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I am a Business:
6 Steps for Getting Published AND Paid
By Jeanne Lyet Gassman
Believe it or not, it
is quite easy to get published--for free. Web sites and eZines abound
offering to publish the novice writer for the payment of “great
exposure.” It is not so easy to get paid in real dollars for what you
publish. How do you bridge the gap from being published to getting paid
for what you publish?
You begin by thinking
of yourself as a business. A successful business makes its money from
the sales of its product. A writer’s product is his writing. That
product can have no value, or it can have real value. It all depends on
how you, the writer, look at yourself and your work. These six easy
steps will help you cross the bridge from being a hobbyist to becoming a
published and paid author.
1. Show up for work.
As a freelance author, you are both the employer and the employee. Put
yourself into the role of employer for a moment. If you had an employee
who only showed up at his desk when he was “inspired” or when he was in
trouble because he hadn’t finished something, how long would you keep
him on your payroll? As a professional author, you need to make an
appointment with yourself. Set up a schedule for your writing and keep
it. If you have a day job, establish a minimum number of hours per week
you will put in on your writing and stick to it. If you can’t show up
for work on regular basis, then you don’t deserve the job.
2. Set goals and
meet deadlines. Every business has goals it wants to meet during a specific time frame.
These can be sales goals, growth goals, or deadlines for specific
projects. Create personal deadlines to help you reach such goals as
finishing a chapter, submitting a short story to a market, or editing an
article. Every few months, take the time to re-evaluate your goals. Are
your objectives reasonable? Are your goals too broad? Too limited? If
you discover that you never reach any of the goals you set for yourself,
you may need to practice more effective time management. External
deadlines come from the demands of the marketplace. These include
contest deadlines, publication deadlines, and requests from editors,
agents, and publishers. If you have an external deadline from an editor
who needs your piece by a certain date, get the work in early. Writers
who wait until the last minute to turn in everything are people who
create chaos and worry in the business environment. They also fall lower
on the list to receive future writing assignments from editors.
3. Know your
customer. A
successful business recognizes that the customer comes first. The
writer’s customer is the publisher who will pay him to publish his work.
Don’t send your customer a product that doesn’t meet his needs. Don’t
submit fiction to a magazine that publishes only poetry. Don’t send a
story that is much longer than the requested word count. If you want to
write for parenting magazines, study the individual magazines. Not all
markets are equal. Some magazines may specialize in articles for parents
of babies and infants. Others may have a Christian slant that focuses on
raising older children. Do your homework so that you know the
difference. Be sure to read the writer’s guidelines for any potential
paying market. The guidelines often contain clues about the editor’s
personal preferences. By knowing your customer, you greatly improve your
chances of making a sale.
4. Be professional.
A lawyer wears a suit to court. A professional athlete wears a uniform
to play the game. As a writer, your uniform is your professionalism. All
e-mail and snail mail letters should be treated as business
correspondence. Editors hate receiving e-mails that start out with,
“Dude, wha-up?” Save your text messaging style for your IM friends. Use
a business letter format and include all the necessary contact
information. Your manuscripts should be formatted correctly as well,
with the standard margins, spacing, font, etc. If you don’t what the
proper format is, check the guidelines first. You can also find
information on formatting your manuscript in the current volume of
The Writer’s Market, published by Writer’s Digest Books. Maintain a
professional manner everywhere you present yourself as a writer. This
includes writing chat rooms and forums. Believe it or not, editors
regularly cruise many of these forums. Would you want to do business
with someone who just cussed out a fellow writer and called them a
#@%*?
5. Don’t confuse the
professional with the personal. A good businessperson respects the important
difference between a business relationship and a friendship. Editors and
agents are not your friends. They are your customers and business
partners. Unless you have worked closely with someone for years, you
should not attempt to get too chummy by sending gifts, personal cards,
etc. Don’t bring your personal problems to work, either. If you can’t
meet a deadline, give the editor a heads-up but don’t offer a host of
excuses. The editor doesn’t care that you had to bail your alcoholic
sister out of jail last night because she wrecked your car. Finally,
remember that most rejections are not personal. Authors are usually
rejected because the work wasn’t polished, the work wasn’t appropriate
for the market, or the market already has something similar.
6. Keep good
records.
Most businesses have to pay taxes on their profits. If you are paid for
your writing, you will need to report this income to the IRS. Keep track
of your writing expenses. They may be deductible. Keep track of your
submissions. There is nothing more embarrassing than discovering you
have sold the same story to different markets at the same time. I have
three logs that I maintain. I keep a log of all my income and expenses
during the year. This includes expenses for supplies, classes, and
transportation to writing-related events. I have a separate submission
log for every story, every nonfiction piece, and every poem. I know when
I sent something out and whether it was accepted or published. I also
keep a response log for every market I send something to. This response
log allows me to track the markets that are most receptive to my type of
writing. Any or all of these logs can be set up easily in a database
such as Excel.
It is always wonderful
to see your writing published. It is even more wonderful to receive a
paycheck for that publication. Treat yourself as a successful business,
and you can become the paid, published writer you want to be. Happy
writing! |
About the
Author
Jeanne Lyet Gassman
is an award-winning author and instructor whose fiction, creative
non-fiction, and poetry have been published in magazines, newspapers,
and anthologies.
In 2002, she was the
recipient of an Encourage-ment Award in Creative Writing from the
Arizona Commission on the Arts.
In addition to her
writing, Jeanne teaches writing classes and workshops in the Phoenix
metropolitan area. Recent class offerings include: Beginning Fiction,
The Secrets of Getting Published, Critiquing and Editing Your Writing,
and Writing Your Personal Memoir.
www.jeannelyetgassman.com
Sonoran Mirage
with contributing author Jeanne Lyet Gassman
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