect that advance to be paltrymaybe just a few thousand dollars.