Writing as business

California’s war on freelance writers

This entry was posted in Writing Writing as business and tagged business California regulation on by

California’s AB-5, which I wrote about earlier, is now law. This is bad news for freelance writers in the state. It’s already cutting into writers’ earning ability. People are already losing work. Some businesses have stopped hiring California writers.

The bill’s supporters in the legislature pretend it’s for the freelancers’ own good. They shouldn’t be working in such low-paying jobs! Certainly some writers work for sadly low rates. It’s the best choice for some people, especially ones with limited mobility or other handicaps. Some of them have few alternatives and need the money to break even. Others love writing and would like to make some money at it, even if it’s not a lot.

But influential unions can’t organize self-employed people. It’s hard to ensure that they pay all their taxes. Uber and Lyft drivers compete with taxis. Those are the real reasons for restricting self-employment.
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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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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.

The content reviewer, as seen by the writer

This entry was posted in Satire Writing Writing as business and tagged clients satire writing on by

Note to companies that purchase content: This is a satire, not a model to follow! 😊

These are from the experience of other writers as they’ve described them on forums, just a bit exaggerated in some cases. I can only speculate on what the reviewer was actually thinking, but the writer can easily imagine a professional sadist at the other end of the transaction.

If you want to cultivate a team of writers who will give you a steady stream of material, please don’t follow these examples. Most reviewers try their best, but hastily-written comments can leave writers bewildered and discourage them from fixing easily-corrected problems.
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Tips for creating topic descriptions

This entry was posted in Publishing Writing as business and tagged clients on by

Do you create topic descriptions for writers to make proposals or submissions on? There’s an art to creating a useful description. Some common omissions regularly evoke complaints from writers. A description that doesn’t work well will result in submissions you can’t use or none at all. When you have to reject them, that sours writers who might have provided you with good material. Here are some tips, based on my experience:
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Theft by the customer

This entry was posted in Writing Writing as business and tagged plagiarism theft on by

Gunman from The Great Train RobberyLast week I experienced the one thing that every writer hates more than rejection: theft by a customer. A customer’s account on an agency site had expired without buying my article. That’s not unusual. I recycled the piece, following approved procedures, and submitted it with a few changes to another customer through the same agency. It immediately bounced back to me as plagiarized!!

This made no sense to me, and I immediately got suspicious. I did a Web search on the first sentence of the article. There was a match — on the site of the customer that had lapsed without buying my article! They had published it without bothering to pay.

In this case, the story had a more or less happy ending. The agency made good on the article, paying me for it even though they must have absorbed the loss. I say “more or less happy” only because a truly happy ending would have given the customer a bath in boiling oil.
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Busted for writing without a license?

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing as business and tagged law licensing on by

Opponents of the First Amendment rarely say they’re against it. They say things like “money isn’t speech,” by which they mean that your rights end when money changes hands. This would reduce freedom of speech to the freedom to stand on a soapbox and deliver an oration, provided you hadn’t paid for the soapbox.

Nonetheless, some states and localities won’t let you do any kind of business without government permission. This includes selling your writing. An article by Kylie Jane Wakefield gives some ugly details. Some governments demand money before they’ll give you permission to write for income, sometimes as much as $100 per year.
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Note on ContentGather

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

If you write for ContentGather, you should be aware that you won’t get email notifications when a regular marketplace article of yours sells. You have to check the site periodically to find out if you’re owed money. There isn’t any preference setting which lets you get notified about a sale of a regular article. You can, however, get notifications about the sale of custom jobs.

This seems like a way to hang on to writers’ money longer.