When you're on a tight deadline, you need information fast. Glennda Chui offers her best advice for finding the people and papers you need. Among her tips: "If all else fails, try directory assistance — either on-line or on the phone — and see if you can get the source's home number. You'd be surprised how many people are listed."
All About Freelancing archive
At the NASW Annual Meeting in February of 2004, two experts offered their insights in a workshop devoted to freelance contract negotiation. According to Erik Sherman, "The best first thing to do is say, 'I'd like to see your first North American Serial Rights Contract, please,'" while Kraig Baker suggests, "If you want to be successful, your first tactic should be whatever tactic keeps the publisher's lawyer out of it." Thanks to Alan Kelly of Verbatim Instant Transcripts, this transcript.
(This is Part 1 of a much-expanded version of an article that is scheduled to appear in the second edition of NASW's A Field Guide for Science Writers, edited by Deborah Blum, Mary Knudson, and Robin Marantz Henig, which Oxford University Press is scheduled to publish next year.)
Do you need an agent to sell your book? How do you find a good one? In November 2003, The nasw-freelance list featured a discussion on this topic with much advice from experienced authors. Highlights (and there were lots) are collected here.
Past time for a roundup of a few Web sites particularly useful to freelance science writers, not least because they are all free. All but one, anyway.
Secondary rights are the rights to resell your work after its first publication. With all-rights contracts growing like kudzu, some authors' groups are trying to work out collective deals and micropayments in order to facilitate reselling stories. Here, freelance Jeff Hecht relates some recent news on these efforts.
Looming over the otherwise idyllic life of the freelance writer is the dark cloud known as health insurance, for which the only silver lining seems to be the silver lining the pockets of the insurance companies. In this report, David Lindley provides a snapshot of how NASW freelances are getting their insurance (or not), and provides some recommendations, both for the individual freelance and for NASW as a whole.
Contracts, rights grabs, negotiations — What advice are magazine editors getting from their lawyers, and how does it affect the freelance? Robin Marantz Henig sat in at a meeting of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and files this report from the other side.
In early March 2003, the NASW-freelance list held a lively discussion about query letters — their value, their formality, their structure, and their success. What follows is edited from that discussion.