Erik Sherman's WriterBiz

Designer Paul Rand's Client Philosophy Explained by Steve Jobs

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:50:00 +0000

Something on Twitter pointing to some blog led me to this 1993 interview with then NeXT CEO Steve Jobs (between stints at Apple):

He's talking about working with a famous graphic designer, Paul Rand. Here's how he describes Rand's philosophy about getting paid for his work:

He had very clear conclusions about what the relationship meant to both parties and how it should be conducted. For example, I asked him if he would come up with a few options, and he said, "No, I will solve your problem for you and you will pay me. And you don't have to use the solution. If you want options, go talk to other people. But I'll solve your problem for you the best way I know how and you use it or not -- that's up to you, you're the client -- but you pay me." And there was a clarity about the relationship that was refreshing.

NBC Universal and Nielsen Want Your Money, Too

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:20:00 +0000

Just the other day I mentioned how Time Inc. wants you to take less money for prompt payment. Well, Gawker, which wrote about the first issue (and eventually noted that while one freelancer claimed payment within 30 days, another said that it generally took 60, making the discount-for promptness plan more economic arm-twisting) has another. NBC Universal is doing the same thing. There is one big difference: while Time may make you wait for 60 days normally before dropping that fiscal ort you so badly need to pay the bills, NBC Universal will either make you wait 75 days or cough up 2.5 percent of the money you earned in 15 days. Oh, and as my BNET colleague Jim Edwards noted back in March, Nielsen says that it won't pay until 75 days unless any of its vendors (which included, but is not limited to, freelancers) give up 3 percent for payment in 15 days.

And for the people who want to argue that discount for early payment is normal business, I'll say that it is, but here's what is considered normal:

The service provider is the one offering the discount because that fits into its business plan.

The service provider sets its own rates and doesn't have to ask, "And what do you pay for this?" So its rates can reflect a more realistic view of what a discounted fee would have to be to remain worth the work. It also sets fees to recognize the many companies that don't pay in a timely manner.

The service provider also has late penalty fees, so if the client doesn't pay on time, more gets tacked on - like 2.5 percent a month or so.

What doesn't happen is a ~~fucking cheap-assed~~ financially conservative megacorporation setting rates that ~~haven't moved in so many years that archaeologists line up to study them~~ recognize the economic pressures on today's business, and then ~~putting a gun to someone's head~~ holding payments for long periods of time to ~~twist people's arms~~ convince freelancers to take a discount.

Bastards.

Time Inc. Wants to Charge You to Pay Promptly [UPDATED]

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:03:00 +0000

Writer colleague Dana Kennedy passed this information on, and even if you don't write for any of the Time Inc. properties, be prepared for a blood pressure boost. As Gawker reports, Time Inc. is offering to pay freelancers quickly -- if they are willing to take less money

Under the cheery subject heading "Time Inc - Accelerate payments at year end!", it outlined the company's PayMeNow program, whereby you can speed up payment of your invoice for a fee, kind of like when you get a payday loan at the check cashing place down on the corner so you can afford to buy lottery tickets for the week.

There's a whole rate sheet of how much you give up to see that check earlier:

25 days - 0.5 percent
20 - 1 percent
15 - 1.5 percent
10 - 2 percent
5 - 3 percent
3 - 4 percent

Nice, eh? Now understand that discounts for early payment are nothing new in corporate transactions. They have been around for, oh, I don't know, I'm guessing hundreds of years. Certainly many, many decades at the very least. But there's a difference between something offered as a general part of negotiation -- and usually offered by the seller -- and something tossed out by a chronically late payer who is trying to manipulate individuals who often have the least fiscal power to make totally reasoned decisions.

And, if you think about it, this behavior is even more contemptible and the evidence that the corporate suits there are a nasty bunch of sneaky little shits. It's almost the end of the year. Guess what companies generally do at this point if their fiscal year ends with the calendar year? They accelerate payments anyway to reduce tax liabilities. Want to guess when parent Time Warner Inc.'s fiscal year ends? Yup, December 31st. So they're laughing all the way to the bank - literally - because they know they're going to try to push all this stuff out anyway, and they want to shave a little extra profit out of the pockets of freelancers. And my bet is that they take the discount and are still late based on the payment schedule. Merry Christmas. Ho, Ho, Fucking Ho. Bastards.

[UPDATE: The original article suggested that Time was paying in 30 days already, which seemed faster than many large corporations. A new Gawker post says that they heard from another freelancer who said that it usually takes closer to 60 days. I've heard from a couple of Time Inc. freelancers that the online payment system works well, but having dealt with one at a big client in the past, where the editor didn't bother to process the paperwork, I can pretty authoritatively say that even with the best accounting system, the company can leave you screwed. It's one reason why you want to get a definition of what acceptance means. Is that "yup, we're going to use the piece," or "you have to wait until the Big Man in the Sky reaches down, lights a burning bush, and allows your manuscript to pass into the publishing promised land"?]

Image via Flickr user DanCentury, Creative Commons license.

Google Bowing to Pressure of Paid Content

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:34:00 +0000

Google is the poster child for those who want to claim that free content is the future and that everyone has to give away what they produce to court “eyeballs” and the advertising they can generate. So why is it that in a number of ways, the company has recently been turning its back on literal free market theory? Is it that management has become inexplicably dumb? No, it’s because that executives at Google have always pushed to get what they can for free but realize that ultimately paying nothing may not be a workable business strategy.

Link to my BNET story about Google

Workflow:Writing Snagging Writer Blogs Without Permission [UPDATE]

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:41:00 +0000

There's a site called Workflow:Writing that has a list of blogs about writing. Although I can't speak to all in that long list, I heard from one, on a writers' board, who had until recently been on the list. No one had asked her permission. This site took her RSS feed and posted it, along with all the other sites, and had advertising displayed against it. Click on one of the article links, and you get the original page, only in a frame with a top section that shows a banner ad and the Workflow:Writing logo. Maybe this one woman's blog was the only one stolen - because that's what you call it when you appropriate someone else's property for your own gain. But I have a funny feeling that if I checked with the other bloggers, I'd be hard-pressed to find one that had given explicit permission. If you blog about words, check the link and see if its own had co-opted you. And if you don't, consider stopping by there and expressing your dismay over people who want to cash in on the hard work of others. This site is worse than a writers' mill. At least those offer some token payment. One ironic point: one site with at least one article posted is PlagiarismToday.

UPDATE: Make that two writers whose work has appeared and who said that they hadn't given permission. Any guesses on how many did give permission? Do I hear ... none?

8 Points to Smarter Client Contracts

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:51:00 +0000

A friend and colleague recently asked me if I had a contract template that I used for clients. I said that I didn't because my contracts are generally heavily tailored to the specifics of an engagement. However, I was able to point to seven different clauses that I like to include to protect myself. Here they are, plus an eight that my publication and IP lawyer, Anthony Elia, had suggested for future use as I was suing an ex-client:

Whether a work-made-for-hire contract or not, no rights should transfer until you get the final payment for the job. If the assignment consists of multiple parts and the client pushes back, you might consider transferring rights to parts as payment for them is completed, if you can separate them out. But if a client balks completely on such an arrangement, I walk. If they're not willing to say that they can only use material if I'm completely paid, then they're saying that they're not interested in upholding their end of the deal. I have better ways to spend my time.
I charge late fees for payment in arrears. Again, this should be a non-negotiable. Companies want to charge me late fees if I don't pay on time, and I don't see why I should underwrite someone else's financing.
Have a clean definition of the work and then an hourly fee for requests beyond that definition. If the client cannot agree to a clear work specification, then it is going to ask for more and more to be done for the same fee, either trying to push the boundaries to get more for its money or because it is confused and inefficient. In neither case am I willing to give something away for nothing in return. That's not to say that I don't do favors for regular clients. I do. But that's with an ongoing relationship where I get plenty of return for my investment.
Give a hard deadline for reviews, with drafts past that date getting contractual automatic acceptance. Generally, payment in corporate assignments keys on acceptance of parts of a project. You do not want to be waiting for money because someone or other won't bother to look at what you've done. This protects you against that, largely by acting as a goad to get the client to do the reviews it owes you. Make the deadlines reasonable, but not too long. I find that two weeks max is a good timetable for getting a review done.
You are the service provider, so make sure that any legal disputes, whether state or federal court, are in your home jurisdiction. You don't want to go to another state to sue for money owed you. Similarly, get your state's laws as the ones governing the contract. If the client won't go for that, then eliminate the requirement completely. Don't allow them to insist that you agree to jurisdiction in their area, because, frankly speaking, if legal issues come up, you're most likely to be the plaintiff, not the defendant.
Explicitly address expenses and any other item that might reduce your income. Don't expect to work such things out after the fact.
Make deadlines offset from when you actually get the expected payments. So if the first should be in a month, make it a month after you have the signed contract and deposit. Before you've signed the contract is when you have maximum leverage in negotiation. Once you start work, your leverage decreases exponentially with the time you've put in.
The final point is to try to include a clause that has the loser in a legal action responsible for the legal costs of the winner. I had thought this a danger, but my lawyer pointed out that the chances were overwhelmingly likely that I'd be the one having to take action, and getting costs covered if you have a good case becomes a goad to getting people to settle

Keeping Up With Media Law

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:20:00 +0000

The law moves slowly - as it should. Whether common law or statute, you want relatively stable rules of the road so you can live your life and do business with some degree of predictability. And when you're in the media - and pretty much everyone reading this blog is likely in the media - law becomes particularly important. You have a host of things that can come up:

libel and defamation
people suing because they took whatever advice you offered and didn't like the results
infringement of intellectual property
actual or simply alleged copyright infringement
new potential uses of material, which means new rights to consider

That's just a start off the top of my head. However, the world does not move at the same speed of the law. Just a few years ago, you wouldn't have been able to talk about Twitter. Cell phone information delivery? Pretty new. Technology is stretching the bounds of where material can appear and in what context legal issues can arise. That's why I'd suggest reading Can the law keep up with technology? on CNN.com. There aren't many answers, but a lot of questions you need to be considering.

Google Books Expands to Magazines

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:15:00 +0000

Scanning paper is scanning paper, so there should be little surprise that Google has already moved past just books and gone into magazines. (Thanks to Randy Hecht for pointing this out to me yesterday.) As I write this, there seem to be just under 90 titles available, including many that you've heard of. The number of issues varies. For example, in one case I noticed that the most recent issue was a year old, whereas for Popular Science, up to March 2009 was scanned in, going back to only 2000. Various issues of Mother Jones from the 1970s up through 2000 appeared, though not the whole run and nothing more recent.

That makes me wonder whether the magazine publishers have even known that this was going on. Remember that the book publishers were taken by surprise. As I understand copyright, depending on what permissions publishers may or may not have given, the question of whether anyone owes money to writers can be pretty confusing. National Geographic has been successful in arguing that reproductions on CDs of actual pages of past magazines are an extension of the original publishing, and so may be covered under the rights they licensed, even if writers or photographers granted only limited rights. Would inclusion in such a format also be governed? I have no idea. I know offhand that a number of the titles have never asked for all rights, exclusive or not.

And what if the publishers didn't know? Are we going to see another class action suit? Will any of the writers' organizations get involved? Will anyone other than the publishers have standing to sue? I see a lot of questions and few clear answers.

Gresham's Law of the Web: Crap Content Quashes Quality

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:54:00 +0000

This is actually a link to a post I did on BNET a couple of days ago. People have asked me what damage writer mills can really cause. Here's my answer - and it's a much bigger picture than how much some writers make:

Gresham's Law of the Web: Crap Content Quashes Quality

Be Wary of Intelius People Search

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:46:00 +0000

I've mentioned Intelius at times as one place to pay for more extensive information on people than you might get from free Internet-based services (though depending on what you need, spending any money at all is a waste). It's rarely needed, however there can be times in reporting when you could use more background. Only, it turns out that Intelius has a bad habit of deceptive marketing, as TechCrunch notes:

They are still selling people information that you can find on other sites like WhitePages.com for free. And during and immediately after the transaction, users are asked if they want $10 cash back. If they click yes, they are signed up for a $25/month credit card subscription.

Consumer complaints continue to flood the company. 1,159 consumer complaints have been filed with the Better Business Bureau in the last 36 months. There are another 214 complaints on RipoffReport. And they have had to deal with class action lawsuits in both Washington and California. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

So if you need information that isn't readily available, find another source. Who needs this type of deceptive headache, or the people who would use such tactics?

HP Competes with Google on Books - Only Smarter

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:47:00 +0000

Hewlett-Packard, which, aside from PCs, is a giant in imaging, is taking on Google on the book front and has thrown the gauntlet down via a partnership with the University of Michigan, one of Google's most important partners in its online book offering, because it has one of the great academic research libraries. First, check the story I wrote at BNET for the details. I really do think that HP has outsmarted Google on its own territory.

That's the view from the business and tech front, but let's consider what this means for writers. Remember that there's still wrangling over negotiations on the class action suit by writers and publishers. (I opted out, considering it a bad deal, so don't have a direct personal stake in it.) The HP announcement would seem likely to have a big impact on how the discussions are going:

Google is going to point to this as proof that there is competition and that it's not closing things off.

The writers and publishers should argue that the HP deal shows that there's no need to grab rights going forward.

The judge might well see the HP deal as proof that handing over rights to so-called orphaned works (still in copyright but the rights holder difficult to ascertain or find) is bad from a market view because it would provide a sanctioned advantage to one company over another.

My short take, for whatever it's worth, is that the HP entry is going to do more to kill the rights grab than almost anything else that could have happened. On the balance, the argument becomes that there's no need for a special deal and that Google or any other company can clearly go into business looking at public domain works and that they don't need to have an extraordinary access to the intellectual property rights of individuals or organizations.

Furthermore, this gives Google a competitive kick in the rear. Since HP is doing it, why not Xerox, which is also big in imaging? Why not Amazon? IBM? It's a case where more is merrier, at least for those of us who own book rights. In fact, I'm wondering why some of the organized writers groups don't do something equal to HP's tactics. Instead of protesting, often long after the horse is out of the barn, some activity, create something practical instead. How about partnering with an Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Xerox or someone who might have the wherewithal to create a competing service. Think of it as an iUniverse that is actually effective - able to store scanned or reproduced books, create paper copies on demand, take and fulfill orders, split revenues. Negotiate with a few and use that as leverage to get a better deal out of one, rather than getting tied into an Amazon "you can have 35 percent" deal. That would be real activism, because it could be effective and makes the market system work for writers, rather than the other way around.

Image courtesy of stock.xchng user designkryt.

Wired on Demand Media

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 13:14:00 +0000

I've covered some of the financial background of Demand Media and its writer mill, Demand Studios, but I'd strong suggest that people also read this article in Wired. It looks at the operational model of the company, which is essentially a virtual factory making money off piecework by writers, videographers, and, soon, photographers.

The process is automatic, random, and endless, a Stirling engine fueled by the world’s unceasing desire to know how to grow avocado trees from pits or how to throw an Atlanta Braves-themed birthday party. It is a database of human needs, and if you haven’t stumbled on a Demand video or article yet, you soon will. By next summer, according to founder and CEO Richard Rosenblatt, Demand will be publishing 1 million items a month, the equivalent of four English-language Wikipedias a year. Demand is already one of the largest suppliers of content to YouTube, where its 170,000 videos make up more than twice the content of CBS, the Associated Press, Al Jazeera English, Universal Music Group, CollegeHumor, and Soulja Boy combined. Demand also posts its material to its network of 45 B-list sites — ranging from eHow and Livestrong.com to the little-known doggy-photo site TheDailyPuppy.com — that manage to pull in more traffic than ESPN, NBC Universal, and Time Warner’s online properties (excluding AOL) put together. To appreciate the impact Demand is poised to have on the Web, imagine a classroom where one kid raises his hand after every question and screams out the answer. He may not be smart or even right, but he makes it difficult to hear anybody else.

The result is a factory stamping out moneymaking content. “I call them the Henry Ford of online video,” says Jordan Hoffner, director of content partnerships at YouTube. Media companies like The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, AOL, and USA Today have either hired Demand or studied its innovations. This year, the privately held Demand is expected to bring in about $200 million in revenue; its most recent round of financing by blue-chip investors valued the company at $1 billion.

Using sophisticated automation, computers decide on the topics and issue story assignments based on what does well in web searches and advertising terms. Equally automated analysis predicts how much revenue in search advertising the piece can bring in. Those that offer enough revenue are given the nod.

It's essentially a service article machine, turning out what might as well be front-of-book pieces at a cheap rate. Will it compete with all writing markets? No, because they can't get the research and work that many who hire writers need. However, does it undercut certain types of content? Absolutely. If you're used to writing quick how-tos or other service-type material, then as things move to the web, you are basically out of business. And can it affect all markets? I suspect it could, as the greatly lowered prices begin to affect perception of value.

Questex Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:11:00 +0000

B-to-B publisher Questex filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. It handled publications in a number of industries, including "technology, telecommunications, beauty, spa, travel, hospitality, leisure, home entertainment, landscape design, building services and natural resources.":

In a statement this afternoon, Questex Media Holdings Group said it had reached an agreement with senior lenders to reduce the company debt and provide “significant financing” to continue operations. Questex says that day-to-day operations will not be affected by the filing or the restructuring, and no job losses or magazine closures were expected.

Its ad pages declined by about a third in the first half of 2009, compared to 2008.

The Deadline Theme Song

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:39:00 +0000

As I'm under the gun on a project, here's a video clip of Steely Dan performing "Don't Take Me Alive" for all my professional brethren under the gun with the deadline police outside, megaphones blaring, "Drop the pen and come out with the manuscript over your head."

Interesting Source for Multimedia Training: YouTube

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:49:00 +0000

Clearly a business like YouTube thrives on the freely uploaded entries of people (though there are some sorts of revenue sharing deals available, as I understand). But instead of seeing it as a video equivalent of a writer mill, I'd suggest checking this link. It's the YouTube Reporters' Center. There's material clearly intended for the novice "citizen journalist," but if you're a word person who isn't used to the concept of moving cross medium, it's worth a stop. For example, you can get tips from TIME.com managing editor Josh Tyrangiel giving examples of how they look at the different forms of media -- text, video, photos -- and when they choose one over the other. Or Tavis Smiley from PBS on using unscripted questions to get a conversation rather than an interview. Some of the snippets here (they seem to be in the 3 to 5 minute range) may be too elementary, but if you can pick up a tip or two on moving to new media for the cost of watching some clips, it's a great return on your investment.

Writer Mill AllVoices.com Answers

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:11:00 +0000

The following came in as a comment on my post about AllVoices.com being a writer mill -- that is, wanting writers to provide content for little to no money. But I wanted to address it more directly, as it seems to come from AllVoices.com CEO Amra Tareen:

Erik, you are absolutely right the writers, photographers and citizens that can have their own website, search engine optimize the content, reach a global audience and build a community should develop their own site. As you 80% of blogs out there have an audience of one.

Allvoices is about people reporting news and opinion and discussing it with allvoices diverse community. The site automatically create context around the user reports with images, newsstories links, blogs and videos in real time. plus allvoices has a community from over 167 countries that contributes and share news. We have a recommendation engine that connects people together from all over the world. The program is an incentive not a salary. Also not everyone needs to join the incentive they can write for views, audience and connections.

Let's address the misconceptions and mistakes in this answer. Do most blogs have a small to non-existent audience? Absolutely. Then again, most blog are not intended to be anything more than outlets of self-expression. And when marketing and exposure is the intent, clearly you need to do work to get more of an audience, particularly an audience that can respond in a way that turns into more work. Or you might be looking for an audience, in which case you want to focus on your connection to them as the primary thing, not the connection to some publication or site.

As to the assertion that AllVoices "is about people reporting news and opinion and discussing it with allvoices diverse community," I have two words: horse shit. This is a business being run by a woman who apparently has an MBA from Harvard and was a partner at an early-stage VC fund. She has held multiple positions in high tech management. There are multiple Ph.D.s on the management team.

This is not some altruistic venture, folks. It's a business. So when I heard, "The program is an incentive not a salary," I think, "Sure, you want to pay peanuts to get the content that might give you something to sell." Here's the headline from the page on which the company describes the incentive program: "Build Your Brand. Gain Influence. Make Money." Let's take this in three steps:

You don't build your brand. You build their brand. The more content they have, the more they drive appearances in search engines and, ultimately, the more money they make.

Gain influence? You have got to be kidding. If I write a piece for the New York Times Magazine I gain some influence -- for that moment. If I write something that hits the front of HuffPo, for heaven's sake, I might get momentary influence. If I write for AllVoice, I get, "Who?"

Make money? I thought this was about brand?

According to the site, you can make a whopping 25 cents to $2 per thousand page views, and you only get the upper end if you can achieve a minimum of 100,000 views. If you'll remember a point I've made before, run of site ads are likely paying in the $10 per thousand range. To put that into perspective, I blog on a fairly high profile site, and even after building what I'm doing for well over a year, that's several months of page views for me.

AllVoices had claimed on its site in February that it hit the one million monthly visitor mark. In responding to Angela Hoy, it claimed 2.7 million. Maybe. I checked Alexa.com, got the percentage of global page views and compared it to that of my own domain. Doing the math, it sounds as if the company is maybe 1.5 million page views a month. You always have to take these site estimates with a grain of salt, but it certainly sounds odd compared to the company's claims. It would also mean that they're bringing in maybe $15,000 a month, which is nothing for a company like this. In other words, the chance of making significant income from the venture might as well be zero.

So there's no money and no real branding advantage. To me, that translates into no reason at all to work for yet another writer mill.

Another Writer Mill: AllVoices.com

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:00:00 +0000

I'm mostly going to point to Angela Hoy's post about what appears to be yet another writer mill: AllVoices.com. An important point she makes is about minimum pay-out numbers. As most writers don't make diddly at these sites, a minimum aggregated sum for getting paid likely means that most of the earnings remain in the pocket of the publisher. Here's how the site responded to her email to it:

The new program is about building a personal brand, writer's portfolio and citizen journalism. We try very hard to help users make money by teaching them how to promote their material (and promoting it ourselves). Also, we're bringing in partners that will sponsor the top writers. Passionate and quality writers can build great momentum and earn money. We're driving 2.7 million visitors to our site each month. Even though we say "the money you make depends on how well you do", for a lot of writers it's not about the money. It's about writing and sharing their opinions.

Now, let's assume $10 cost per thousand for advertising. That's at least $27,000 a month in revenue, or $324,000 a year. That's actually not a huge amount for a business, but, still, it's a business, not a charity. But it is trying to position itself as a place that will "promote" what writers do. You might as well create your own site and work to develop an audience that's interested in you, rather than grabbing some tiny percentage of whatever the site's overall traffic is.

Analyze the Web Site Before Paying the Ad Money

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:31:00 +0000

PageOneLit.com will say that it's:

# 1 Literary Newsletters Website out of 1,770,000 (GOOGLE)

# 3 Newsletter Website search out of 90,200,000 (GOOGLE)

# 9 Author Interview Search out of 4,000,000 (GOOGLE)

Owner (I think) John Weaver will tell you that in a letter that his site was listed on the 2009 Writers Digest best 101 web sites (which it was, but more on that in a moment). At least that's a letter that he's been known to send to people who have forthcoming books. And then he notes that for a mere $250, he will offer:

A full personal interview page at Pageonelit.com PageoneLit.com and AuthorsPressReleases.com with your photo, bio, book summary, short book review, etc...This is a one time fee for long range promotional goals. Note: Your interview page will stay up forever. Note: Your interview page will stay up forever. This is your interview page to market your book as you like. Plus AuthorsPressReleases.com & Books-and-Authors.net

The claims seem to be accurate, and lord knows book authors want sales. But you're in business to get exposure and results, not to waste money, so let's get beyond the surface for a moment. Here's how Writers Digest described the site:

Page ONE is a one-stop shop for author interviews, contest news, inspirational quotes and writing resources.

That's significantly different from endorsing it as a way of getting people to buy your book.

Google rankings are fine, if the particular search term someone uses is what they might use to look for the book you are offering because, after all, search marketing is something that depends on specific intent of the audience, not a general nosing about. If your title would be of immediate interest to someone searching for a literary newsletter, then you're set. If not, then the search results aren't necessarily going to do you a spit of good.

And Google rankings aside, if you are appearing somewhere, then you want traffic flowing in, because only a small percentage of the people are going to be interested enough and motivated enough to buy the book. So what are the traffic rankings of PageOneLit? Not so hot. According to Compete.com, which samples large panels of Internet consumers for their surfing habits, since January 2009, the average monthly number of unique visitors has been around 1,000. That's a pretty damned small number. To put it into perspective, even my domain gets more traffic, and given that you either have to be looking for me or, more likely, something I wrote about freelance writing, that is a sad state of affairs.

Granted, the sample size for both is low, as noted by Compete.com, which measures U.S. traffic to web sites. But that, in its own way, is a clear statement as well. To triangulate, I also checked Alexa.com, whose "percentage of Internet users" going to a site depends on knowing how many users they think there are, but sill gives a potential comparison. That site suggests that my domain has been receiving almost three times as much traffic over the last three months, and, I cannot stress enough, that number is nothing to brag about, as Internet stats go.

To put it differently, PageOneLit.com gets hardly any traffic. If you've traditionally published and are making, say, $1 in royalties per copy, then you need to sell more than 250 companies in addition to what you would have sold to talk about the investment in "exposure" as offering a return on your investment. So the interview is up, maybe gets the majority of its notice in a month and then drops off radically in effectiveness, because that's how traffic works on the web. As in anything else, you get the biggest boost while you're top of mind. So let's be generous and say that the primary sales pull-through lasts for two months. That would mean you'd need to see 250 sales out of 2,000 visitors, meaning a conversion rate of 12.5 percent. In my experience in direct marketing, that is a total pipe dream.

Before you believe the come-ons of people preying on the desire of writers to be read, check the numbers. There are better ways to spend your time and money.

DOJ Shoots Holes Though Google Book Settlement

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:50:00 +0000

If any one business dealing represented the potential to reshape media, it’s the Google Books class action settlement. The agreement has received some heavy criticism, though, clearly, the publishers and the one professional writers’ group, the Authors Guild, involved in the negotiations seem to support it. (Usual caveat: I’m a book author who opted out of the settlement, which suggests that I see flaws, at least as to how it could affect me.) But now the Department of Justice filed a last minute memo in the case, and it gives a strong view of the problems the DOJ sees and the difficulty facing Google and its would-be publishing partners.

For the rest of the post (on BNET), click here.

Checking Language at the Door to a Story

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:12:00 +0000

A colleague of mine, Laura Laing, who writes at times for the blog of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA), posted yesterday regarding coverage of South African middle distance runner Caster Semenya being intersex -- that is, possesses both male and female reproductive organs. Laing's point was that the much of the press used the term hermaphrodite, "an outdated medical term that is no longer considered appropriate by U.S. journalistic standards."

An interesting discussion, as Laura's posts generally are. I found it raised a troublesome more general question. When language becomes obsolete but you don't regularly report on the topic, how do you know it? I've never even heard the term intersex before. That is unsurprising because I run into the topic about as often as discussions of lacrosse. (I'm fairly certain that I've even thought of curling, as in the team sport played on ice, more often.)

Just a moment's thought shows that the linguistic considerations go far beyond gender issues. Any time a journalist is in unfamiliar water, potential mines lie about. What if the topic is business? Technology? Art? Music? Construction? Cooking?

Curling?

Other than the transitory verbal fad -- whether groovy or rad -- language develops slowly enough that the changes come like a meandering tide. You look down and suddenly realize that the dry beach sand is covered with a thin sheet of sea water. However, if you're off in the mountains, you don't notice.

So how do journalists know that language has changed when they haven't paid attention? There's no office memo, particularly if, as is true of many of us, you don't work out of a news room. I don't have an answer, but then until this morning I didn't even realize that I had the question. Perhaps all journalists need to add one more type of fact-checking, taking a moment when using terms that we rarely employ to see whether they are still in play in their respective fields.

Image courtesy of stock.xchng user dewlittle.

Writer Mills Making Money on Articles

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:43:00 +0000

I've gone on at length about the money that Demand Studios has made off paying writers a pittance. But payment gets far worse at some of the other mills. However, it doesn't mean that those companies aren't getting an astounding mark-up from their customers.

Let's start with Helium.com. As I've noted, if you crunch through the numbers they've made public, the average article makes 80 cents. (Ironically, while searching I found a piece I wrote about the company back in 2007 when it introduced its "Marketplace," with writers setting prices from $20 to $200 and Helium taking a 20 percent commission for the massive undertaking of listing the piece.)

But have you ever wondered how much Helium charges for what you write? I did a little snooping and got a price list directly from the company itself. It still has the Marketplace, only the customer sets the price and lets writers compete for the job. Great, eh? But the real eye-opener is for that stock content it offers. Purchase fewer than 25 articles and you're paying ... $30 each. Up the volume to between 25 and 49 and it's $25 each. That's every time the article sells. Quite the mark-up.

It's not the only case of a writer mill charging vastly more for content than it pays. Look at AssociatedContent.com. A typical online advertising CPM, or cost per thousand page views, is $10. If the ads delivered with an article get 5,000 views, that's $50 in revenue at a conservative estimate. How much does the writer get paid? Between $1.50 and $2.50 . For 50,000 page views, or $500 in revenue, the payment to the writer is between $75 and $100. Let me tell you from experience in blogging commercially: the chance of getting 50,000 hits on a collection of articles even over the period of a month is pretty flipping slim unless you have many up. (By the way, since 2006, AssociatedContent has racked up about $21.4 million in VC money. It claims such clients as Autobytel.com, IAC, Mojo, and GoDaddy.com. The CEO was formerly chief marketing officer at CBS Interactive and, before that, was at Google for four years.)

I don't have the numbers on the flat fees that AC may pay, but I do on Delegate2, otherwise known as PureContent.com, which is the firm that shows up when searching for the former name on Google. You may remember my reporting that the company offered $3 for a "simple" 250 word article. What do they get for the short simple articles from their clients? According to a price list from the company, that would be $16. And for a more complicated article that has writers spending "extra hours researching your subject"? Try $50 for the same 250 word article. So what are they paying the writer? $10? For hours of research?

These mark-ups of 500 percent are large and show how much the writer mills depend on authors opting for orts. There's a reason I refer to this as piecework or a company store. Let's use one more term: sucker bait. They're looking for people who don't realize how much more money work can provide.

Google Fast Flip as the New News Stand

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:14:00 +0000

Google has released into beta a new service called Fast Flip, which provides an intriguing approach to making news media work on the web. I'll point you to my post on BNET Technology, which also has links to the service itself.

Freelance Writing Versus a Freelance Business

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:24:00 +0000

I think part of the reason for the ongoing debate over working for what I've come to call writer mills is a gulf of understanding. However, I think the gulf is actually one-sided. The gap isn't between "experienced" writers versus "newcomers." It's not between "professional" and "amateur" or "talented" versus "pedestrian." The gap is between those who understand from experience the possibilities and requirements of freelancing as a business versus people who think of making some money off their writing. I see this as an underlying issue in the ongoing debate over Demand Studios and the other writer mills.

The writing and business camps, if I can put it that way at least for the moment, have different outlooks. The writing camp wants to make some money, maybe a significant sum, and wants to spend time only writing or editing instead of drumming up business, going through queries, and the like. And if someone understand the ramifications of that choice, and the potential upside of the other, it's fine. I'm convinced, however, that a good many don't.

To understand how experienced, monetarily-successful freelancers approach what they do, you have to understand that they are running businesses. It's not that money is the only measure of success, although it's an important one for practical reasons. You must make enough money to cover:

higher taxes of independent work
expenses that can run far more than you might think
sick time
vacation time
health insurance
life insurance
disability insurance
all personal expenses
retirement
profit for the business above your "salary"

In teaching writers business planning, and the course is generally for writers who are established to some degree, I more often than not come across shock when people sit down and do the calculations. They are high. Of course writers want to have the satisfaction of seeing their work published and knowing it's being read, but none of that can happen on any meaningful scale if the money isn't there to support the desire. Every writer is a media company in miniature. If the revenue isn't there, the writer can't get paid. Without sufficient income, you don't have the options to do the more rewarding work.

That realization begins to color how you look at writing. Sure, you can write something really interesting at a low rate (or for nothing, as I do in this blog and often, though not always, in writing plays). However, you need enough income to cover your expenses. The higher payment must subsidize the lower and the work you might do for the love of it.

As my colleague Michelle Rafter notes in her blog, it translates in part into freelancing being about selling. That's because sales is intrinsic parts of running any business, whether writing or masonry. There are other tasks as well, including marketing (a little different from selling), business development, financial analysis, planning ... also taking in new ideas, reading the work of others, contemplating, professional development, and, not to be ignored, constantly improving and honing your work. Also occasional rest, or else you burn out.

These are things that become impossible when you work in a low pay, high volume paradigm. (If the pay is low enough, you can call that a pair-of-dimes. Sorry, couldn't resist.) When I see people considering work with the writer mills calculating what they can do, they make assumptions of the volume of work they can both get and undertake. "Sure, I can knock off three pieces in an hour, so I should be able to do 21 in a day." But that includes two massive assumptions.

One is that the stream of work is available. A person who does work for Demand Media has told me that the work isn't unlimited and that there are times when the assignment stream temporarily dries up. If that happens and you've committed to depending on this source of work, you are screwed because you are unlikely to find other outlets quickly enough. It goes to Michelle's point about sales cycles. Writers who are well-established in their careers are constantly marketing because a) only some of those queries will turn into assignments, and b) you need a variety of sales cycles so the business doesn't become feast or famine. When you've gone down the path of waiting for someone to give you business, then you depend too heavily on one source. If it slows, even if you start marketing like crazy today, you may not have work for another few weeks. Planning on favorable circumstances is setting yourself up for an eventual crash.

The second assumption is that you can keep up the pace. "No problem," I'm sure some say. Well, let's put it this way. As someone who wrote me correctly calculated, it would take 7 pieces a day five days a week to gross $2100 a month -- an inadequate figure for almost anyone, I'd argue, if you sit down and calculate all the expenditures I mention above. Beyond that, that would be 2400 words a day at least. Over 52 weeks it becomes 624,000 words, or enough to fill six large novels. Now I can write large volumes of publishable material if I know the topic well, and I've been known to write in the 300K to 500K words range in a year. But 624K? I'd find it impossible to maintain that type of volume and my health and sanity at the same time. It's not just the writing, because wire and daily newspaper reporters are used to cranking it out, but finding the topics and doing the research. If you're covering hard news, there are always releases and events and incidents that offer fodder. But evergreen articles? Anything but easy.

Penny a word work was tough in the 1940s and 1950s when pulp fiction writers had to bang it out to make a living, and most quickly got tired and aged. But with today's cost of living, getting a few cents a word is a recipe for disaster. Even if it works today, it will soon blow up in your face. And the writers who have been freelancing for years and sustaining themselves and families know that because they've seen the bad times as well as the good.

Mediabistro and the Reputation Economy

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:05:00 +0000

You’ve heard of the New Economy. You’re heard of the Old Economy. There’s the Freemium Economy and the Link Economy and, as everyone knows after the past year, the Crashing Economy. But now we have a new invention from WebMediaBrands in its guise as MediaBistro: the Reputation Economy:

BNET Media story

Blogger Claiming Newspaper Rip-Off Goes on Video Attack

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 11:40:00 +0000

I came across this story on Bloggasm, a blog by Simon Owens focusing on new media and online journalism. A freelance writer and blogger, Tina Dupay, sent a column via email to the Tampa Tribune, which decided to run the article without notification or payment. So the blogger took the issue to YouTube after sending an invoice for $75:

She's received support online as well as an eventual offer by the paper to pay. Normally I'd advise registering copyright in a timely fashion and then sending a demand letter quoting how much statutory infringement can run. But this seems to have worked. Shows you what public pressure will do. Wonder if her name is pronounced Do Pay?