Tag Archives: Freelancing

Don’t sell yourself short: Advice from a social media queen

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I recently had the chance to interview Aimee Davison, a Montrealer who has gone from underpaid actress to Social Media Guru with her blog, 100 Jobs. Asking her about how she did it, I also wanted to know what advice she had for writers, specifically, and her main concept was one that most will agree with:

Don’t sell yourself short.

Indeed, the quote I liked best from this particular interview was:

Do you want to be known as the $10 freelancer? Would you put that on your business card? If no, stop accepting a pittance and pursue bigger clients with better professional standards.

To find out more about Aimee and read further advice for writers, check out my article, Writing Tips from a Social Media Queen, up now at Writing for Dollars.

When to fire a client, in 6 easy steps

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I’ve fired clients before. It’s not something I like doing, but it happens. Sometimes it can be hard to tell whether a particular individual will become a problem before you agree to work for them. Thanks to this great, concise WritersWeekly article, “Getting Pooped Upon… and Six Other Reasons to Reject A Client,” by David Geer, you now have a checklist for potential uh-oh’s to look for and nip before they blossom into huge pains in the bum.

You’re welcome.

I particularly identify with “they are surprised you actually want money.” Um, yes. Oddly enough, we Professional Writers do charge for our services. Sometimes, you will not be able to afford us. Suck it up and get the money for the fee so you’ll have it done right the first time, or else get your “friend who writes good” to do the work, and see how far that little exercise in futility goes.

Missing from this list is the “oh, I just need a few edits to my website,” which turns into “oh, you have to actually edit the code for my website, otherwise I won’t be able to, like, upload the text myself, or get an unpaid intern to do this dirty work for me!” I do not edit code. I edit text. Words. You know, the things that form sentences? If you want me to muck about in your backend, you’d better be paying me code monkey fees. Look those up and then see how you feel.

Editors like money too

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I realize there’s next to no money in writing erotica, as I run an erotica website myself and make no money off of this project, but this is simply ridiculous. Here’s a copy of an email I just sent to Ellora’s Cave Publishing’s Editor-in-Chief, Kelli Collins, upon reading this unbelievable “job posting,” and its insultingly low payment.

Dear Ms. Collins,

I recently saw your ad on JournalismJobs.com in search of copy and content editors, but I believe there must be a typo in your posting. Does your company really only pay $0.0075 cents per word (i.e. less than 1 cent per word) for content editing, and $0.00175 per word for copy editing? This seems unbelievable, as you say the typical project is a minimum of 10,000 words, which by my account works out to a pay scale of $75 per book edited, content-wise, or $17.50 per book for copy editing.

Are you aware that this payscale is far below industry standards? According to Writers.ca, the website of the Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC), the average payment for editing is between $500 and $20,000 per project, or $30 to $60 per hour. These are figures that have not changed substantially over the past 30 years, and I would certainly hope that rates for professional editing would not have dropped so significantly!

Please let me know if these are, in fact, your rates for editing work, or if there has been some mistake, as I would certainly like to know why “the premier publisher of erotic romance novels” cannot, seemingly, offer their freelance editors a more competitive wage.

Sincerely,
Laura Roberts
–
Writer, editor, button tapper

http://buttontapper.com

If you’re going to pay people for their work, you should pay them at least the minimum by industry standards. If kids flipping burgers are guaranteed a minimum wage, then why shouldn’t writers and editors receive equally fair treatment? Ads like this make me mad, not just because it’s all about quantity over quality, but also because it shows just how little the person offering the job will respect the person who does the job. I don’t expect respect, but I do expect to be treated like a human being, rather than a wage slave. If I wanted that, I’d go take some office job pushing papers in a cubicle, à la Office Space.

What do you think?