The Language of Freelance Marketing
by:
Mridu Khullar
For freelancers, knowing the basic language “before” they begin can be a valuable lesson in earning a few extra dollars in that initial stage. Once
I started my freelancing career, I knew nothing of rights, coincidental submissions, querying or varied
payment rates. All I knew was-- I could write. Everything else, I learnt on the job. You wish too. But simply to do your stay a little less frustrating, and a lot more enjoyable, I’ve listed a few concepts that wish help you vastly
as you contact editors and try to do them pay you for your words.
Copyright
It’s yours as before long as you have those words on paper. You don’t have to register copyright to claim it, tho'
if you’re writing a novel or book, it’s a wise investment. Registered copyright is proof enough for a court of law, and is extremely valuable in cases of dispute. However, for short materials like articles or essays, copyright needn’t be registered. You can however, club a number of essays and register them together.
Reprints
Reprints are articles, essays or pieces that have already been published. If you own the copyright (more on that later), and want to sell the piece once more to another publication, it wish be termed as a reprint. Most publications pay more less for reprints and several don’t accept them at all. However, for a freelancer, sometimes reprints bring more financial gain
than innovational articles do.
Rights
Earlier, magazines asked for all rights to articles. Even as today, in many a countries, including my own (India), most magazines want to support all the rights ensuring that the articles in their magazine remain unique to them. However, this trend no longer exists in America, North american nation
and England, and is fashioning headway into different nations as well. Now, all but all magazines in these nations refrain from asking for all rights to the work. Others have opened their doors for reprints, which is a boon for writers. Let’s look at several of the several kinds of rights.
All Rights: This means that the article must not have been publicised before, and cannot be used once more after it has been publicised in this particular publication. Ne'er
give up all rights for a meager sum of money. If you’re commerce all rights, do sure you’re being paid what you deserve.
First Serial Rights: These commonly pertain to several country. For e.g., 1st North American Serial Rights, or 1st British Serial Rights. Tho'
the article mustn’t have been publicised in the country prior to this, you are free to submit elsewhere after publication.
Electronic Rights: As more and more publications archive their articles online, they are asking for electronic rights. This means that they can carry your article online. Commonly a time-period is specified. Also, electronic rights are commonly non-exclusive, meaning that you can sell this article elsewhere tho'
it wish continue to appear on this publication’s website.
CD-ROM Rights: A fairly new addition to the list of rights, this means that the publication is free to use your activity on a Compact Disk.
Anthology Rights: Several publications publish yearly anthologies (collection of articles or stories). In such cases, they ask for these rights for possible inclusion of your activity in their anthology.
First-time Rights: Your article must not have appeared anyplace
worldwide. You are however, free to sell your activity elsewhere after publication.
One-time Rights: Your activity may have appeared elsewhere. Publications asking for one-time rights require that you let them use your activity once. It may or may not have been publicised before and you are free to use it after publication.
Payment on Acceptance vs. Payment on Publication
You’ve written an article and the editor has authorised it. Now comes the time to pay you. Well, not quite. Many a publications prefer to pay their writers on publication, meaning once
the article appears in print. In established magazines, the time between acceptance and publication can be months, so you may write an article in January, and be paid for it in June. Always try to get paid on acceptance.
Clips
When you write a query, the editor wants to see more than simply a nice idea. She wants to cognize whether you can do it justice, whether you’ll be able to carry it through or not. For this, she necessarily to see samples of your writing. Publicised samples are termed as clips. Just stated, you photocopy the pages of around three magazines in which your articles have appeared and send them to the editor.
If you haven’t been published, you’ll still need to send in samples of your writing. For this, write out an article or two related to the subject of the magazine, and send them off with your query.
Lead Time
A magazine commonly asks writers to submit their activity well in advance so that there are no last-minute goof-ups. Magazines, especially acknowledged ones, cannot risk delaying an issue because of a single writer. This period is commonly termed as lead-time. Tho'
most magazines have lead times of around three months, many a have periods of more than six months.
Kill Fees
Editors are always “killing” articles that they’ve assigned. To the writer, this could mean wasted time, as well as money. To reimburse the writer for her research and hours put in, magazines commonly have a 20-50% kill fee. Just put, if your query has been accepted, but your article isn’t publicised for several reason, you’ll be given a kill fee for your work.
Expenses
For your article, you may have to interview a subject. In several cases, you may have to do long-distance calls or spend a few bucks on travel, lunches and different expenses. All such expenditures incurred for the assignment are commonly paid for by the publication. You should be really clean on this before you get on the assignment. Usually, editors wish agree to reasonable expenditure refunds.
Bios and Photos
Haven’t you sometimes detected
how the author’s image or contact information appears aboard
the article? Yours could too. Tho'
this isn’t always done, sometimes editors may agree to put up a exposure or a short bio beside your article. It ne'er
hurts to ask.
Simultaneous Submissions
Although this is thing
magazines advise against, it isn’t always feasible waiting three months for your hot idea to strike a note with the editor you’ve submitted it to. This is wherever
coincidental submissions move in. Tho'
I truly warn you against submitting the same article to more than one publisher (I did it, and I regretted it), I do advocate coincidental queries.
Now that you’re armed with the basic knowledge, you’re all set to go out into the big, bad earth of publishing, and show them what you’ve got. Nice luck!
About The Author
Mridu Khullar is the editor-in-chief of www.WritersCrossing.com, a free online magazine for writers. Sign up for the free weekly account to get a complimentary e-book with 400+ paying markets. As well check out her e-book, "Knock Their Socks Off! A Freelance Writer's Manual to Query Letters That Sell," accessible at http://www.writerscrossing.com/queries.html
This article was denote
on Jan
22, 2005
