We’ve finalized our itinerary for our next big RV trip. We’re once again taking our family and business on the road. We’ll be running our business from campgrounds that offer wireless Internet access and have plans to visit most of our relatives and many old friends along the way on this trip. We’re leaving Maine on August 19th. It usually starts cooling off in Maine in late August so we’ll be heading west and south in just the niche of time!
Ah, but what a kettle of controversy we stirred up with last week’s article. In case you missed it, we came out publicly against those so-called “Amazon.com Best Seller” programs, which are very good at taking money from hopeful authors while teaching them how to manipulate the Amazon.com best seller database, thus giving the false impression that their book is any good and is selling in great numbers. Basically, these programs teach you how to get a bunch of people to buy your book on the same day, around the same time, making your book, albeit for just a few minutes or hours, an Amazon.com Best Seller in a certain category. You then get to say your book is an “Amazon.com Best Seller.”
This Week:
Would you like to get an abundance of article assignments without writing a single query letter? By getting sub-contact work from public relations agencies, I wrote over 100 newsletter articles, a professional column in a monthly trade publication, and a chapter in a travel guidebook. Sub-contract work gave me the opportunity to write for large, prestigious companies such as Bell & Howell, Grant Thornton, LaSalle National Bank and many others.
After being laid off four times in as many years, I knew I could do better in freelance writing than as an executive secretary.
I had been writing piecemeal for a few magazines and newspapers for years; however, once my day job evaporated, I put all my energy into freelancing.
Frank, age 12, who has always been the class clown (before we started homeschooling him anyway) has a very quick, very bright sense of humor. He can really keep us rolling most days.
I received the following inquiry from a reader two weeks ago:
Angela,
I saw an ad in a well-known zine that offered a “free telephone
seminar” about “how any author can become an Amazon.com bestseller.”
What are your thoughts on their message?
C.
This Week:
A few weeks back I was especially busy in my communications consulting business. One late evening, as I pondered how I’d get everything done in the brief time available to me, I made a note to visit the Yellow Pages the next day to find a transcription service. I write a lot of feature articles for the employee newsletter of an insurance company, and most assignments involve interviews with executives whom I quote for the stories.
Upon finding out that I was pregnant in 2004, I made the decision that I was going to become a freelance writer so that I could be a work-at-home mom. Staying home to raise my daughter means so much to me, yet like most families we rely on two incomes. Although I wasn’t new to writing, I was new to freelancing so I spent months reading every book I could my hands on regarding the subject. Three months before my daughter was born, I quit my job and dove right into freelance writing.
