Fab Freelance Writing Blog

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A ghostwriter* produces material, usually books or articles, which will be published under someone else’s name. Publishers hire ghostwriters to write books for celebrities in various fields like news, entertainment, business and sport.

It works like this. Someone convinces the celebrity that he/ she should write a book by waving a large advance, or offering another inducement, such as the opportunity to get publicity. The celebrity agrees, and the publisher hires a writer, who will gain (limited) access to the celebrity in order to write the book.

The books are published under the celebrity’s name, with no credit given to the ghostwriter. Occasionally you may see a book appear with “as told to” and a writer’s byline, but usually the writer writes in obscurity.

How to get ghostwriting gigs

If you’ve published a couple of books, you can offer your services to publishers as a ghostwriter. Or, you can approach a well-known person and suggest that they might like to “write” a book. If you have an agent, you can suggest to him that you’re up for ghostwriting gigs that he can hunt up for you.

Business people often have writers “ghost” articles for them. These ghostwritten articles are published under the business person’s name, in print or on the Web. I do a lot of ghostwriting for business people in my copywriting practice.

Ghostwriting has its pitfalls, as do most kinds of writing, and I’ll look at those in another blog post.

* Sometimes appears as “ghost writer” online.

Technorati Tags: ghostwriter, ghost writer, book editor, POD, print on demand, self-publishing

Want to be discovered? Writers have never had it so good. Not only are people falling all over themselves to hire you online, you can sit back and wait for people to find you. Yes, you really can be discovered as a writer online.
So what do you need to do to get discovered?

* Get a blog;

* Network via the social media - MySpace, LinkedIn etc;

* Make contacts, by getting jobs, and getting people to pass your name on to others;

* Lather, rinse, repeat. The more visible you are online, the more chances you have to get discovered.

Resources - my writing ebooks can help

* Blogging For Dollars: How to become a career blogger — in your PJs, if you want - become a career blogger and get known;

* Writing For The Web - every business online needs writers;

* First Steps in Your Copywriting Career: cash in on the demand for business writers - to help you to get your first few jobs, so you make contacts, and get discovered by someone who can give you a BIG contract.

Technorati Tags: freelance writer, freelance writing, blogs, blogging, make money online

One of the major arts of freelance writing is the pitch. I’m preparing a report on how to pitch to magazine editors, publishers, and clients, so watch for it if you want to increase your pitching success rate.

A pitch is a query or proposal designed to get you freelance writing work.

Email pitches and the subject line
You’ll be pitching many of your contacts via email, and very few writers know how to pitch via email so that their email message gets read and isn’t deleted or automatically sent to the Junk folder.

How to craft your subject line: drop “cute”
I get around 400 email messages a day. Most of your contacts will have a similarly overflowing inbox. Therefore, it’s vital that your contacts know what your message is about, without having to open the message.
I’ve worked as a tech journalist for many years, and over the past year “cute” has become popular in headlines in press releases and in general emails from contacts. Unfortunately this supposedly attention-getting device makes email messages look like spam, so they’re treated like spam and junked.

Your subject line is not a headline
Writing a cute headline is fine, but if you use it as your email’s subject line, it can mean that your pitch is deleted unread, and your email address added to a blacklist.

People scan their subject lines looking for junk. I look at my inbox, and checkmark every dubious subject line, and then delete those unread. Any which resemble spam are checkmarked and sent to the Spam folder, also unread. I just haven’t got time to read everything. Neither have your contacts.

Tell them what you’re sending them in the subject line
I craft pitch subject lines so that it’s obvious, like this -

* Query from Angela Booth: How to get your emails read

* Proposal from Angela Booth: The Get Your Email Delivered Fast Book

* News from Angela Booth: get your emails read

Etc.

Make it obvious WHAT your message is, and FROM WHOM it is. If you’re just starting out as a freelance writer, you won’t have name recognition, but over a few months of sending pitches, you will have. So put your name in the subject line.

You also need to make it clear what your pitch is about.

Pitching via email is fast. However, you need to think from the point of view of your recipient to get the process to work for you.

Technorati Tags: freelance writing, pitch, query, proposal