Resource for running your freelance writing business:
Negotiating resources:
40 Questions You Need to Ask Every Copywriting Client:
10 Negotiation Tips for Writers
Listen in on a Writer-Client Negotiation
5 Things Carol Tice Taught Me About Writer-Client Negotiations
How I Got Paid $300 a Blog Post
(See Carol’s negotiation case study below.)
Contract resources:
A Crash Course in Writer’s Contracts:
Why Writers Need Contracts
Do you follow this writer’s basic assignment checklist?
American Society of Journalists and Authors – Contract Watch:
How to deal with indemnification clauses:
(See Carol’s sample contract and questionnaire below.)
Rates:
The Writer’s Market lists rate ranges for many types of freelance work.
Also read: Why Freelance Writers Need to Make $100 an Hour
(you’ll need to be signed in to FWD to access)
Taxes:
IRS Small Business site:
Time & money management
Writing vs marketing: 5 Tips for scheduling your freelance time
How to fit freelance writing into your busy life (includes a podcast with Bryan Cohen, author of Writer on the Side)
7 Money-management tips for freelance writers
9 Time-management tips for busy writers
Email time management domination
OneNote (For PCs. You can download a trial):
Evernote (For Macs. Free.):
Here’s a link to Linda’s interview with David Allen for the Renegade Writer blog, which gives more details on how freelancers can use his system: (
How does negotiation work? Here verbatim (company name and details omitted), is a recent negotiation Carol did that resulted in thousands of dollars being added to her contract:
Hi Carol,
(My colleague) David ____, who I believe you’ve spoken to in the past, gave me your details and suggested I get in touch about a project we’re working on.
We’re looking to hire a US-based business journalist to write some company profiles of successful American brands such as ______and ______. We have drawn up a list (not definitive) of around 20 companies. The c.3,000 word profiles would appear as chapters in a US edition of our popular ______book series.
The work is fairly straightforward in that interviews with the founders are not required, but strong research and original copy are.
I’m not sure how familiar you are with (OUR COMPANY) from exchanges with David, but we publish a handful of the leading websites for entrepreneurs in the UK (URLS).
We also publish a number of business books each year: (URL)
Would you be interested in taking on some work? And could you recommend any other business journalists who might be interested in taking some on (as there is more than enough work for at least two journalists and we anticipate doing more on an ongoing basis).
I look forward to hearing back.
Best wishes, Ian.
Hi Ian --
Thanks for getting in touch...I do remember discussing this project with David quite a ways back.
I’m certainly interested in hearing more about your project — I have two clients that seem to be going into a summer hiatus, so your timing is good for me.
Can you give me a sense of your deadline for getting these 20 profiles done, and the proposed budget per-piece for writing these profiles?
Also, do these involve getting company managers to talk, or is it entirely based on research?
I can certainly refer you to other business journalists as well, if deadlines require that projects be split up to get them done on time.
Look forward to learning more --
Carol Tice
Hi Carol,
Thanks for the swift response. I’m delighted the timing works for you.
We’re looking to complete the manuscript by the end of October and were looking to pay $700 per profile (£435).
Each chapter has a similar narrative, from the germ of an idea, the start-up story, early growth and challenges met and overcome, through to a ‘where are they now’ conclusion.
We don’t expect you to get company managers to talk for this, although it may be helpful to contact the company’s press office to get some imagery and any official accounts of the story. Sourcing any early or subsequent interviews the founders gave, autobiographies or biographies, and written profiles should be sufficient. So it should be fairly straightforward. If you do purchase an autobiography or biography you would be able to charge that as an expense.
Readers of the book are likely to be early stage entrepreneurs who love reading about others’ accounts of the phase they are going through.
I think it would be sensible to split the work, so if you could suggest another writer I’d be grateful. Happy for you to CC an introduction.
I hope that answers your questions and look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Thanks,
Ian.
Hi Ian --
$700 for 3000 words sound low to me, Ian. The figure I had in my head was about double that...but maybe we can find some middle ground.
Also I didn’t ask about credit...are we ghostwriting here? If it’s work-for-hire and no future pay, AND no name on it, it definitely needs to pay more.
Would you get us a Lexis-Nexis type access for researching? I think that would be vital to doing this type of project in a time-efficient way rather than Googling around and looking at millions of responses. I used to do corporate espionage (research into quality of management) and found L-N vital for digging up past stories quickly.
Look forward to learning a bit more --
Carol Tice
Hi Carol,
Apologies for the slight delay in responding. Following your reply we needed to consider your points.
Fee:
You’re right that $700 for 3,000wds is a low fee for journalism. To give you a little more context, book authoring typically pays less and it would not be commercially viable for us to double that figure – the upfront risk would be too great. There is scope for us to increase it, but only by re-engineering the economics for this title – off-setting it against other products we have, for example. I do understand that for someone with your experience the fee I quoted initially is not attractive and I’m keen find a solution if possible. You mentioned meeting in the middle, which still looks a little too high for us. Would you accept $900?
Credit:
This is not ghost-writing. We plan to credit every chapter to the relevant author and would be prepared to name a contributor as a co-author on the cover if they contributed six or more chapters. In addition we can include a short bio for all contributing authors.
Lexis-Nexis:
We don’t have an account and will look into it. If it costs a few hundred dollars a month I think it’s unlikely we’d be able to justify it for this title. You may well know more about the charges and I’d be grateful if you are able to enlighten me. One way to get more of what we want without trawling through Google would be emailing questions to the press offices of the companies concerned in the hope of getting answers the founder is comfortable with – in an ideal world they would respond themselves but we have to be realistic. This worked for us with a number of the UK companies we featured in our first UK edition.
I hope that answers your points and you are able to consider the revised terms.
Best wishes,
Ian.
(NOTE…at this point in the negotiation I thought hard about this project. Ordinarily, I’d never do 3,000 words for $900 each. But I’ve had a goal of wanting a book credit for a couple of years -- so there was something in this project that was really desirable for me, and made me seriously consider this fee, and want to be a little flexible, now that the’d come up in rate. It also was a large client with lots of potential for future work, which weighed in their favor, too. My response:)
Hi Ian --
Just wanted to check back in as I spoke with Lexis-Nexis today and think they probably are too expensive (and want a 12-month commitment)...I’m looking into Factiva (Dow Jones) as a possible alternative.
But in any case, think I’m willing to pay for research tools and just write it off. I might also do a free 2-week trial on L-N and just harvest all the info I need up front :-)
Thought about it, and I think at $900 a chapter I’d be interested to take six or seven of the profiles. I’m interested to do something at the book level, so that makes it worth it to me (assuming it’s not a screaming rush...still awaiting news of your timeline).
I could see if anyone else I know would take another chunk of the 20 profiles at that rate if you like...have a couple business reporters in mind.
Let me know on your timeline for this. Also would like to know your payment method and terms — hoping for either Paypal or ACH.
My usual terms for a project this size would be on the order of 30% up front, 20% when first 3 drafts are in, 20% when second set are in, and 30% on final approval or 60 days from first draft, whichever comes first.
I have a deal through my Freshbooks accounting system where I only pay $.50 for Paypal processing when I invoice through them, so that would work for me, though bank transfer is most ideal.
I have another large project that seems to be coming down the track at me from a Seattle client, so I’d like to nail down the details of what I’d be doing when in this project before I take that on.
Look forward to moving this forward --
Carol Tice
Hi Carol,
Thanks for looking into Lexis-Nexis and your honest appraisal of their pricing. We suspected it would be prohibitive, but your plan of using a free trial to harvest info makes a lot of sense, if it proves possible.
I also really appreciate you coming down a little on the price. It makes a big difference in terms of the viability. We have played with the figures and plan to offset against our editorial sites.
We have published three editions of (this book series). None of these have been published in the US, but we have a number of American companies profiled in those books. We plan to combine existing profiles of Coca-Cola, Wholefoods, KFC, LinkedIn, eBay, Google, Disney, Microsoft, Apple, BlackBerry, Nintendo, Ikea, IBM, HP, Sony, Pizza Hut and Wikipedia, with a dozen or so new profiles, namely (and this is a provisional list): (LIST).
In total we anticipate the book will contain 30 profiles.
We would be willing to commission 8 profiles at $900 right now.
We would look to get another, slightly less experienced, writer for the remainder (the final four named companies above are less likely to resonate with UK readers). We have a UK-based American writer who would write four for $650 each.
In terms of timeline, we are planning to publish in the first quarter of 2012. We have targeted the end of October for the submission of the final draft manuscript (clearly some chapters would have been submitted and checked beforehand). Attached is a profile of (company), which should give you a reasonably good idea of what we expect in terms of format, style, length etc. Each chapter runs to approximately 3,000wds.
I’ll look to provide details on payment methods and terms tomorrow if that’s ok. I didn’t get the opportunity to discuss the particulars today, but the timings of payment look sensible to me.
I hope that answers all of your other questions and look forward to hearing back.
Best wishes,
Ian.
(From here we proceeded to contract.)
Sample initial contract for new clients Carol has used:
This is an agreement between ___ (“Company”) and Carol Tice, a freelance writer and owner of TiceWrites (“Freelancer”).
Company agrees to compensate freelancer for drafting exclusive and unique content for the _____ blog. Company will provide Freelancer with topic ideas and the Freelancer will recommend topic ideas, based on her understanding of the marketplace and its target audience. The topics will be captured in an editorial calendar, to which both parties have access.
Freelancer agrees to draft __ (articles/blog posts) per month, at a minimum length of ___ words a piece. Posts will carry Freelancer’s byline and link to her website,
Freelancer warrants that she is entitled to grant rights to the blogs created hereunder, and that the content will be unique, previously unpublished and not plagiarizing of anyone else’s work. Company has permission to use any photographs, biographical information, or other ancillary materials provided by freelancer, in any media.
Company retains the rights to all content produced.
Company agrees to pay Freelancer in the amount of $____ per month for services provided. Payment will be made via check, terms are 50 percent paid up front and 50 percent on conclusion of work for the first month, and full payment due at the end of each subsequent month. Aside from the initial up-front payment, terms are net (15 or 30) days.
This contract is effective as of (DATE) and expires (DATE 60-90 days later).
Signed:
Carol’s questionnaire for corporate blog and article clients:
TiceWrites company client questionnaire
Hello and thanks for your interest in my writing business! Please answer the questions below to help me in pricing your project:
Please define your project:
1. I want _____ blogs/articles that run _____ words each
2. Is this a one-off project or will it be ongoing, month after month? If the latter, how long is the initial contract for? ____ months.
3. Why is this content being written? What business goal do you have for it?
4. How many weeks will I have to complete the project from when I receive the needed materials and information?
5. Will interviews with sources be required? If so will I be expected to find my own sources or will you provide?
6. Will I be expected to come up with my own topics, or will they be developed by you?
7. Where will the work appear? What is circulation or site viewership?
8. Will I have a byline, will it run no-byline, or will I be ghostwriting for someone else?
9. If I have a byline, can it be a live link to my Web site?
10. Will I retain rights to resell or republish the work, or will you own all rights?
11. Please describe the intended audience for this content in as much detail as possible – ie age, profession, level of expertise in their field, income level.
12. How does the audience use your content? Do they pay for it or is it free?
13. Is there a site in your industry that is doing something similar that you think does a good job? What is their URL? How would you expect your content to be different and/or better?
14. Who do you consider to be your major competitors in this sector, and what are their Web sites?
15. What are the major sources of news in this sector?
16. Give me an idea of the type of "voice" you envision for your content – is it first-person, third person, formal, casual, snarky, neutral, authoritative, journalistic? If possible provide examples of similar content to what you'd like.
17. How did you hear about me?
18. What questions do you have for me?
19. My normal terms are: 50% up front for a first project, 25% on turning in a first draft, and 25% on satisfaction of all terms. Aside from the up-front payment, payments are due in net 14 days. If the project runs beyond a month, I will bill at the conclusion of each subsequent month. After turning in the first draft, the final payment is due within 60 days in any case.
____ Those terms work for me
I need the following other terms:______