Peter Bowerman's ongoing goal in The Well-Fed Writer: Back For Seconds is to help writers earn a living and "pay all your bills, buy a house, amply fund a retirement account and take a few nice vacations a year."Back For Seconds is a companion volume (95% new content) to his first book, the award-winning Book-of-the-Month Club selection, The Well-Fed Writer - a how-to "standard" in the field of "commercial" freelancing - writing for businesses, large and small and for hourly rates of $50-125+.
He includes all the tools to make this happen. Included are success stories from writers of all descriptions with a commonality of making a living by writing and paying bills. Peter Bowerman takes the "scary" out of the cold calling and gives tips for sales and marketing. In addition, Peter includes information on how to start a writers group.
Right off the bat is a chapter on sales and marketing with eight tips for non-salespeople. Peter Bowerman says the key to sales is matching your skills to your client's needs, with a non-aggressive, natural manner. This is common knowledge but he tells you how to do this.
Next chapter covered is marketing to show benefits to the client rather than features and to talk about what's important to the client. You will find pertinent web sites sprinkled throughout the chapter. Need help in formulating your Unique selling Proposition (USP)? It's all in this chapter.
Chapter 3 discusses tips of good web site showcase samples. Also, you will find what kind of information to include in your online portfolio to enhance your professionalism. Two pluses are: "Top 10 List for Creating TWTW's Web Site," and, "Your Colleague's Sites."
"Let Me Clarify" answers 20 questions to: do I have what it takes to be a good freelance writer, what should I call my business, how to create a selling portfolio, and can I achieve "financial self-sufficiency in six months." These are but a few among very useful information.
The whole Chapter 5 is devoted to cold calling. You will receive specific great tips of what to expect when cold calling and face-to-face cold calling, with truths about cold calling. Included is a useful guideline for a cold calling script as a way of customizing your own script.
Next is email marketing campaign, direct mail and fax. You will find specifics from pros, complete with web sites and effective new ideas.
"Dining Off the Beaten Path" broadens the writing field of assignments from the corporate projects to the Not-For-Profits (NFPs) and less obvious corporate departments. These are mentioned with anecdotal experiences. Included is a chart of "Sixty Potential Writing Clients."
Chapter 8, "Eating Well in Smaller Markets," while the emphasis is on smaller markets, the tips given can be used in any size market. Readers will be treated with four stories "from the trenches."
How to transition from a full-time job/part-time writer to a full-time freelance writer is explored in Chapter 9, "Full-Time Dream, Part-Time Reality." Enjoy an interview with Chris Taylor, journalist who became a full-time freelance writer as well as other stories.
A necessary part of being a successful full-time freelance writer which is covered in Chapter 10, "The Well-Networked Writer." It is complete with tips and suggested further reading.
Chapters 11, 12, and 13 include potential and perception of writing, the craft of writing, valuable writers checklist, writing for the web, and finally taking the first step into a new writing world. Six valuable appendices include:
Appendix A - abridged edition of The Well-Fed Writer
Appendix B - stories of self-employed writers of all types
Appendix C - case study of meeting client's needs
Appendix D - business taxes, structures, insurance and retirement
Appendix E - web sites of writing and marketing books
Appendix F - self-publishing
Peter Bowerman, freelance commercial writer and columnist, has written over 250 articles and columns since 1993. He leads writing seminars and publishes a free monthly ezine called, "The Well-Fed E-Pub." Peter's corporate clients include: UPS, American Express, BellSouth, Mercedes-Benz, IBM, Cingular Wireless, and The Coco-cola Company.
His awards include:
**Second-place: ForeWord Magazine 2000 Book of the Year (Career category)
**Honorable Mention: 2000 Writers Digest National Self-Published Book Award
**Finalist: Publishers Marketing Association 2000 Ben Franklin Awards (Best First Book)
**Book-of-the-Month Club selection: Winter/Spring 2001
**Quality Paperback Book Club selection: Spring 2001
**Writer's Digest Book Club selection: July 2000 for second best-selling Featured Alternate in more than two years)
The Well-Fed Writer: Back For Seconds is beneficial to writers who want to become self-employed and write full-time with proven techniques that actually work. Peter Bowerman's tips are solid for becoming a full-time freelance writer. If you are floundering in the sales and marketing area, this book is for you.
Product Description
The Well-Fed Writer: Back For Seconds (Fanove, October 2004)
In 2000, Atlanta-based freelance commercial writer Peter Bowerman released "The Well-Fed Writer: Financial Self-Sufficiency As a Freelance Writer in Six Months or Less," a detailed how-to for starting, building and managing a lucrative commercial freelancing business: writing for corporations and creative entities and for $50-125+ an hour. The book became an award-winning, triple-book-club selection (Book-of-the-Month, Quality Paperback Book, Writers Digest).
As Corporate America has downsized, it has outsourced much of their creative needs, making this particular writing direction more viable and profitable than ever before. Here's a writing direction with plenty of work, strong demand for good writers, hourly rates of $50-125+ ($60-80 average) and where ALL time is billed. No flat fees with vast, open-ended commitments of time. Translation? Less time working to pay bills and more time pursuing your writing passions.
Perhaps you're a writer - seasoned or aspiring. Or maybe a home-based business-seeker or at-home Mom - looking to leverage past business experience into a lucrative, flexible income. Regardless, if you're looking to turn your love of writing into your living - a GOOD living - this might be the direction for you.
With 95% new content, "TWFW: Back For Seconds" is a companion volume (the other 5% is a 12-page encapsulation of the TWFW) that builds on TWFW with dramatically expanded sections on sales and marketing - demystifying subjects that often terrify creative types. Marketing by phone, fax, e-mail, direct mail, Web sites and networking are all covered.
Drawing from the author's own experiences and dozens of firsthand accounts from commercial writers around the world, the book discusses building the business in small towns or rural areas, on a part-time basis, in unusual niches, along with effective networking strategies and much more.
What's "commercial writing"? Marketing brochures, ad copy, newsletters, direct mail campaigns, speeches, sales sheets, proposals, web content, video/CD-ROM scripting, annual reports, case studies, and so much more.
Why do corporations hire freelancers? For good solid economic and creative reasons. With a freelancer, corporations don't have to pay salary, benefits, and vacation time. But they will pay a freelancer $60-80 (average) for their time. In addition, they pay only what they need when they need it. And with a network of freelancers, they get a broad spectrum of fresh talent (hard to get with in-house staff writers used to writing about the same topics day after day) which they can "form-fit" to their specific writing needs.
Veteran commercial freelancer Bob Bly, known as the freelance writing "guru" for his 50+ writing titles (including the classic, "Secrets of a Freelance Writer" and "The Copywriter's Handbook") says of commercial freelancing: "I know of no other arena of writing so lucrative yet so easy to get started in."
His take on the "The Well-Fed Writer": "This book is the best information on how to make more money with corporate clients I have ever read. It answers everything you want to know. Highly recommended."
His feedback on "Back For Seconds": "When I wrote 'Secrets of a Freelance Writer,' it was the first and only book on making six figures as a commercial freelancer. Of the dozen-plus books written on the subject since then, this book is by far the most comprehensive, useful and valuable."
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