Sell All Rights to an Article? No Way!

Even if you don’t have a particular attachment to an article you’ve written, it’s not a good business practice to sell all rights. In fact, it’s best to have a standard policy of never selling all rights.

Consider the quoted words below of Dennis E. Hensley, who advises writers to write only about topics they feel they can modify for a variety of audiences. He and Holly G. Miller co-wrote The Freelance Writer’s Handbook: How to Succeed in a Competitive Business. In their book, Hensley tells about one piece he wrote in 1975, “How to Be an Effective Listener,” that sold to a total of 21 markets and earned him more than $6,500. Hensley said:

You cannot sell all rights to your articles and be competitive. It’s impossible. If you work two weeks doing interviews and research for a major feature, and then one week writing it, and a fourth week revising, typing and submitting it, you’ll produce only a dozen features a year.

“And that’s O.K., as long as you sell this year’s dozen again next year to new markets while you are writing a dozen new features. At the end of five years you’ll have sixty features in the mail simultaneously, and believe me, that’s being competitive. But if you sell all rights, you will be starting from scratch with each new assignment. You’ll have one manuscript in the mail at a time, and hyper-multiple-marketers like myself (and there are plenty of us) will just out-leverage you and completely crowd you out of the marketplace.”

Good advice. Of course, nowadays most freelancers submit their work by email, not regular mail, but the advice is the same for email.

This handbook is one of the most-consulted resources on my bookshelf. My dog-eared copy, with scores of highlighted passages and marginal notes, has served me well over the years. It offers lots of good, practical help for any freelance writer.

2008 by Laverne Daley

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Finding Experts for Your Articles

Where do you go to find expert sources for your articles? Whatever the topic, you need to quote people who have expert knowledge about the topic, people who can validate the information included in the article. Unless you quote experts, your article could be viewed as an opinion piece.

Colleges and universities are a great source for experts on scores of subjects, and many faculty members welcome the opportunity to share their knowledge and research with members of the media, including freelance writers. I’ve never failed to receive help from any faculty member I’ve approached when I needed information for an article.

It’s easy to find those experts because most colleges and universities provide lists of faculty members and their areas of expertise. For instance, my local university, the University of Memphis, offers experts in subjects ranging from the Academy Awards to African history, to landscape ecology, linguistics and personal injury law, to pregnancy, world politics and youth development through the arts.

Smaller colleges, such as Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, New York, also have experts in diverse subjects. At Hudson Valley, for instance, you can find experts in economic botany, public speaking, geriatrics, children’s behavior, and scores of other areas.

You can do in-person interviews or interview the experts by telephone or email. You can choose to interview experts at your local college or university, or select experts from schools at opposite ends of the country or beyond. Several times I’ve quoted experts from Canada in my articles. A google search is sure to turn up experts in any topic you choose to write about.

© 2008 by Laverne Daley

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Finding Little Gems on the Bargain Book Table.

Have you ever found any good writing books on the bargain tables at Barnes & Noble? I think I found two that might become favorites of mine: Living and Teaching the Writing Workshop by Kristen Painter, and Writing Brave & Free by Ted Kooser and Steve Cox.

What caught my eye in Kristen’s book was a segment on time and the writer. She reminds readers that you don’t have to quit your day job to become a writer,
that many full time writers put in only two or three hours a day writing. She pointed out that J. K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone during her baby’s naptime.

“Don’t think you have to find an eight-hour stretch of time in which to retreat in order to write (not that some writers haven’t done that),” she said. “Simply find fifteen to thirty minutes at first and let that dictate how much time you need, then maybe some weekend you’ll go to the coffee shop and write for a whole hour or more. The more you think like a writer, the more time you will create for your writing.”

The important thing is to write every day, either in your journal or on some writing project that draws your interest. Kooser and Cox say you need to make writing as much a daily routine as having your morning cup of coffee or brushing your teeth.

“For writers, the one essential habit is writing every day. And it’s got three advantages over brushing your teeth:

You’re working hard at your writing for the pure joy of it, as Stephen King says—because you want to, not because a doctor or a spirit of your mother told you to.

Writing is a lot more fun than brushing teeth.

Brushing your teeth is pure process; all you have to show for it in the short haul is a mouth tasting of toothpaste. Writing daily is a process, too, but the result is a product—every single day you’ve got another entry in your journal. Instant gratification!”

Sometimes you can find little gems on the bargain book table.

© 2008 by Laverne Daley

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