Yearly Archives: 2019

New Jersey bill attacks freelancers

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing as business and tagged freelancing New Jersey regulation on by

A bill in the New Jersey legislature could mean trouble for freelance writers. It bans freelance contract work that doesn’t meet all of the following requirements:

a. The individual has been and will continue to be free from control or direction over the performance of the service, both under the individual’s contract of service and in fact; and

b. The individual’s service is either outside the usual course of the business for which that service is performed; and

c. The individual is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, profession or business of the same nature as that involved in the work performed.

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How writers should deal with Internet bullying

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing and tagged Internet writing on by

There’s an old Internet saying: “Don’t feed the trolls.” It’s still excellent advice. When people communicate with you only to get you upset, the best answer is usually no answer.

Some authors have been subjected to online harassment by cultural segregationists. Their crime is to write something which is not permitted to their race or ethnic group. A bunch of racists piled on Amélie Wen Zhao for the offense of depicting a fantasy world in which slavery isn’t limited to people with dark skins. (There’s a real-world counterpart: China, which is where Zhao comes from.) Some of these bigots said that people with yellow skins shouldn’t write about slavery at all. They temporarily intimidated her into withdrawing her book from publication.
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Beware of fake statistics 1

This entry was posted in Writing and tagged research writing on by

Some research I recently did for an article turned up a statistic that would have made a nice centerpiece: 60% of small businesses that experience cyberattacks go out of business within six months! If I were a hack writer, I could just have run with it; it’s “confirmed” on plenty of websites. But it smelled phony.

First, what exactly is it counting? It doesn’t even say “successful” cyberattacks. Let’s assume it means that, though. Almost every business falls victim to some malware. The consequences can be small or huge. It might contact a server that no longer exists and do nothing. It might attempt to encrypt files for ransomware but fail. It might mine for cryptocurrency, send spam, or try to enlarge a botnet. Those are all bad but won’t usually destroy the business.

Second, how much of the correlation is causation? Small businesses have high mortality rates in general. It just isn’t plausible that cyberattacks are wiping out huge numbers of small companies.
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Medium’s new payment model

This entry was posted in Writing Writing as business and tagged Medium writing on by

Just as I thought I was starting to figure Medium out, they’ve completely changed the payment model. This is what they’ll be doing, starting October 28:

1. We will calculate earnings based on the reading time of Medium members.

2. We will include reading time from non-members too, once they become members.

3. Your earnings will be updated daily, not weekly.

4. Your story stats will show new metrics to explain your earnings.

For more information, please read our blog post here. [no link]

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This entry was posted in Writer ethics Writing Writing as business and tagged business clients on by | Open »

A while back, I got a solicitation from a Dan Marzullo saying, “I run a small copywriting firm and I’m looking for another writer to add to the team.” I didn’t respond, since it felt like mass marketing. Since then I’ve learned that he’s contacted other writers I know and may not have represented his conflicts of interest accurately. I recommend not dealing with him. Inadvertently violating your existing agreements can really mess up your business.