The Freelancer's Rulebook: A Guide to Understanding, Working With and Winning Over Editors (Story Line Press Writer's Guides) [Paperback]

Bonnie Hearn Hill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2001 | Series: Story Line Press Writer's Guides

*A new SLP Writers' Guide

Many books on the market teach how to write. This book teaches writers how to sell their work. Freelancers learn to think like editors. They learn how to contact the right editor for their articles and books. Editing examples, samples, lists of best publications and web sites for freelancers, and practical interviews with professionals like Helen Gurley Brown, Fran Hodgkins, and others make this latest Story Line Press Writers' Guide a sure winner. It's a book that every aspiring freelancer will want to have on the desk.

Bonnie Hearn-Hill has been a freelance writer for more than thirty years, a newspaper and magazine editor for more than eighteen years.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Some guidebooks for freelance writers mindlessly replay rules that no longer apply. Others are exhaustive ... and exhausting. The (Expanded) Freelancer's Rulebook is, thankfully, neither of the above. Written by Bonnie Hearn Hill, a longtime editor (for the Fresno Bee) and freelance writer, the Rulebook is practical, down-to-earth, and short but not slight. "This is not a book about how to write," says Hearn Hill. "It's a book about how to sell." Her approach is to show freelancers how to think like editors. While her rules are straightforward--have original ideas, be reliable, provide clean copy, don't use squirrel stickers on your query letters--it is remarkable, really, how few freelancers follow them. Send your query or manuscript to "a real, live human," advises Hearn Hill, who counsels that the slush pile is "as cold, unappealing and unproductive as it sounds." Supply heads and subheads in the style of the publication. "Force yourself to cut everything that doesn't contribute to the overall focus of the piece." And as for multiple submissions? Go for it. "The editor who acts fastest wins," says Hearn Hill. "What is so horrible about that?" --Jane Steinberg

About the Author

Bonnie Hearn-Hill has worked for twenty years as a contributing editor and columnist for the The Fresno Bee and Blue Dolphin Communications. Her work appears frequently in numerous literary and consumer magazines. Her previous books include Focus Your Writing, and Cesar Chavez: the Courage and the Power.

Product Details

• Paperback: 125 pages
• Publisher: Story Line Press; Expanded edition (October 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586540122
• ISBN-13: 978-1586540128
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,048,208 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bonnie Hearn Hill is the author of six thrillers from MIRA Books and the Star Crossed young adult astrology series from Running Press/Perseus. A multi-tasking Gemini, she leads a successful writing workshop in Fresno, CA. Visit her on Facebook or at www.bonniehhill.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book helped me to become a paid freelancer, January 29, 2003

By 

Cathe Fein Olson "Avid reader and writer" (curled up with a book) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Freelancer's Rulebook: A Guide to Understanding, Working With and Winning Over Editors (Story Line Press Writer's Guides) (Paperback)

Thanks to the tips and suggestions in this book, I regularly freelance for magazines and newspapers. The pracitical advice and sound rules have actually had editors asking me for articles. My byline on the stories has even helped to promote my own book. This is a great book for anyone looking to break into the freelance field.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Wish This Book Had Been Available Twenty Years Ago", February 2, 2004

By 

Bill Lampton, Ph.D. "Communication Consultant... (Gainesville, GA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Freelancer's Rulebook: A Guide to Understanding, Working With and Winning Over Editors (Story Line Press Writer's Guides) (Paperback)

Highly successful author Bonnie Hearn Hill begins this book with an important distinction: "The process of creation, exhilarating as it can be, is distinctly separate from the process of publication." In this easily readable guidebook, Hill offers specific tips about the creative side of writing. However, she focuses most of her attention on "the business of writing."

Readers will respond favorably to Hill's mission: To save other talented writers from the mistakes she made early in her career when she pitched her materials to publishers. You will welcome her candor. She admits her early blunders, and tells us how to avoid them. Enriching her readability, her keen sense of humor surfaces and resurfaces throughout the book.

At the end of each chapter, she lists rules writers should follow to become consistently paid writers. Concluding the book, she repeats the rules-all 112 of them.

Her advice covers: proper letterheads, query letters, how to follow up with the editor who has held your article too long, using the Internet judiciously, and much more that relates to getting the free out of freelance.

Good news: Knowing that she has excelled as a nonconformist at times, she encourages readers to exercise poetic license with her proposed rules. After all, "None of this means you have to write a paint-by-number piece." One of her views as an iconoclast: Query letters may just delay a decision, rather than speeding up the decision by sending the manuscript itself.

Had I bought this book two decades ago, my submissions to editors would have generated a much greater percentage of paid acceptances. I recommend The (Expanded) Freelancer's Rulebook enthusiastically.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A book for freelancers from a freelancer and editor, February 15, 2004

By 

"stupage_stu" (Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Freelancer's Rulebook: A Guide to Understanding, Working With and Winning Over Editors (Story Line Press Writer's Guides) (Paperback)

This is a freelancer's book written by a former freelancer now editor. As such you get an insider's view on what is needed to be a successful freelancer. There aren't a lot of hints for improving your writing or picking subjects or any thing like that. The author assumes either you have the necessary ability and talent needed or you'll learn soon enough that you don't. Instead the focus is more on what to do to get in the door and stay inside. That is getting the attention of the editor and once you do get it how to keep it. I'll give you the main tip in two sentences. Do good work. Write what the editor asks for, write it well and write it on time. The author goes into more detail and explains more of how to do it. Not a bad investment if you're looking to get into freelancing. I give it a B+ on the StuPage Reviews.