Customer Reviews

Get a Freelance Life: mediabistro.com's Insider Guide to Freelance Writing

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I just started "pitching" articles to magazines earlier this year. I just never really saw the benefit before. So I went looking for a resource last week and came across this book. It has more than I needed, but I've gotten a few new tips for editing my work as well.

The coverage of how to approach and gain the interest of editors was very useful in addition to the reality check on pricing your work. But the surprise, the extra information on editing, was very useful as well.

All around - good book.

Tom Carpenter, Author: Wireless# Certification Official Study Guide, CWSP Certification Official Study Guide, Foundations of Effectiveness

I read this book having been only doing freelance writing for 3-4 months now. A lot of the information was common sense, like managing a business, paying your taxes, etc. The things I wanted to see explained more, specific to freelance writers, not just people in business for themselves, never seemed to get beyond the surface.

The thing I found that I didn't really like about the book, and caused me to knock a star off the review was the endless cross-promotion of Media Bistro. I ended up joining the Web site, and actually found it more useful than the book. It would've been nice though to see less blatant promotion of it going on in a book I paid for.

I can't say enough good things about this book and am so grateful to the author for writing it. It answered all of my questions (and I had MANY) about how to break into freelance magazine writing. This book leads you through every step of developing and pitching a story. It also offers so many useful strategies for how to get your first break being published. There is also a lot of good reference suggestions and it is written in such an upbeat, encouraging tone. This was the best use of fourteen dollars, ever!

"Get a Freelance Life", by Margit Feury Ragland is a third Kindle ebooks I've read on my iPad. I probably should have purchased the paperback edition of the book because I think it's a useful resource to thumb through if you're going to be a freelance writer.

"Get a Freelance Life" is not the only book you'll ever need about the freelance writing profession, but it's pretty comprehensive, covering all the basic things you need to know to get started. It gave me some great ideas for developing a sort of business plan for taking my freelance work to another level. I've been getting paid to write for a couple of online sites and I'm actually liking the work almost more than I do wedding photography. But like the photography business, freelance writing has its own challenges, and it's definitely a competitive field to get into.

Anyway, "Get a Freelance Life" covers most of the essentials, from finding ideas to write about, getting your first assignment, to what you need to do to boost your income. The last part of the book is most useful to me. In fact, I think part 4 of the book, "Mind Your Own Business" could be another book in itself, for taking freelance writing to a professional level is almost as difficult as learning to write effective articles. I'm learning that I need to spend about 40-50% of my time working on the business aspects of freelancing if I'm going to really make a good income in this area.

Now that I've read the book, I might join the companion website, [...], to learn about what's going in the profession.

This book was well written and organized in a fashion which is easy to follow and understand. Still, there wasn't really anything new here. Only book on this subject that is different and a bit more truth driven is The Renegade Writer.

Although I only gave it 3 stars, it is one you might find used and spend less than cover for - might be nice to have in reference library.

This book was very useful, and it was exactly as represented. I would recomend it to anyone wanting to start a freelance writing business!

"Get a freelance life" is a functional and useful guide to anyone who wants to become a writer or journalist. From the first questions one should ask him/herself to how to pitch media and a easy explanation about journalism genres.

Simplemente IMPRESCINDIBLE!!!!

The back of the book states "Write Your Own Check" well I am still waiting on my first article to be published so I continue to pay bills will I write my next novel in my trilogy. The first book The Vampire Next Door: The Outerworld. There is a great section on contracts and a lingo section that can teach you a thing or two, but the meat of this book is Part IV Write section. It will show you how to turn one idea into several and where to submit it. You will learn more about the publishing world that will carry over to other areas of writing. It is a must for my bookshelf.

Short and sweet. Nice for those new to the idea of freelance writing and are contemplating this career.

There is good information in this book but the authors reveal a startling lack of integrity when, in Chapter 4, they include anonymous entries from people describing how they pursue freelance projects at their full-time jobs. Stealing time from employers goes on all the time but it is unethical and is to blame for much of the decline of workplace productivity in this country. For the authors to encourage it undermines the validity and integrity of the rest of their book.