|
||||||||||
|
Subscribe to the Absolute Write Newsletter and get the Agents! Agents! Agents! report free! Click here.
|
Win a 1-year subscription to Writer's Digest by subscribing to Absolute Markets-- all paying markets for your writing. Click here. |
|
| |||||||||||||
|
|
Inside the Cover Book Review Review by Amy Brozio-Andrews
The Well-Fed Writer: Back for Seconds Peter Bowerman Fanove Publishing 2004 284 pp. Freelance writing
For any writer interested in tailoring her freelance work to business clients, Peter Bowerman’s The Well-Fed Writer: Back for Seconds deserves prime space on her desk. Packed with how-to information and tips from his personal experiences and those of other freelance professionals, Back for Seconds gives writers the blueprint they need to make a successful career of freelance business writing.
Back for Seconds has broad appeal for writers with a variety of backgrounds and circumstances-- stay-at-home parents, career changers, part-timers, full-timers-- all are welcomed by Bowerman. Whether you live in the Big Apple or the Little Apple, there’s plenty of commercial writing to go around, from copywriting to annual reports, sales letters to brochures and more; Back for Seconds includes tips and advice for freelancers working in smaller cities and rural areas as well. Profiles of successful freelance corporate writers fill the book (complete with writers’ website URLs so you don’t just have to take Bowerman’s word for it). In Bowerman’s experience, there’s room for everyone at the table; marketing your skills and finding your niche are key.
In addition to pages and pages of strategies, examples, testimonials, and personal anecdotes, Back for Seconds includes several valuable appendices. The first is an abridgement of Bowerman’s first book, The Well-Fed Writer (which I found so informative, I went out and bought the first book because I wanted to learn more). The other appendices offer more in-depth interviews with working commercial writers, including how they started their businesses, their writing niches, and dealing with any special challenges they face; a step-by-step case study on a business writing project; a quick overview of business structures, taxes, and insurance; writing resources, including books, websites, newsletters, writers’ groups, and organizations; and self-publishing.
Placing a heavy emphasis on sales and marketing of the business writer’s services, Bowerman does more than just tell writers how important it is; he shows readers how it’s done, shares others’ innovative ideas for reaching out to clients, and motivates writers every step of the way, even when it comes to tough tasks like cold-calling potential clients.
Bowerman’s conversational and encouraging writing style puts readers immediately at ease. He never loses sight of the reality of freelancing though, and doesn’t gloss over the hard work it takes to build a business. For example, he says it may take more than 500 cold-calls to before you start seeing a return on your time and effort, however if you keep doing it, it will get easier, and you will see results.
The format of the book, with frequent subheadings in each chapter, makes quick-reference easy. The website URLs included in the book are printed in bold, which is helpful for picking them out of the text when you want to type them into your browser.
Bowerman’s true talent is motivation; after the cold-calling chapter, even I felt ready to tackle the Yellow Pages (and almost nothing scares me more than cold-calling). If you’re serious about being a commercial writer, The Well-Fed Writer: Back for Seconds will motivate and inspire you to get started on making that dream a reality.
Amy Brozio-Andrews is a freelance writer and book reviewer. She brings more than five years' experience as a readers' advisory librarian to her work, which is regularly published by Library Journal, The Imperfect Parent, and Absolute Write. Her reviews have also been published by The Absinthe Literary Review, ForeWord Magazine, January Magazine, and Melt Magazine. Amy is also the managing editor and an international markets columnist for Absolute Write. Visit her online at http://www.amyba.com.
|
Sponsored links 
Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer! How to find a book publisher |
Text on this site Copyright © 1998-2007
Absolute Write, all rights reserved.
|
