Populist angst and anger is running through the United States presidential campaign, but also through the Brexit debates, directed at the political establishment, and also at globalization (with the European Union standing in for the latter in the UK context). This anger has taken policy elites by surprise, throwing wrenches into the works of carefully planned political campaigns by mainstream Republican, Democratic, Conservative, and Labour parties on either side of the Atlantic.

The post Is globalization the problem? appeared first on OUPblog.

डाक्टरी सलाह और हमारी मानसिकता ऐसा भी होता है..!! कल एक सहेली को किसी डाक्टर से कुछ सलाह लेनी थी सो मैने एक बहुत ही काबिल और अनुभवी डाक्टर का पता बता दिया. आज मैनें ही फोन करके पूछा कि डाक्टर साहब के कैसा रहा ? इस पर वो बोली कुछ खास अच्छा नही रहा. […]

The post डाक्टरी सलाह और हमारी मानसिकता appeared first on Monica Gupta.

  काला धन मामला , निर्धनता और मोदी जी के मन की बात मामला काला धन का हो या नकली धन का हो मोदी जी अपनी बात तो देश विदेश में या रेडियों पर अक्सर रखते हैं पर काला धन , नकली धन के चक्कर में निर्धन को न भूल जाना मोदी जी  नकली वोट, […]

The post काला धन मामला , निर्धनता और मोदी जी के मन की बात appeared first on Monica Gupta.

It's tempting to say yes to book donations, free author visits, and the like, but you need to learn to say no.

http://writersinthestormblog.com/2016/02/how-much-will-you-give-away/

Austerity, uncertainty, instability … all problems we associate with Europe today as it cycles from pre-GFC exuberance to today’s austerity. But to put things in perspective, these are minor problems compared what our grandparents endured after World War Two. In Britain many people did not have enough to eat, the government had secret plans for national catastrophe, the Cold War was raging, the colonies erupting, and Sterling was in crisis. In those days there were few policy economists, and macroeconomics was caught in a battle between non-interventionist classical economics and the Keynesian revolution of demand management.

The post Who was Bill Philips? appeared first on OUPblog.

From 2017, ten-pound notes issued by the Royal Bank of Scotland will feature a new face: that of the great nineteenth-century science communicator Mary Somerville. Her book on mathematical astronomy, Mechanism of the Heavens -- published in 1831, when she was fifty years old -- was used as an advanced textbook at Cambridge for a hundred years. This is a phenomenal achievement for a woman who taught herself science and mathematics.

The post Mary Somerville: the new face on Royal Bank of Scotland’s ten-pound note is worthy of international recognition appeared first on OUPblog.

When we pay our bills using a plastic card, we are simply authorizing alterations to the information stored in some computers. This is one aspect of the symbiotic relationship that now exists between money and information. The modern financial world is byzantine in its complexity, and mathematics is involved in many ways, not all of them transparently clear. Fortunately there are some bright spots, such as the fact that it is now possible to measure information.

The post What is information, and should it be free? appeared first on OUPblog.

I did a similar post about this on my personal blog in 2010. For someone who says “I am a librarian” I think it’s useful sometimes to discuss how and when I get paid and by whom. I know people are curious, they often ask. The work news in my life is that I’m upping my hours at the Internet Archive so that I’m now officially half-time. I am pleased about this and I hope it lasts. Since my father died I’ve had a buffer of cash available to me (and my sister) as a back-up which means I’ve been able to do a few “riskier” things that weren’t necessarily lucrative but were otherwise fulfilling. Working at the Archive and Open Library was one of these. Doing some consulting was another. My income covers my bills which, through sheer luck, doesn’t include student loans and, through some attention on my end, doesn’t include any consumer debt. Here’s a chart.

The interesting thing to me is how many governments I got paid by. The W-2 money is basically three governments (two different checks from my town, for working at the school and the library, one from my state for teaching at the tech college) plus the Internet Archive. The 1099 money is mostly consulting and talks. I got paid by two state library associations, one state library (twice) and one city library system. The consulting was for two town libraries, a high school and one private company. My writing gigs included royalties for both of my books ($128 total), one lucrative article for the Mozilla Foundation, my column for Computers in Libraries and a lot of crazy start-up money from Medium who laid off nearly their entire slate of writers for The Message and replaced us with younger cheaper writers. It was good while it lasted. I made some random money AirBnBing out my house and doing one Justice of the Peace gig.

All in all it was a mid five-figures year that did slightly better than paying for itself which is my nominal goal.

Why adapt Zola? What’s he got to say to us today? If the novels are so good why not leave them as they are – as novels – and forget it?

The post On Adapting Emile Zola: Notes from a BBC script writer appeared first on OUPblog.

In 2009, I started researching and experimenting with ways to work less and earn more with my writing. I started out by vowing to work only two days per week.

It worked — and I’ll tell you how in a bit.

Since 2009, my schedule has settled to 30 hours per week or less; more than before because now my son is in school all day, and I really do love what I do and find it hard to keep myself from writing. These days, I generally work from 9-2:30 daily, and often take Fridays off if I can.

And during it all, my freelancing income has gone up by 30%.

Want to know how I did it? Let’s start in 2009.

How I Cut My Work Hours & Still Kept Earning

My goal, when I started the two-day workweek in 2009, was to spend more time with my one-year-old son, have more fun, and do more volunteering. On my days off I would check e-mail just to make sure nothing came up, and if a source could schedule an interview only on one of my days off, I’d do it. But most weeks, I sat down at my desk and worked two days per week.

The first thing I did to cut my hours was quit a time-suck writer’s forum. I could spend hours on there every day because there were so many members that every time I clicked, there was a new message. One day I posted a question about freelancing, and was treated to snarky responses about how I should already know the answer.

Right then, I decided to quit. I had my husband change my password and promise not to reveal it to me. For a couple of days my fingers kept twitching towards the keys that would bring up the forum, but then the urge subsided.

Then, on a roll, I found a free site-blocker app and blocked the other sites I spent a lot of time on, like iCanHasCheezburger.com and Failblog.

Suddenly, I had a ton of free time.

I soon came to realize that a lot of what we freelancers do is busy work. For example, I was in the habit of sending out e-mails to sources or editors in the morning, and then spending the rest of the day alternately clicking on “check e-mail” and surfing the web. Then, at 5, I felt that I’d put in a full day’s work, even though I really only worked for a few minutes and then spent the rest of the day waiting for people to get back to me.

So I stopped doing that. If I sent out e-mails and couldn’t take action until I got a response, I would shut my laptop, go off and do what I wanted to do, and come back later to check. Exact same results, but much less time “working.”

One week I felt stressed about all I had to do: I had several writing assignments on the go and was insistent on working three days that week at the most to get it all done. I asked my life coach for tips, and she said that many of her clients feel they have too much to do, but then when they sit down and actually calculate the hours — or actually do the work — they realize it’s not so much after all. They had just built it up in their minds.

So my goal buddy and I set up what we called a “boot camp” day on one of my work days that week. On boot camp days, my Jennifer and I called each other every hour on the hour to tell each other what we did in the last hour and what we planned to do in the next hour. There were no repercussions if we don’t get the work done, but there’s something about telling someone else what you plan to do that lights a fire under your butt.

And guess what? That day, I got all the work I had been worrying about done in four hours. I didn’t even have to work that third day.

You CAN Set Your Own Hours

Those were some very, very valuable lessons, and after so many years of freelancing, I’ve really realized the full power of the freelance lifestyle — the power to set your own hours and be the master of your own time.

The eight-hour workday is so ingrained in us that it’s hard to envision working less and still earning the same income — but as Tim Ferriss said in The Four-Hour Workweek, isn’t it amazing that all over the world, no matter what job they do, every person needs exactly eight hours a day to get their work done?

We freelancers are not in jobs where we have to be present all the time, like in retail. We can “disappear” and, using the power of technology, still be reachable if a client has an emergency (which they rarely do).

Granted, when I started cutting my hours in 2009 I had already been freelancing for 12 years, so I was past the stage where I had to spend hours each week formulating ideas and pitching. I was in many magazines’ “stables” of writers, so it was easier for me to cut down my hours than it would be for someone just starting out.

But even new writers can probably use their time more efficiently. C’mon, fess up — when you should be writing a query or building your website or working on a book chapter, are you 100% focused on that task or are you taking frequent web-surfing breaks? Do you bang out that pitch or do you procrastinate, yet still feel “busy” because you’re sitting in front of your computer?

Do MORE of What You Love

So what did I do with all this extra time in 2009? Well, I started a local parents’ group that ended up with over 100 members, so I spent a lot of time hanging out with other parents and their babies. I read — a lot. I upped my weight training from two days per week to three. And I did more volunteering for animal welfare causes.

Isn’t that why so many of us decide to go freelance — so we can control our workloads and our hours, and have more time to spend on our families, hobbies, and causes?

Every day I have to pinch myself — I can’t believe that so many years later, I’m still working reduced hours and earning more than ever. I keep thinking that one day, my husband is going to say, “Uh, Linda…we’re broke.” But it hasn’t happened. I’m going to keep up this schedule as long as I can…and the more I do it, the easier it gets.

Your challenge today: Want to work less and earn more as a freelance writer? Find your top five time-wasting activities and find ways to ditch or delegate them.

This post originally ran in 2010 and has been updated to be more helpful to you.

The creativity of rich individuals and their tax advisors to hide private wealth in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands or Switzerland knows hardly any bounds. Just as unethical, though often legal, are the multiple techniques multinational corporations use to shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions such as Panama or Bermuda. And even though small states have a structural advantage when it comes to engaging in tax competition, that is, attracting capital from abroad, big economies have become adept at playing the game, too: The United States, Germany, and with the Cayman

The post Tax competition – a threat to economic life as we know it appeared first on OUPblog.

A subliminal message about how much you would like to pay for each book. :)

A week ago, Diana and I decided to try an experiment: All the e-books in the Renegade Writer Store (except one) would become Pay What You Want, meaning you, the reader, decide what to pay for each one.

The minimum price was $1 because that’s the minimum my order processor allows. (And they do charge me for each download!)

The deal was this: We would try this experiment for one week, and if we liked how it turned out, we would keep this pricing structure.

Here are the results:

• Around 330 writers took advantage of the Pay What You Want offer.
• The average order was $6.50.
• Sometimes an order was for a single book, but mostly they were for multiple products.
• Many, many people scooped up every book we have at $1 apiece. (Now you need to READ them all, LOL!)
• The lowest order amount was $1. The highest order amount was $30 (for multiple books). (That was pretty exciting!)
• Most writers paid below retail for the books…but some paid around retail, and just a few paid higher! (And this is not a judgement in any way…readers paid what they could afford or according to how much value they thought the books would bring.)
• We got orders from all over the world, including Canada, the U.S., Serbia, and Nigeria! (Discovered one reader from Serbia went to the same high school as our Serbian exchange student!)
• Several writers emailed me to say they hope to make sales based on what they learned in our books, so they can come back and pay more for them. Aw! (I’m actually thinking about creating a way for writers to come back and add more to their payments if they feel they’ve gotten a ton of value from the books. )

So what’s the verdict?

Of course we, the authors, feel we deserve to be compensated well for the value we provide in our books. We worked hard on them, and they cost us beaucoup cash for design, editing and so on. I also pay the order processor, and need to pay for tech help—for example, I paid $500 to have the books pages set up, and another $500 to get them converted to PWYW.

And of course, these books are meant to get writers gigs and change their lives! We think that’s worth at LEAST the $5-10 most of the books were originally priced at.

On the other hand, once we eat the sunk costs, it costs us very little to provide these e-books.

AND…since our mission is to help as many writers as possible reach their freelancing dreams, having 330 people get their hands on our books is excellent news! We want to reach EVERYONE—including those who can’t yet afford to hire help, take classes, or buy full-priced books.

So…drumroll…we decided to keep the PWYW pricing structure!

That means from now on, YOU choose what to pay for each book, e-course book, and checklist…including Write Your Way Out of the Rat Race…And Step Into a Career You Love, which comes with a boatload of downloads (originally $9.99), The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing Success (also $9.99), and the Write for Magazines E-Course book (originally $29).

(And soon, very soon, I’ll be posting a meditation I created called Positive Thinking for Writers as a PWYW product. I wrote the meditation and it was produced and voiced by a former public radio reporter! It has everything…soothing music, nature sounds…IT’S AWESOME.)

Yep, you can get all these goodies for as little as a buck each.

Don’t have much cash? Pay the minimum. You’re rich? Pay more than retail and reap the karma that comes from covering a less advantaged writer.

Here’s where you can do that:

http://www.therenegadewriter.com/store/

Please do spread the word to all your writing friends! You can post it on forums, share it on Facebook and Twitter, and let your writing groups know they can now get these helpful, valuable books for a minimum of $1 each. (BTW, we reserve the right to change our minds in the future…but for now we don’t foresee getting rid of PWYW.)

Here’s a tweet you can use if you like:

Renegade Writer e-books are now Pay What You Want…permanently! That means YOU choose what to pay! http://www.therenegadewriter.com/store/

Thank you, thank you for helping us make this experiment a success! We’re so excited to get our books into as many hands as possible!

I’m VERY excited that actress-turned-podcaster Yin Chang interviewed me for her iTunes “New & Noteworthy” podcast 88 Cups of Tea!

Tune in to learn:

• The big differences between query letters for freelance writers VS. authors
• I share exactly how to pitch a query letter and advise what to include in it
• Why it’s crucial to avoid content mills
• How I earned $40,000-$60,000 worth of writing gigs just from referrals
• How being a professional “class-taker” can ironically hold you back from achieving your goals
• Why it’s crucial to start pitching even if you feel like you’re not ready to
• How diversifying my work helped me cope with moments of burn-out
• How having your own website as a freelance writer can help your career and the important things to showcase
• Why you should break the hard and fast rules in freelance writing
• How to determine your own pay rate 

You can listen in here:

http://88cupsoftea.com/podcast/lindaformichelli/

Enjoy!

P.S. All the e-books for writers in the Renegade Writer Store (except one) are Pay What You Want until Friday…this is an experiment, and if we like the way it goes, we’ll make this a permanent change. That means, at least for right now, YOU choose how much you’d like to pay for each book (with a minimum of $1 each). SO far we’ve had about 300 orders, most containing multiple books. Some writers are picking up EVERY book at $1 each, some are buying just a couple at a higher price, and some are in between. Have fun!

As you’ve probably guessed by the name of this blog, and the book it stems from, here at The Renegade Writer we’re all about doing what works for us. Experimenting. Trying new things. Bucking the status quo.

My personal life is the same way…yes, I LIVE what I preach. I’m proud of my freelance writer/board game designer husband; ballet-dancing Montessori-going son; and two lovely exchange students, from Serbia and Indonesia. (See the gratuitous photo of my three adorable kids to the left.) In October the nuclear fam and I are going to Europe, and in November we’re hitting Tokyo—because Eric and I can work on the road. (And if we time our trips to hubby’s business travel, he gets a free ticket, which is kind of key.

I tell you, we love not being normal…and I want to help others who want to be as weird as we are!

So: While most normal, status quo-type business owners want to squeeze every penny they can out of their customers, that’s not what we’re all about here at The Renegade Writer. Yes, I like money. However, I’m also passionate about helping writers earn a living doing what they love most. And, I’m someone who loves experimenting to figure out what works best for myself and for the writers I help—instead of always going with what’s expected and normal.

All that leads to this:

Not everyone who wants to become a writer has the means to get quality help—good e-books can cost $10 and more, and coaching can exceed $350 per hour!—so now, almost every e-book in the Renegade Writer Store is now Pay What You Want, with a minimum of just $1. I want to get the helpful info in these books into as many hands as possible, no matter what their situation.

That means YOU choose how much the books are worth to you. Yes, even the Write for Magazines e-course book that retails at $29 (and is based on a $267 course), and books like The Renegade Writer, Commit, and Write Your Way Out of the Rat Race—which retail at $9.99!

You can pay less than retail…or if you’re rich you can pay more and reap some good karma because you’re covering someone who can’t afford as much. (But $1 is the minimum my shopping cart service will accept for each book…probably because they charge ME 75 cents for every book I sell!)

HOWEVER…this is an experiment. I’ll be offering the books as PWYW for just one week—until Friday, September 18—and will then take stock of how it went. If we here at The Renegade Writer are happy, and our readers are happy, we can keep the PWYW pricing. If for some reason it just doesn’t seem to be working out…the books go back to retail prices.

Want to gather up a virtual armload of books that can help you write killer query letters, quit your day job to write, reach your goals through massive action, write faster, build confidence as a writer—and generally live and love the freelance life—all at a price YOU choose? Here’s the Renegade Writer Store, where every book but one is now PWYW. (The one that isn’t is only available on Amazon…and speaking of Amazon, our books will remain full price on that site.)

http://www.therenegadewriter.com/store

Have fun loading up on books…I think you’ll dig everything we have! I hope this helps many, many aspiring writers make their freelancing dreams a reality.

My 6-year-old son is a dancer: He takes several ballet classes and a jazz class every week, and has done tap as well. (That’s him at the Nutcracker rehearsal last year…sorry, I couldn’t resist!) So when a local Irish dance studio did a demo at T’s school and he asked to take lessons, I raced to sign him up. Encouraging his passions, and all that.

A weekly class costs $45 per month, but one month I had a brain fart and dropped off a check for $40. The next day, I got a polite reminder from the studio owner that I had sent in the wrong amount — fair enough — and I responded that I would drop off the $5 at T’s next lesson.

But at that very point, T decided Irish dance wasn’t for him. (I have to say I was relieved…driving T to dance five days a week and then sitting in a waiting room with 3-year-old copies of Dance Magazine is not my idea of a good time.) He had taken only one session at the beginning of the month, and after that I just stopped taking him.

A few weeks later, the studio owner emailed to ask where T had been, and I said he decided to stop taking classes, but perhaps one day he would change his mind.

She responded, “Okay, we hope to see him again…and by the way, you still owe me $5.”

I was taken aback: We had paid $40 and T had taken one lesson that month. I responded, “I think the $40 I paid covers the one 30-minute class T took!”

To which she replied: “Sorry, we don’t prorate for classes not attended.”

Now, of course, she was right. In fact, I’m sure I signed a contract agreeing to this very thing. But…seriously?

My husband and I joked for a while about sending the dance school a box of 500 pennies, or mailing five one-dollar bills a week apart, but finally I said, “Just send her a check for the five dollars and be done with it. I never want to deal with this school again.”

So the business owner got her five dollars — win! — but she lost potential future business, not to mention word of mouth. Because if anyone ever asks me to recommend a good place for dance classes, you can be certain I won’t be suggesting that school.

Penny Wise…

Ever hear the expression “penny wise but pound foolish”? This usually refers to people who cut costs unwisely and end up paying more in the long run. But it also applies to writers who are SO invested in coming off as professional, and so hyper-vigilant about not getting ripped off, that they turn off clients.

For example, one student of mine who had been attempting unsuccessfully to get good-paying clients for over a year asked, “A prospect wants me to come in for a meeting. My time costs money! So how much should I charge them?”

Wha-wha-whaaaaa?

I understand the thought behind this: You want to look like a hard-bitten pro, and it’s true — your time IS worth money.

But is it really smart, when you’re desperate for work and someone shows an interest in hiring you, to go all hardcore and demand payment for an exploratory get-to-know-you meeting?

The same goes for writers who go into a frenzy when a client asks for a revise, or when an editor asks for 200 more words or a photo caption that wasn’t included in the contract. You need to consider whether it’s worth doing a bit of extra work for free to keep a good client.

(Of course, if this is an abusive client, one who pays pennies, or one who consistently asks for extra goodies with no compensation — you’re well within your rights to put your foot down…and hopefully ditch the client for good.)

Think about the last time you were at a café and you dropped your drink. (This happened to me just last week!) In 100% of the cases this happens, the barista will offer to replace the drink for free.

Now, the café owner is certainly justified in making you pay for the new drink. After all, is it HIS fault you had case of butterfingers? And drinks cost money, so he’s losing five bucks by offering you a free replacement!

But if he’s smart, the business owner understands that the cost of the free replacement drink is eclipsed by the goodwill created when he offers it to you. You’ll keep coming back and ordering more coffees, ad you’ll tell your friends about it too. That’s five bucks well spant.

Give to Get

Not only should you think hard about demanding money when a good client asks for a little extra here and there — but you should make it a point to offer little freebies even when the client doesn’t ask:

• An extra sidebar you create with research you couldn’t fit into the article.
• An introduction to someone who can help your client.
• Some tweets and Facebook posts to promote an article or blog post you wrote for a client.
• The occasional little gift just to say “Thank you,” such as an e-book or a box of candy.
• Ten minutes of consulting time to help the client with a question or problem you happen to have the expertise to solve.

Yes, you’re spending your valuable time, and sometimes your hard-earned cash as well — but it’s worth it to foster loyalty in your good clients. As they say in Big Business, it costs much more to get a new client than it does to keep an old one.

Don’t Be a Sucker

I know you don’t want to be taken advantage of — and you definitely don’t want to come across as a doormat.

The trick is, when you agree to do free work, convey how much it’s worth and that you’re doing the client a favor.

For example: “I had some extra materials I couldn’t fit into the article, so I created an extra sidebar, no charge. I hope you can use it!”

Or: “I normally charge $X for that kind of work, but you’re such a good client I’d like to offer it to you gratis.”

This way, you graciously offer something of value to your client — but you also get across the concept that there is indeed worth to your offering, making the favor even more valuable in your client’s eyes.

At the same time, you keep the requests for freebies to a minimum because you’ve made it clear that these are things you normally charge for. And if the client DOES ask for more, they won’t be shocked when you say, “Sure, I can do that — how does $X sound?”

Remember, don’t be a stingy Irish dance teacher…you may get your five dollars, but you’ll lose a client. [LF]

P.S.Two new (awesome!) classes coming up that you can register for now: (1) Write Big: A Fear-Busting Bootcamp Experience: Practical exercises, live coaching, a challenge, and bonus goodies to help you overcome the fears that are keeping you from writing, pitching—and succeeding. (2) Freelance Writer’s Pitch Clinic: A class on how to write killer queries & LOIs. Your homework will be critiqued, and your questions answered, by editors from Redbook, Forbes, and Writer’s Digest/Print Magazine. And…you have the chance to get a full refund on the course fee!

In the face of severe disasters, or ‘Acts of God’, society turns to reinsurance. It is a financial market that insures insurance firms, and thus trades in large-scale disasters. Reinsurance is therefore the backbone for economic and social recovery in times of unimaginable losses, such as Hurricane Katrina or the attack on the World Trade Centre, through enabling insurers to pay their claims.

The post Eroding norms in reinsurance trading: Can it cause industry collapse? appeared first on OUPblog.

The next time you are slipping the valet a couple of folded dollar bills, take a good look at those George Washingtons. You might never see them again. Every few years, there is a renewed push for the United States to replace the dollar bill with its shiny cousin, the one dollar coin.

The post A fist-full of dollar bills appeared first on OUPblog.

Part I of this post addressed a familiar question: how should individuals concerned about international issues decide where to donate money? Here I turn to a second, less familiar question that follows from the first: what is entailed in being a responsible donor after the question of where to donate has been settled?

The post Being a responsible donor appeared first on OUPblog.

In the current geopolitical context, the International Criminal Court has managed to stand its ground as a well-accepted international organization. Since its creation in 1998, the ICC has seen four countries refer situations on their own territory and adopted the Rome Statute which solidified the Court's role in international criminal law. Is the ICC sufficiently funded, how is the money spent, and what does this look like when compared to other international organisations?

The post How much money does the International Criminal Court need? appeared first on OUPblog.

Emerging market multinational enterprises (EM-MNEs) are the new kids on the block. When Forbes magazine first released its list of the world’s largest 2000 companies in 2003, the list was dominated by companies from the USA, Japan, and Britain. In the latest “Global 2000” list, companies from China and other emerging markets feature prominently. In 2014, 674 companies came from Asia, compared with 629 from North America and 506 from Europe.

The post How did emerging market multinationals internationalize successfully? appeared first on OUPblog.

A couple weeks ago I sent an email to my Renegade Writer subscribers letting them know I’m thinking about offering a four-week Pitch Challenge where writers would need to send out eight unique queries in four weeks to be eligible for prizes. And I mentioned I was thinking of a price of $150.

A very nice writer emailed me a very valid question:

“If you’re only entering names into a database, why are you charging $150?”

This question is important because it reflects why so many writers are getting paid less than they’re worth.

More Than Components

My husband works in the boardgame industry, and you’ll sometimes see avid boardgamers on forums posting things like, “Why does this game cost $50? I went to the Chinese component manufacturer’s website and priced out all the pieces, and the components are worth only $11.”

I always want to offer to send them a game for $11, and then mail them a blank box filled with blank components.

What are you really buying when you buy a game? Beyond the bare components, you’re purchasing enjoyment. Fun. Excitement. The ability to impress your buddies on game night. Not to mention everything that goes into creating and delivering a game you would want to play, from the idea to the artwork to the distribution.

When you buy a book, are you just paying for the paper and the ink that goes into printing it? Judging by the people who complain about the prices of e-books because “They’re cheaper to produce than print books,” you may think that. But if that were the case, you could just get book with a blank cover and the word “and” printed in it a few thousand times.

But in fact, you’re buying the author’s ideas and skills and hard work. The cover art that enticed you to pick up the book. The agent that brought the book to the attention of the publisher. The marketing that let you know about the book in the first place. The infrastructure that hosts and delivers the book, such as the bookstore or website. And most important, the main value you’re paying for is adventure, excitement, action, inspiration, knowledge, romance.

In the same way, what are you really buying when you buy a class like the Pitch Challenge I’m considering doing? Are you buying the minutes the instructor spends entering pitches into a database? No…you’re buying the entire infrastructure that makes this class exist. But more importantly, you’re buying confidence. New skills. The ability to earn more.

Carol Tice and I recently ran a pitch challenge as part of our Pitch Clinic class. Of the 36 people who completed the challenge, around 20 received assignments from publications and businesses within those four weeks. A couple of these assignments paid over $1,000. A few writers landed multiple assignments. Two were offered full-time writing jobs (which they turned down). And one writer started with nothing, and 6 weeks later is earning $2,000 per week.

What do you think that was worth to them, to get the skills and confidence, the motivation, the accountability, to pitch like crazy and get work? To start new careers as writers?

Behind the Curtain

I think entrepreneurs (yes, that’s what you are!) who are new to running a business have a skewed idea of what it takes to create something people want. That’s why they underprice themselves — they think, “What does it cost me to write 500 words? Just a few keystrokes and an hour of my time.”

But there’s so much more that goes into creating something other people want to buy — and that will help, entertain, or inform them.

The last e-book I wrote cost hundreds in cover design, layout, professional editing, business coaching (to get advice on marketing the book) and more.

The last class I built with Carol Tice over at UsefulWritingCourses.com cost us $24,000 to create, market, and put on. No, there is not an extra zero there. (And that does not even count the cost of our time and skills in creating the actual course materials — webinars, handouts, recordings, and so on!)

We have a team of four freelancers who create our logos, banners, and web design; do our coding; handle IT; and man the helpdesk to field students’ technical problems. We had to build and design a sales page, course modules, forums. We hired editors to critique students’ assignments in the forums (and paid them a rate that would entice them to work with us!). Class recordings needed to be transcribed. We gave free webinars, which required building special sales pages to capture email addresses where we could send the webinar details.

It took months for a team of six people (including Carol and me) to build that class. And it was freaking expensive.

Do you wonder why we charged $500 for that class?

The same thing happens when you write something for a client. You may not have need employees or web design to write an article or a blog post, but there are indeed costs that need to be accounted for in your pricing. More on that below…

What is a Word Worth?

If you’re writing for a magazine that pays $1 per word, does that mean the word “the” is worth one dollar?

No. Clients aren’t paying for words, otherwise you could just write the word “the” one thousand times and collect a thousand bucks.

First, your payment compensates you for the things that cost you money that are required to run your business:

• Your education (J school, writing classes, writing books, writing magazines, an English degree — or even the School of Life, if that’s where you got your education)
• Your overhead (The fixed costs of doing business: Your rent, heat, health insurance, self employment taxes, etc.)
• Your expenses (Laptop, Internet, paperclips, printer ink, scanner, advertising, coaches, etc.)

And even more important, your client is paying you for these intangibles:

• Your skills and creativity
• The value your words bring to their publication in terms of attracting readers and advertisers
• The actual profit you help bring into the company
• The loyalty your words help create in the company’s customers/readers
• Your ability to generate great ideas that help them profit

So: If you write a 500-word sales page for a client’s website and it brings them $500,000 in sales, what are those words worth? Would it be fair for you to charge $5,000 — just one percent of the value you create? I think so. What if your sales page brings them 100 new loyal customers who in turn each bring your client a handful of new customers through word of mouth? Or what if your writing helps the client win an award that garners them great PR?

(And for myself, I can say: If you put on a class the helps people get new careers they love, gain confidence and ability, and earn lots of money, should you feel bad charging a premium?)

When you feel guilty charging a high rate because it’s “only words” or “only minutes,” you’re shortchanging yourself.

Pricing your services can feel very fuzzy, because you can’t put a price on a lot of these things you bring your clients: New customers. Confidence. Skills. New careers. Good PR. Awards. Happy-fuzzy feelings.

So all you can do is go with your heart. I read an excerpt of the book Unveiling the Heart of Your Business by Mark Silver — the excerpt was on heart-centered pricing and you can find it free here — and it really resonated with me, because it’s how I’ve always set my prices. I know the range of what’s being changed out there, and I choose my place in that range based on what feels right in my gut.

You know, in your heart, the value you offer your clients. You know, in your brain, how much it costs you, financially, to offer that value. Let those insights direct how much you charge, or your minimum rate for taking on an assignment — and don’t feel bad about it for even a second.

I’m a big fan of Laura Vanderkam’s books, so I was excited to get an advance copy of I Know How She Does It : How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time (which is now available!), and especially to get a chance to interview Laura for The Renegade Writer.

In I Know How She Does It, Laura interviewed and analyzed the time logs of over 140 women who have kids and earn at least 6 figures — women many consider as “having it all” — to offer advice on how we can fit a full, fun, busy life with work and kids into 168 hours per week. This is especially relevant to aspiring freelance writers who may have kids and a day job, and who are having trouble fitting writing and business-building in among all their other obligations.

By the way, if you’d like to keep your own time log, you can sign up for one free here.

Can you talk a bit about how you view the hours in our lives as a mosaic?

Laura: Many people look at their time log and just see these cells on a grid. I said, well, let’s change that. Let’s view it as a mosaic — and you are the artist, you are the mosaic maker, designing what your hours are going to look like and moving things around to

I think this mosaic image is also profound because we have a tendency to tell our lives in stories and to construct memories as stories — and probably your Renegade Writer readers do that, especially because we are storytellers. And the format of a story tends to be: Here are three points of evidence that lead us to an epiphany that we must make some change.

With life it is very easy to fall into the trap of thinking: These stressful things happened — I had this horrible day at work, this bad night of sleep, this issue with my kid. Therefore, life is crazy and unsustainable and I must change.

But what if you view life more as a mosaic and say, well, we had those three stressful moments, but we had all these other moments too? Those moments count as well. We can choose to see those three stressful moments as this evidence leading toward our epiphany or we can say, well, life is stressful AND life is wonderful. There really is no contradiction here. We don’t have to construct a story out of it. We can simply view of the whole mosaic for what it is. So that’s why I like that image.

Can we talk about the 24-hour trap and how writers can avoid it?

Laura: The 24-hour trap is that we have a tendency to think that things need to happen daily in order to count in our lives.

Obviously, it is good to have daily habits — and when we want to add something into our lives, we first ask ourselves, where can I put this into my life every day? The problem is that if you have a busy life, often you can’t put something in at the same time every day — but that does not mean it can’t happen.

I see this especially with things like exercise. Many people will say, “Laura, I’d love to exercise, but I am just not the kind of person who can leave for an hour at lunch every day” or “I want to get home and see my kids so I can’t go to the gym after work every day” or “I recognize mornings might be a great time to exercise, but I just can’t stomach the thought of setting my alarm for 5:30 every day.”

And it’s like, “Okay, well, don’t set your alarm for 5:30 every day.” Here’s an idea: Maybe one day a week you could get up half an hour early and do something; maybe one night a week you and your partner trade off who has the kids and you can go exercise during that time; maybe you do something on weekend mornings before the family has gotten up; and maybe you run around the track by your kid’s soccer game on Sunday. Then you’ve already fit in four exercise stints per week.

That was not daily, but four times a week is pretty good.

I think the 24 hour trap keeps us from seeing the whole picture. If you look at the whole 168 hours of the week, often things will fit. You can’t hold to everything fitting into 24 hours.

And I think writers especially fall into that trap because they think, “I need a special writing time every single day.” But even if you got it in three times a week, that’s better than nothing.

Laura: Yeah, and the problem especially is when people don’t do it because they can’t do it daily. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Sometimes it’s really easy to hold onto these stories we tell ourselves, like “I have a full-time job and a family, and therefore I can’t write.” Instead you could say, “Okay, I can’t write for three hours daily, but I could wake up early twice during the week and do it then, or I could stop watching one television show and just get something down on paper, and maybe I’ll be so inspired by what I’m doing that I’ll keep going.”

We have a tendency not to try those things because then we have to actually confront what we are doing and what we are not, and we have to look at our output and judge it — and often it is just easier not to do it and tell ourselves the story that it is impossible.

I notice that you often recommend outsourcing so that you have more time to do the things that are more important to you — but how can writers do this, especially if they are new and aren’t making a lot of money, and they can’t afford to hire much help? Do you have any tips for them? Maybe they need to just relax their standards?

Laura: Yes. When you don’t think something is the best use of your time, you have three options: You can ignore it, you can minimize it, or you can outsource it.

And obviously the outsourcing part costs money, but it does not cost anything to lower your standards — so that is a first line of offense if you are trying to make more time in your life.

I was just reading a comment on somebody else’s blog from this woman who was all excited about how she would get the kids into bed at night, and then do three hours of housework. I think she wanted everyone to think about how diligent she was or some such. I don’t know what point she was trying to make, but my first thought was “Why on earth are you doing that? Why does it require three hours at night to do all this? If you really feel the need to clean, set a timer for half an hour and then be done with it — and if it did not happen, it did not happen.”

So that’s certainly an option for people: Just let it go. Borrow that theme song from Frozen and let it go. It really does not matter. You will never get that time back, so use it first for the things that are important to you and let other things fill in around the edges.

There are a lot of writers who think, “I have kids at home, so I can do freelance writing from home and it will all work out.” And then they realize it does not work out because the kid isn’t napping on their schedule, or they need things while you’re on an interview. So I was wondering what are some of the creative ways that women you interviewed handle childcare.

Laura: Well, this is the thing: There are very few good ways to meet the needs of a client and a baby simultaneously. And, yes, there is inevitably the day you have a phone call with your biggest client at 1:30 p.m. that your child who naps religiously at 1:00 p.m. elects not to.

The only real way around this is to have childcare when you need it. When you’re doing something that you cannot do with kids’ noise or kids’ distractions, then you need somebody else to be responsible so you can focus on your work.

And there are many ways you can pull that off that might not be as expensive as hiring full-time childcare. For example, you can be efficient about pushing phone calls into a certain set of hours per day and have childcare for those hours, and then maybe do some more of the writing work after the kids go to bed. Or you could do the writing work when your partner can be with the kids, for instance, if you have a partner.

That’s a way you could pull it off without needing to pay for 40 hours of childcare. But it is very difficult to work without childcare. I had one woman in my study who was managing to run a small business without much childcare. But the way she was trading that off was by sleeping less, and it seemed to work for her because she did not need much sleep. But if you are not the kind of person who can function on six hours of sleep, and most of us aren’t, then you’re going to have to come up with something else.

A lot of writers think they are at the mercy of the client’s schedule. But what I realized is that if you actually tell people when you are available and suggest times, you can get them all into the one block of time where you have childcare.

Laura: Yes. Be very strategic about that and plan to have a few hours where you really attempt to push calls. I try to save mornings for writing and then do phone calls in either the late morning or the afternoon when I’m ready to interact with the world. You can express preferences. Sometimes you’re interviewing an A-list celebrity, and you’re going to have to do it when she needs to do it. But in other cases, people may have a bit more flexibility.

And people are actually happy for you to suggest a time. “Are you available at 10:00 or 10:30? If not, let me know.” They like not having to think about all the options.

Laura: Yes, it is actually not that helpful to send an e-mail to someone saying, “Can we do an interview in the next week?” Because then they’re looking at their whole schedule, and inevitably the first thing they suggest is not going to work for you. So it helps to just throw a few free times out there. If none of those work, then you can go from there, but the odds of at least one of those three working are decent.

You’re a successful writer — what are some of the things you think new freelance writers can drop to make time for what’s important? What are they doing that makes them feel productive that they don’t really need to be doing?

Laura: Well, the way I approach this question is that it’s not so much about dropping things. It’s about making sure that you first put in time in your life for the things that you need to be doing.

If you’re building a business there are certain things that are important for you to do. You need to have some of your work out there, so building your web site with examples of your work is a top priority. You need to be reaching out to potential clients. That is a top priority. You have actual assignments you need to get done. Those are top priorities.

Do those things first and then this magical thing happens where the other stuff that you don’t actually need to be doing starts taking less time. For example, generally people spend more time in their inboxes than they need to because they’re checking it too frequently, and they’re just working from the top down. Whatever happens to be on the top of your inbox is not necessarily your top work priority, so probably it does not need to be the first thing you tackle when you start approaching work.

But the beautiful thing about filling your time first with the things that you need to be doing is that then you figure out for yourself the other things that can give, and they will naturally give because there are only 24 hours in a day — so try that first.

What’s the most surprising thing you learned about balancing work, family, and everything else when you were analyzing these women’s time logs?

Laura: I think one of the best approaches — and I’m not saying this is done consciously, I think it was more just because these people had fuller lives — is that they did not watch as much TV as the average American.

It’s not that people didn’t watch any TV. There was certainly a reasonable amount of TV on logs, but the average per week was about 4.4 hours — if you think about it that’s like watching a handful of sitcoms and two or three longer shows, so it’s really not nothing. Four and a half hours a week is more than a half hour a day, so TV can be in your life — but it’s not 20 hours a week, it’s not 30 hours a week, which are some numbers that have come out of surveys of American life.

So I think that is an instructive difference because the women in my study were working longer hours than the average American works. They were spending time with their families, they were exercising for the most part, they were getting enough sleep. What had to give? Well, it was not really anything of that much importance. That, in and of itself, is a great way to balance your life in the sense of actually making time for things that matter.

You don’t have to cut TV out of your life, but make sure that you’re watching the shows that matter the most to you, the ones that really get you excited, that you’re taping, that you want to talk about with your friends. That’s great, it’s a fun thing to do, it’s a great way to blow off steam — but don’t just turn it on and leave it on. Don’t automatically turn the TV on after the kids go to bed and see what’s on. If you and your partner want to hang out, there are other things you can do than sit on the couch watching TV. There are other things that are much more exciting, for instance, than sitting on the couch watching TV that you can do together, so don’t automatically think TV first.

What’s the one piece of advice you picked up from your research that you think would resonate most with freelance writers who have kids and possibly a day job?

Laura: Daily rituals are great. There has been a lot written lately about the daily rituals of artists and how they make time to write or do whatever they do.

And again, that’s great if it works, but it doesn’t always work — and so what you need to do is look at your whole calendar and say, “Here are some blocks I have for writing. I am going to make sure those work one way or the other. If it’s asking my partner to take the kids for a certain amount of time. If it’s choosing to come into work half an hour late because I have that flexibility. If it’s that I just go sit in your car with my laptop during lunch once a week and write during that time.”

Do whatever it takes, but make sure that those blocks are in there — look at the whole of the week because probably you will be able to find the time.

The numbers I use for people is if you are working 40 hours a week and you’re sleeping eight hours a night for 56 hours a week, that leaves 72 hours for other things. 72 hours is a lot of time. You definitely have time to hang out with your family, to exercise, and to maybe spend 15 hours a week launching your business.

Laura’s book I Know How She Does It : How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time was just released…here’s where you can check it out!

P.S. The Freelance Writers Den is opening its doors to members of the waitlist tomorrow (Thursday, June 11, 2015) ONLY. Carol Tice opens the Den only a few times per year, so if you want to take advantage of the goodies, now’s the time! Interested? Here’s where you can join the waitlist.

(This post is based on yesterday’s Monday Motivations for Writers email. If you’d like more goodies like this in your inbox, plus two free e-books, please join the Renegade Writer mailing list!)

Carol Tice and I surveyed more than 500 content mill writers and presented the findings in a webinar last week. One of the most stunning stats was that 40% of content mill writers earn from $1-$5 per hour.

Maybe another 40% earned somewhere between $6 and $20 per hour, and I could almost hear some writers on the call thinking, “Hey, $15 per hour writing isn’t so bad! That’s how much I make at my day job.”

But here’s the thing: At your day job, you get paid for ALL the hours you work — even those hours where you’re reading Gawker and checking Facebook. As a freelance writer, you get paid only those hours you can bill for — and believe me, far from all hours are billable.

As a freelancer, you’re also paying for your own expenses and health insurance, and your taxes are higher. (Normally your employer pays a 7.5% employment tax rate and you pay 7.5% — but as a business owner, YOU pay the entire 15%. Bummer, I know.)

Renegade Reader Ivonne Cueva let me know about an hourly rate calculator that will help you determine what you SHOULD be charging to reach your target income (Thanks, Ivonne!):

https://hourlyrate.beewits.com/

You just enter your current income and how much you’d like to increase that by, your expenses, and an estimate of how many work days and billable hours you’ll have in a year. Then click “Calculate My Hourly Rate” and voila! — that’s how much you need to be earning/charging per hour.

For example, I entered in $10,000 as the current annual earnings (which is probably actually TOO high for content mill writing) and then keyed in that I want to increase my income to $50,000 per year. I very roughly estimated some expenses and figured the writer would be working 4 days per week, 8 hours per day, with 50% of those hours being billable.

(Keep in mind this is an educated guess for an average writer…you may have more billable hours, or less…you may have more hours to work during the week, or less.)

Annnnnnd: To make this work, a writer would need to earn $133.53 per billable hour.

Now, that’s not impossible — it’s the amount a good copywriter can make. And when I write, I typically earn $250 per hour because I’ve been writing so long that I can create a great article, web page, etc. pretty quickly. So, definitely doable.

And this shows that even earning $20 per hour at a content mill — about 7% of content mill writers earn $16-$20 per hour — well, it sounds good but it really isn’t.

Check out this online calculator (it’s free) and see the hourly rate you would need to bill to earn your target income as a writer. It’s eye-opening, AND it will motivate you to seek out better-paying work.

Happy writing,

Linda Formichelli
The Renegade Writer

P.S. Join us for the beta session of our new e-course Escape the Content Mills, which starts on Wednesday! We’re charging only $29 because we’re looking for YOUR feedback to make the course amazing. (And once we get your input, we’ll redo the course incorporating your questions and comments, and send you a copy of the completed materials.) Next session, the price will go up to $49, so you get a hefty 40% discount if you sign up now. http://usefulwritingcourses.com/courses/escape-the-content-mills/

P.P.S. Even if you don’t want to join us for Escape the Content Mills, visit that class page to get a free copy of our case study report “Escape the Content Mills: 6 Writers’ True Stories of Breaking Out and Earning More.”

If you want to earn money as a writer, treat it the same as you would any other job.

http://picturebookden.blogspot.com/2015/04/do-you-want-to-earn-more-money-writing.html

In Seville, Spain a vibrant and active 85-year-old duchess, who owns way more stuff than any human needs to, defied her six children and married a 60-year-old man. She had to sign over part of her vast estate to her little darlings to shut them up.