Bly - Secrets of a freelance writer: how to make $100,000 a year

ALSO BY ROBERT W. BLY

The Copywriters Handbook
Selling Your Services
Business-to-Business Direct Marketing
The Elements of Business Writing
The Elements of Technical Writing
How to Promote Your Own Business
How to Get Your Book Published
Write More, Sell More
Direct Mail Profits
Ads That Sell
Careers for Writers
Creating the Perfect Sales Piece
Targeted Public Relations
Keeping Clients Satisfied

SECRETS OF A FREELANCE WRITER

THIRD EDITION

How to Make $100,000 a Year or More

Robert W. Bly

Owl Books
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
Publishers since 1866
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10010
www.henryholt.com

An Owl Book and are registered trademarks of
Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Copyright 1988, 1997, 2006 by Robert W. Bly

All rights reserved.

Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bly, Robert W.

Secrets of a freelance writer: how to make $100,000 a year or more / Robert W. Bly.3rd ed.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-7803-9

ISBN-10: 0-8050-7803-7

1. Authorship. I. Title.

PN151.B63 2006
808.02dc22

2005058458

Henry Holt books are available for special promotions and premiums. For details contact: Director, Special Markets.

Originally published in hardcover in 1988 by Dodd, Mead & Company

First Owl Books Edition 1990

Second Owl Books Edition 1997

Third Owl Books Edition 2006

Designed by Kelly S. Too

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

To my assistants, advisors, and vendorsIlise Benun, Peter DeCaro, Fern Dickey, Jon Kauffmann, Wayne Kolb, Paul and Carolyn Mazza, Nurit Mittlefehldt, Stanley Dumanig, Edward Mueller, Brett Ridgeway, and Jodi Van Valkenburgfor helping to run my office so smoothly so I can sit here and do nothing but read, think, and write for our clients

On writinga matter of exercise. If you work out with weights for 15 minutes a day over the course of ten years, youre gonna get muscles. If you write for an hour and a half a day for ten years, youre gonna turn into a good writer.

Stephen King,

Time, October 6, 1986

No one writes as well as he ought. He is fortunate if he has written as well as he could.

Bliss Perry,

Bedside Book of Famous British Stories

Id like to thank my writer friends and colleaguesfreelancers who, over the years, have given me countless ideas on how to build my business, get new clients, expand my services, and increase my income. I wont name them all here, but they know who they are. Thanks, folks!

Special thanks to Don Hauptman, Richard Armstrong, Milt Pierce, Sig Rosenblum, Roger C. Parker, Joan Harris, David Yale, Dr. Andrew Linick, John Finn, and Bob Kaliansuccessful writers and marketers whose brains I greedily pick whenever the opportunity arises.

I would also like to thank my editors, Cynthia Vartan and Flora Esterly, for being the best editors an author could have and the most patient. And Henry Holt, for allowing me to reprint portions of my book Successful Telephone Selling in of this new edition of Secrets of a Freelance Writer.

Some of the networking tips in are from Carolyn Campbells article Networking, which appeared in the April 2005 issue of Freelance Writers Report (page 5) and are reprinted with permission.

And, of course, thanks to my assistant, Carolyn Mazza, and my project manager, Ilise Benun, for handling the details of running my office so I can just sit and write. And to my agent, Dominick Abel, for shepherding this book through its many editions and printings.

This book was written to help you make a lot of money as a freelance writer.

To my mind, too many writers spend too many hours laboring over work for which they are paid only a pittance. We live in a society that often forces writers literally to give away their writings, either for free or for wages that, when figured on an hourly basis, are barely competitive with what an unskilled laborer can earn pushing hamburgers in a fast-food restaurant or moving crates in a warehouse.

This book is dedicated to the proposition that writers should be paid a fair dollar for a fair days work and that writing is a professional service worth the fees that other professions command.

Think about the last few articles or stories you sold. Were you satisfied with the pay? If notif you feel frustrated by editors and publishers who seem to begrudge you every penny when it comes time to negotiate your fee or advancethis book can change your life!

If youre tired of being underpaid as a writer, of spending long hours on projects that barely provide a decent living wage, Im going to show you a different side of freelancingone that can put you in an income bracket that even a corporate executive, attorney, or physician might envy.

If youre a new or established freelancer handling commercial projects for corporate clients, Ill tell how you can double or triple your writing income, how to get new clients, and how to get more business from current clientsand Ill give you new ways to market your services and expand your business as never before.

If youre a staff writer employed by a corporation, advertising agency, newspaper, or other organization and you want to quit your job and become a freelancer, Ill show you how to do it. By following my techniques, youll be able to matchor even doubleyour present salary in your first year of freelancing.

If you dream of writing the Great American Novel, or short stories, poetry, plays, essays, articles, or other literary formsgreat! This book will show you how to get lucrative commercial assignments that pay the rent and free you to pursue more artistic interests.

If youre a moonlighter, a part-timer, or you want to expand your regular income, the type of writing described in this book is ideal for you, because you can work as much or as little as you choose. Its all up to you.

If youve never written for money in your life but you have a hankering to write, or youre looking for a second career, or to make some money in your spare time working from home, youve come to the right place.

When I wrote the first edition of Secrets of a Freelance Writer for Dodd, Mead in 1987, I was thirty years old and had five years experience as a freelance commercial writer.

Now its nearly two decades later, Im 48, and Ive been a freelance corporate writer for twenty-three years. In the eighteen years between editions, Ive written hundreds of freelance projects for dozens of clientsand I pass along the new tips, techniques, and methods Ive learned in this new edition.

The question readers of the first and second editions most often ask me is Can you still make $85,000 to $125,000 a year or more doing freelance writing for the business market? The answer is yes, although market conditions have changed over the past two decades. Here are the key differences between then and now.

First, the bad news:

The recession of the late 1980s and early 1990sand the uncertain economy of the twenty-first centuryput us into a buyers market from which we will never recover. There is more competition, and, at the same time, budgets are more limited and clients are more cost-conscious. You can still make $100,000 a year or more as a freelance corporate writer, but its more difficult than when I started in 1982no doubt about it.