Editors—You Can’t Make a Living Without Them

Editors—you can’t live with them and you can’t live without them. The truth is you can’t make a living without them. When you work with a good one, you’ll know it. And when you work with a bad one, you’ll wish you hadn’t.

If you’ve been freelancing for any length of time, you’ve probably dealt with editors who neglect to respond to your queries, are vague about what they want, make you do incessant re-writes, and then, of course, there are those who take forever to pay—or don’t pay at all.

It’s possible to have a successful freelance writing career if you know how to handle editors. Most beginning and a lot of other writers take the submissive role in the editor/writer relationship. That’s you’re first mistake.

Remember, you’re in business for yourself. You’re a business owner and as such have the right to negotiate terms. Don’t let your editors walk all over you. Sure, you’re desperate to get published and ultimately to get paid, but becoming a puppy with a ring through your nose or even worse an editor’s slave won’t get you anywhere.

Let’s start at the beginning. You researched the market, came up with a timely, compelling idea, and sent a great query. Weeks pass, and you still haven’t heard from the editor. Now what do you do?

Editors are notoriously busy people, but many of them don’t know how to communicate with their writers in a businesslike manner. This is where you have to take control of the situation. Follow up your initial query with a brief Email in which you’ve included your original pitch and ask if the editor is interested in the idea. In fact, you should have asked that question in your first query. Let the editor know that if you don’t hear from him or her in, say, two weeks, you’ll pitch your idea to other markets. Don’t sound threatening, but instead act like a professional. This type of response also shows that you’re serious about your business. But if you don’t hear anything in a reasonable amount of time, pitch the idea to another publication.

Once you get an assignment, has the editor given you detailed instructions or did he or she offer only vague suggestions. First, make sure you lay out exactly what you’re planning to do in your article query. If the editor agrees to what you’ve proposed, you’re all set. However, many writers leave the details up to the editor. If the editor gives only vague directions, you’re stuck. There’s nothing worse than researching and writing an article only to have an editor reject it because it isn’t what he or she wanted. And how were you to know? You’re not a mind reader.

When you get your assignment, make sure the editor gives you the following information:
    1. Exactly what you’re to cover in your article.
    2. The number and type of sources if you haven’t already noted this in your
        query.
    3. How many words your article should be?
    4. The due date—this is usually two weeks before the editor really needs
        the article.

If you’re dealing with a vague editor, you may want to write your own assignment letter, then ask the editor to confirm the details. This will also help you to avoid multiple revision requests.

And what do you do with an editor who consistently pays late or not at all? You wrote the assigned article and sent it in on time. You answered a few follow-up questions from your editor and submitted backup material for fact checking if necessary. You’ve completed your part of the deal, so where’s your payment?

To fully understand how this might happen, you have to understand the payment process. Just about every publication has an editorial side and a business side. While the editor commands the editorial side, the business manager and/or the accounts receivable department commands the business side. It’s the editor’s job to send your invoice or a work order to the accounts receivable department in order for them to cut you a check for your article.

Some publications have large staffs, but at others a few people do all the work. The smallest staff may consist of three or four people while larger publications have hundreds of people working for them. Both can be problematic when it comes to getting paid on time.

It’s your job to stay on top of your accounts. At first, you probably don’t care when you get paid because you have a day job to pay the bills. But once you quit your regular job and start your own business, you’ll need the money to come in regularly to keep your cash flow in line.

Make sure you send a complete invoice along with your article. This should include the date sent, title of your article, pay rate, publication date if known, due date, projected payment date and your contact information. Be sure to ask when the publication pays writers when you first get the assignment. There should be no guessing or assuming when it comes to money.

If I don’t get paid, send Email reminders to the publication’s accounts receivable department with the attached invoice to save the staff the time of looking through old messages or piles of paperwork for the original. If you still get no response, send a hard copy by regular mail. And if that doesn’t work, send it again by registered mail.

Remember, you are the one who has to take charge of business dealings with your editors—or at least meet them halfway. Don’t let your editors run the show completely. It’s just not good business.

Revamping or Retrenchment

As your freelance career progresses, you may find that some of your ideas and avenues for publication just aren’t working out. Do you throw in the towel? No. Instead, you should revamp what you’ve been working on and try again. However, the damage may be severe—markets for your ideas begin to disappear, you’re running out of ideas, or you’re just not as interested in the subject as you were when you started. In this case, you may need to fall back and retrench. And much like soldiers in World War I who did just that to come up with a new strategy, so should you.

Revamping your operation or project isn’t as drastic. You may have to go back and do more research in both your subject and the market for it. Perhaps you’ll need to find some new contacts and get in touch with ones you haven’t heard from in a while. If you've corresponded with an editor previously and received encouraging words but no assignments, send him or her a short E-mail, saying something like “I contacted you a few months ago, and you said you’d be glad to look at other ideas I had. Do you have any stories you're contemplating? If so, can I help?" Reminding editors that you're still available to take on assignments isn’t such a bad one.

Revamping may also mean asking for more pay. No writer gets additional compensation without first showing that he or she deserves it. Keep a special file containing notes on all the best pieces you’ve written for a particular editor. While some editors will increase your pay automatically if you’re doing an outstanding job, others will need a little more prodding. If you an exceptional job on an article, be prepared to ask for more pay the next time around. But always leave yourself a graceful way out if the editor turns down your request. Don't burn bridges unless you absolutely have to.

If you’ve been specializing in a particular subject area and not getting too far with it, perhaps it’s time to take a second look at it. While revamping may also mean developing another specialty, remember that you’ve already put in a lot of time into the one you’re pursuing, and you’ll have to go back to square one if you begin again. Study your target market. Note changes in it and your specialty.

How has what’s happening in the world affected your specialty? After 9/11, the market for travel articles went into chaos. People weren’t traveling and advertisers stopped buying ads, so publications that specialized in travel had to pull back. Some went out of business. Likewise, have the effects of global events filtered down to your locality yet? You may be able to cash in on your specialty in local or regional markets—at least until the national markets recover. The recent economic recession had the same affect on a number of subject areas.

If you're pushing your skills into a new area, it's bound to make others a little suspicious now and then, even if you know you're competent to handle the new situation. Remind yourself this new arena is one in which you're going to have to sell harder than before. Be prepared. Do your research and come up strong.

If you manage to get an assignment in your specialty area every now and then, that should tell you that you should be able to get more. If you’re at a point where some editors trust you to deliver, you're halfway there. Assuming it may take several queries to land one assignment, prepare yourself for the strikeouts and keep after the home runs. Your self-confidence will grow with practice. Success, no matter how slight, whets the appetite as nothing else can.

Occasionally think outside the box. Even specialized publications run general pieces once in a while. Their readers are always looking to save money, travel, manage their lives, etc.

If you're changing specialties, you may have to go back a step or two until you've proven yourself. Move ahead quickly once you've established your new specialty. Be alert for chances to point out to editors that you're now as qualified as anyone else. Perhaps review books in your new field. You’ll not only increase your visibility, but you’ll also add free books to your personal specialty library, saving money in the process.

New technology in electronic books now enables you to further increase your visibility by self-publishing short books or articles in your specialty to sell on Amazon for Kindle. It’s a fact that Kindle has the lion’s share of the ebook market, so ignore Nook and other venues and concentrate on it. This helps provide you with a track record in your new area of expertise.

Sometimes it doesn't make much sense to continue in the direction you’re headed. If you've tried to make a go at a specialty but discovered you've hardly made headway, you might want to  reconsider. Retrenchment may be what's in order, before you get in over your head financially or otherwise. But retrenchment means giving up what you were doing in favor of starting something else. You’ll definitely lose money on this because income won’t be coming in for a while. Unless you have another source of income, only use retrenchment as a last resort. Don’t give up too soon.

Writing on Speculation or Assignment--That is the $100 Question?

If you've been trying to write and publish non-fiction, namely articles, should you write on speculation or assignment? You'll notice I said that's the $100 question since there's no way the everyday freelance writer can make a million bucks answering it.

As a non-fictioin writer, I have a choice of working in two modes--on speculation or on assignment. Naturally, I prefer to work on assignment, but sometimes, for instance when entering a new market or at least a new one for me, I need to work on speculation.

What's the difference between these two modes, besides the obvious? When working on speculation, I decide what to write and how to write it, and then market what I produce. While this may seem an easy method and one that many writers follow, there one element missing--the reader. Unless I write for a particular group of readers all the time, there's no way for me to know what their needs are. Consequently, I can't assume to know the needs of editors, either. So writing on speculation is risky at best.

On the other hand, when I write on assignment for a magazine, the editor already has an idea in mind and does know his or her readers very well. Sometimes, an editor will give me specific instructions on what to write, how to write it, and how long to make the article. Some even give me suggestions of where to go for information or contact information for sources of quotes. At other times, working on assignment is a cooperative effort. Perhaps I approach an editor with an idea. He or she then offers their input, and I offer mine--it's an even exchange. The result is knowing exactly what the editor wants and needs. This method works best with an editor with whom I have a good working relationship.

The other problem with writing on speculation is not knowing exactly when my article will be published. The first article I had published, for example, took a full year to the day from the date I sent it in until it appeared in print. It took another month or so to get paid. At that rate, I'd have died of starvation if working full time! Luckily, at the time I had a full-time salaried job, so it didn't matter when I got paid. Today, as a full-time writer, it does. Even if an editor agrees to publish my article, that's all he or she agrees to. In fact, at other times, my articles never made it into print because the magazine went under before they did.