Writing Freelance (Writing) by Christine A. Adamec

Writing Freelance (Writing) Reviews

• 
  Rose

  This book attempts to give a very glancing overview of many parts of a freelance writing career. Unfortunately, it falls into the trap of saying a lot about very little: for all its weight, most of the book is consumed by large bolded subtitles (often 3-4 per page), white space, and paragraph-long tips by the author. Sure, they seem well-intended, and early on in the book the tips come from several professionals. However, as the book went on, these hints became increasingly focused on the author and increasingly unhelpful or outdated.
  
  And that was my main problem with this book. I don't have much knowledge about submitting to non-fiction magazines, say, or co-authoring, to fact-check this author, but I do know about querying fiction, and Adamec gets that all wrong. Part of her problem is that this book is now quite dated; she makes several references to the "new technology" of America OnLine, and she says she doesn't think that having a website is very necessary for freelance professionals. She constantly talks about snail-mail queries, gives outdated advice on email etiquette... and then says some ridiculous things about querying uncompleted novel manuscripts by phone. In today's market, a first-time author must ALWAYS complete his/her novel before querying, and phone queries are generally considered inappropriate.
  
  Ultimately, I put this book down as too dated, too general (How to write an essay for a magazine: start with an outline.) or too untrustworthy-- once I caught a few wrong-by-current standards pieces of advice, I found that I was unwilling to listen to any more.
• 
  Pat Stanford

  EXCELLENT! This is a great how-to for anyone starting up a freelance business. Esy to read and very practical advice on everything you need to know. Highly recommend.
• 
  Alexis

  A writing friend said this book was part of her writing library, so I got a copy. There's a lot of useful information and it could come in handy for teaching or the beginning freelancer. That said, the book was written in 2000, so the Internet information is laughably out of date.