Member's Library I am what the librarians have made me . . . B. K. Sandwell

Public Service Announcement: For Educational Purposes Only

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I’m the expert who deconstructed ghostwriting theory, skills, and psychology necessary to command premium fees for the work. Most writers who come to me for help are in the same boat.

  • They look for clients but aren’t positioned to attract them
  • They include “ghostwriting” as one of myriad services they provide
  • Their promotion lists their accomplishments: titles written, degrees earned, awards won
  • They willingly share writing samples or do free chapters to demonstrate their skill

Most don’t understand the difference between BISAC spread and BISAC clump. Few can explain the disparate development paths (or potential ROI) between public, purpose, and private titles.

In other words, they present themselves to the world as employees but cannot understand why they’re treated as hirelings. They have no ghostwriting knowledge base. No ghostwriting skills. No ghostwriting authority.

So let me share some facts.

  1. The demand for professional book ghostwriters is higher than the supply. According to industry lore approximately eighty-one percent of Americans want to write a book. That’s 5 million potential authors, conservatively. But of the 54,000 writers in America, only 200 are professional ghostwriters, according to Madeline Morrell of 2M Communications. (I think she’s wrong; I’ve personally trained at least fifty ghostwriters who turned out to be top pros. That said, 283,500,000 : 250 is still a significant demand/supply ratio.)
  2. Pro ghostwriting has been the most profitable career choice for 21st century writers for nearly fifteen years, according to Marty Nemko (US NEWS & WORLD REPORT, 2009).
  3. Professional ghostwriting authority is based on a toolbox of knowledge, skills, and psychology that myriad freelancers admit: “It never occurred to me to even think about knowing something like that.”

To command premium ghostwriting fees, your toolbox must contain:

Book Industry Knowledge Base

  • Industry expectations and standards
  • Industry supply-chain players, discounts, and prospects
  • Traditional vs. hybrid vs. service vs. self publishing
  • Registrations, ownerships, and scam pitfalls

Ghostwriting Theory

  • Scope and limitations
  • Authority and obligations
  • Business vs. freelancing
  • Nonfiction structure, templates, and story
  • Fiction architecture
  • Market vs. audience vs. Amazon
  • Author communication vs. report

Mechanical Skills

  • Editorial
  • Chicago Manual of Style
  • Algorithm-compliance
  • Nonfiction templates
  • Draft sequence
  • Implementation logs

Mechanical/Creative Skills

  • Market positioning
  • Tells, Intent, Perspective
  • Nonfiction charting
  • Fiction mapping
  • Chart to chapter manipulation
  • Map to chapter manipulation
  • Musical Line Editing mechanical elements

Creative Skills

  • Open interviewing
  • Creative Analysis, aka Analytical Reasoning
  • Perspective, Motive, Agenda
  • Plot-PMA integration
  • Meet-in-the-Middle plotting
  • Movel to novel conversion
  • Non-mechanical musical line editing

Creative/Professional Skills

  • BISAC Subject Headings
  • Industry based nonfiction, memoir, and fiction gold and strengths
  • Industry based non-fiction, memoir, and fiction content disruptions and deal breakers

Professional Skills

  • Book proposals
  • Bestseller strategy plans
  • Synopses
  • Query letters

Business Skills

  • Business model
  • Project proposals, aka bids
  • Equitable contracts
  • Business plan
  • Sales funnel
  • Business launch tactics

Ghostwriting Psych

  • Mindset management
  • Human-nature management
  • Project management

Yes, it’s a lot to master, and I truly wish I had a simpler answer for “How do I find clients who will pay me what I’m worth?” But I don’t. Writing can be a job, a paid occupation, or a trade, all of which earns however much the market will bear—but professional ghostwriting is a business that provides premium services at premium prices.

Fortunately, everything in the above list is 100 percent learnable and can be acquired by:

  1. Trial and error, which is the way most pro ghosts learned their profession
  2. Working with a mentor
  3. Taking Ghostwriting Professional Designation Program

 

 

Claudia Suzanne is a consummate ghostwriter/teacher, understanding what authors need in order to successfully complete their book dream, and she has a finely honed talent for communicating what she knows to her students and clients. Popularly dubbed “The Einstein of Ghostwriting,” Claudia has entertained and informed tens of thousands of writers, editors, journalists, and aspiring authors at countless writer and professional meetings, conferences, radio and BlogTalk radio broadcasts, webinars, and podcasts. Claudia was an invited expert on Penguin’s Author Solutions Expert Video series and a featured entrepreneur in Orange County Business Journal and Norwegian Business Daily. Her signature title, This Business of Books: A Complete Overview of the Industry from Concept through Sales, earned her a 2018 Author of Influence Award from Connected Women of Influence.

What Level of Copyediting Do I Need?

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You’ve finished your manuscript (MS), and now you are looking for an editor. Congratulations! The first step you need to take is to have a professional editor evaluate your MS. Once you’ve confirmed that you have a solid story structure, a sound plot, and well-rounded characters through an evaluation, you’re ready for copyediting.

Punctuation, word usage, grammar, spelling (aka “PUGS”), capitalization, and formatting are all part of mechanical editing. It’s black and white, the standards are set (if not by the style guides, by the author’s preference, or publisher’s house style), and your editor will conform the text to these rules. But your MS might need more than this. The areas of editing that change with the levels deal more with the ideas that are conveyed in the text and the techniques used to create the readers’ experience.

 

Light Copyediting

If your MS needs a light copyedit, that means it doesn’t have any peculiarly worded phrases or sentences. You’ve conveyed your ideas with concision, and you don’t have any wordy and repetitive sections. The ideas are presented with clarity and there’s nothing there to confuse your readers. Sentences use strong verbs and fresh descriptors. And you’ve kept details consistent throughout. However, manuscripts that haven’t already been professionally copyedited rarely need only a light copyedit.

 

Medium Copyediting

In a medium copyedit, you may have some awkward or repetitive content, minor point-of-view issues, long paragraphs that need to be broken up for more comfortable reading, or transitions that need a bit of work to flow better. If you have unnecessary dialogue tags, weak writing, or purple prose, a medium copyedit will also take care of these.

Of course, it’s likely that as the author, you may not realize theses awkward or repetitive phrases, otherwise you would have corrected them yourself. But a trained professional will be able to pinpoint issues like this right away.

 

Heavy Copyediting

If this is your first book, and you’ve had no training in self-editing, I can almost guarantee your MS needs a heavy copyedit. Your editor will resolve inconsistencies in voice, diction, setting, point of view, and chapter titles. They will break up paragraphs where appropriate for more comfortable reading, eliminate unnecessary dialogue tags, add action beats where appropriate, and generally strengthen the writing. If you have areas that “tell” where you should “show,” your editor will fix these. And your editor will ensure appropriate levels of description for settings and characters, rewriting a bit if necessary, cutting a lot if necessary. This level of editing takes the most amount of time, which translates into a higher cost. So what should you expect when it comes to paying for a copyedit?

 

Copyediting Pace

As you’ve probably concluded, the cost of editing depends on the amount of time it takes to complete it. That’s why editing can get so expensive. So it’s helpful to have an idea of how much time your editor is investing in your MS. Here is a general guide I’ve found to be pretty accurate, taken from The Copyeditor’s Handbook.[i] Keep in mind that a manuscript page is equivalent to 250 words.

Standard Text                       Difficult Text

Light copyedit              6–9    pages/hour                   4–6      pages/hour

Medium copyedit          4–7    pages/hour                   2–4      pages/hour

Heavy copyedit             2–3    pages/hour                   1–2      pages/hour

 

How does this translate into cost? A 50,000-word manuscript is going to cost anywhere from $800 to $4,000, depending on the level of copyediting it needs and time it takes to complete it. Knowing this will help you better prepare to hire a quality editor who will give you a great experience for the money you pay.

 

As you move forward to greater heights of writing and editing, remember that your voice is significant, your life is valuable, and your contribution is unique.

 

[i]. Amy Einsohn, The Copyeditor’s Handbook (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), 22.

 

 

Rachel E. Bradley holds a BS degree in paralegal studies from Northeastern State University in Oklahoma and graduated summa cum laude in 2006. She is a gold member of the Christian PEN: Proofreaders and Editors Network, is an established freelance editor with the Christian Editor Connection, is an instructor with the PEN Institute, is a judge for the Editors’ Choice Award, and has served as faculty for PENCON, the only conference for editors in the Christian market. After serving nine years in the legal field and becoming an advanced certified paralegal, Rachel started her business as a freelance editor and indexer. She now owns Revisions by Rachel Inc. In 2018, Rachel lost her first husband, Matthew, after an intense battle with brain cancer. This life experience carried over into her editing and gave her a new understanding and a fierce compassion for people who feel broken and hurt. In celebration of continued life and hope, Rachel became a licensed skydiver and takes to the skies with her rainbow canopy, “Promises,” any chance she gets. In early 2021, she asked God to choose her next husband. In an incredible tale of trusting God and giving him her yes without exception, Rachel is now joyfully married to Alexander Bradley. They have been assigned the awe-inspiring and continually humbling task of raising two incredible children. Beyond reading, Rachel enjoys Bible studies, dancing during church worship, skydiving, swing dancing, rock climbing, reading, teaching, discussing important issues, watching Star Trek, sewing, cooking, Pilates, horseback riding, water sports, playing guitar, and snow skiing.

Emotions, the Characters We Love to Hate, and Paying It Forward

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February is all about emotions, specifically love because of Valentine’s Day. Emotions are one of the keys to a great novel. Without them, there is no connection between reader and story or reader and author. Emotions are also a core component of the conflict that drives a novel forward.

Think about your own experience. When is the last time you kept reading a book you didn’t feel strongly about? Probably not recently. But sometimes we “hate-read” books we don’t like just like we “hate-watch” TV shows we don’t like — either waiting for them to get better or continuing on because we just can’t believe how truly bad they are. In the same vein but on the opposite end, we read books we love because we can’t wait to see what happens next.

Then there are the characters. Obviously there are those we love and care about but some of the best are the ones we love to hate. Any character that strikes us with strong emotion (positive or negative) is a testament to the skill of the author (or actor, if it is on TV). I still remember the first time I encountered a character like that. I was probably 18 or so and watching the show Roswell (the original, not the remake. Yes, I am that old). The character of Tess made me so mad, I was in awe of how much I hated her. (Oddly enough, the actress who played her, a very young Emily DeRaven, has become one of my all-time favorite actors.)

As an author, I still keep Tess in mind when writing my villains. They are ton of fun to write and if I can make my readers feel an ounce of the loathing I felt for Tess, I have truly accomplished something. It’s hard to explain how to do that. You have to create a character who is abhorrent, but give them qualities that still make them attractive at the same time. So they can’t be cardboard evil; you have to feel sympathy for them as well. For example, in my only contemporary novel, Been Searching for You, there are two villains, Nick and Mia. Nick is a total jerk, but he has a history of being kind to the main character, Annabeth, so while you don’t want to see the two of them together, you can’t totally hate him, either. Mia is Annabeth’s best frenemy.  She’s complete witch but you also see her taking care of Annabeth as well, so while you want to shake or slap her, you can also see why Annabeth keeps her around.

But emotion isn’t just for the page and the reader. It’s for the author, too. There is a saying “no tears in the writer, no tears in the reader,” meaning if we don’t feel emotions (yes, I have actually cried while writing certain scenes) they won’t translate to our readers and make them feel what we want them to. That is why as an author, it is so important to get inside the heads of your characters and really feel what they are feeling. It shows when you do.

And honestly emotion is why I am here as well. Part of the reason why I write historical fiction is to educate. While my stories contain elements of fiction, because I write biographical historical fiction, they are also highly factual, where I can be. I want people to read my books and come away wanting to do their own research to find out more about the people and events in my books.

That same impulse, to teach and share, is why I agreed to be NAIWE’s Novel Writing Expert. I love to pass on what I have learned (often the hard way) to other writers.

 

Nicole Evelina is a USA Today bestselling author and biographer who writes historical fiction, nonfiction, and women’s fiction. Her six books have won more than 40 awards, including four Book of the Year designations. Nicole was named Missouri’s Top Independent Author by Library Journal and Biblioboard as the winner of the Missouri Indie Author Project in 2018 and has been awarded the North Street Book Prize and the Sarton Women’s Book Award. One of her novels, Madame Presidentess, was previously optioned for film.

You’ve Written a Book: Now What?

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Now what? Indeed!

There are numerous options for authors today to get their books in print, but many people have a room full of good-looking printed books they wrote and wonder, “What do I do now?”

From traditional publishing, self-publishing, independent publishing, and university presses to e-books, it’s important that your publisher pays attention to your requests and needs and that they offer the expertise and experience to help you publish your book the way you intend. However, it is also essential for you as an author to realize that publishing is only the beginning. You need an aggressive and comprehensive marketing plan incorporating traditional and social-media options and opportunities.

Who is going to read your book? Who will buy it? Oh yes, of course some friends and family. All traditional and self-publishers will tell you, “You need to market your book. YOU need to promote it, tell your story and create a buzz about it.”

You’re a writer. You’re a creative person. You really don’t want to be a marketer. However, more and more, it’s a proven fact that writers have to promote their books. No matter how wonderful, interesting, compelling your book might be, you still have to let the reading world know it exists. Unless you market your book, chances are it will fall through the cracks of literary chaos.

Marketing includes everything from getting your book reviewed to doing book signings or seminars. It’s also important to have a website for your book. It’s like that old question that advertisers asked: “Do you know what happens when you don’t advertise?” Answer: “Nothing.”

Public relations provides information and can be a way to get free publicity through articles, book reviews, and interviews in print or with electronic media.

Advertising is when you pay for placement in the media such as a Facebook Author Fan Page, a Google ad, or even local media, which is far less costly than national media. Authors can also pay for reviews in publications such as Kirkus Indie Review, Goodreads, and San Francisco/Manhattan Reviews. Another avenue is to search through Google for reviews and event contest options.

 

Traditional Marketing Actions

  • Set up book launch signings, time, place, and details.
  • Develop an invitation list and sign-in sheet, and bring books to sell if you are self-published.
  • Donate several copies of your book to the main library in your community.
  • Send a press release including the cover of your book and your personal photo to media, announce the release on your website, email it to organizations of which you’re a member and to your personal contacts. (Continue to build your contact list.)
  • Develop pitch letters for speaking opportunities, and make list of potential places you might speak such as target-appropriate conferences.
  • Submit to online calendar listings in your target market.
  • Have book swag (bookmarks, cards, flyers, pens, etc.).
  • Write an eye-catching sell sheet incorporating your book cover, book synopsis, and author bio.
  • Write articles related to your book and submit to organization blogs, newsletters, local papers, and magazines.

 

Online and Social Media Actions (a few ideas)

  • Participate in Goodreads giveaway programs.
  • Join or develop a blog tour.
  • Set up a Facebook Author Fan Page and boost some of your posts. This can be very effective in building social-media and website traffic. Posts can include reviews, announcements, new books, links to book chapters, event dates, press releases, etc.
  • Look into Instagram and X and other offerings. Be aware of scams and ask other authors about their experience with a particular promotional opportunity.

 

So, now what? Be willing to spend the time, money, and energy to fulfill your dreams and ambitions.

 

Marcia Rosen (aka M. Glenda Rosen) is an award-winning author of twelve books including her newest one, An Agatha, Raymond, Sherlock and Me Mystery: Murder at the Zoo plus The Senior Sleuths, Dying To Be Beautiful Mystery Series, and The Gourmet Gangster: Mysteries and Menus (menus by her son Jory Rosen). She is also author of The Woman’s Business Therapist and award-winning My Memoir Workbook and has given memoir writing presentations and classes for close to 20 years. Marcia has assisted many authors in developing, writing, publishing, and promoting their books. For 25 years, she was the owner of a successful national marketing and public relations agency. Marcia has frequently been a speaker or program moderator at organization meetings and conferences, bookstores, libraries, and Zoom programs. Topics she has taught and presented over the past 20 years include Encouraging the Writer Within You, Marketing for Authors, Writing Mysteries…Not A Mystery, Writing Your Memoir, and recently Anatomy of Writing a Murder. Many articles on these topics have been published on mystery reader blogs and in newsletters and magazines and her newest articles include Location, Location, Location: Murders Have Their Places; Hearing Voices of Past Famous Detectives: Their Impact and Influences; and Writing Mysteries at a Zoo: With Caution. Marcia is a member of Sisters in Crime National and New Mexico (Croak & Dagger), Southwest Writers, New Mexico Book Association, Women Writing the West, Public Safety Writer’s Association, Women’s National Book Association, and National Association of Independent Writers and Editors.

Just Following Up

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Earlier this fall, I was contacted by a prospect for a potential project. He runs a marketing/advertising agency, and we’d worked together for a third party on a project earlier in the year. This was my first chance to do some work directly for him, so I wanted to make it count.

We had a 30-minute Zoom call to discuss the scope of work, and it sounded like a good fit. I crunched the numbers and sent him an estimate the next day. He said he’d discuss it with his team and get back to me.

As it happened, my wife and I watched the movie Swingers over the weekend after I submitted the estimate. If you haven’t seen the movie, it’s a snapshot of the mid-1990s featuring a young Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau. If you have seen it, you’ll recall the agonizing scene where Favreau’s character Mikey leaves a string of increasingly desperate voicemail messages on a girl’s answering machine — against the advice of his buddies, who tell him it’s smarter to wait a few days before calling. (Or even, one suggests, till the next Olympics.)

So I waited. And waited some more.

A week turned into two and into three.

At this point, I was assuming that it wasn’t going to happen, whether I had priced it too high or they had decided to do it internally, or to scrap it altogether.

Then, at the beginning of week four, I received this email: “Estimate sounds good, let’s get started!” I was both excited and relieved, not necessarily in that order, and the project (which wrapped up a week ago) was a success.

In retrospect, I’m glad that I stuck to my Swingers principle of being patient. Even when you’re excited about a project, it can come across as too eager or even desperate if you push someone to a decision when they haven’t had enough time. From personal business experience, a “Just following up” subject line is a huge turnoff.

In retrospect, however, I would have done one thing different: When I emailed the estimate, I could have simply asked, “When do you think you might have a decision?” or something similar. That would have given me a reason to reach out after a specific number of days or weeks, without feeling like I was being pushy—and also without having to wait till the 2026 Winter Games in Italy.

 

Jake Poinier made the leap into freelance writing and editing in 1999 after a decade of positions in the publishing industry, giving him key insights from both sides of the desk. As the founder and owner of Boomvang Creative Group, he has worked with a diverse array of Fortune 500 and small businesses, consumer and trade magazines, and independent authors. Jake is committed to helping freelancers improve their businesses and shares his knowledge and experiences frequently as a speaker at industry conferences, through webinars, and on his blog.

7Cs

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I wanted to share with you today some things I learned at our International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) meeting last week from our guest speaker Carol Daniel of KMOX radio here in St. Louis.

The seven Cs of communication is a list of principles for written and spoken communications to ensure that they are effective. The seven Cs are

  1. clear
  2. correct
  3. complete
  4. concrete
  5. concise
  6. considered
  7. courteous

Other notes:

  • Does your message/story matter?
  • Does it move people?
  • Does it break through?
  • Does it carry any weight at all?
  • Your target is shell shocked from everything that has been going on.
  • Say what needs to be said.
  • We are all powerful as individuals and should speak truth. Once we do, it is out there and our job is done. It is up to the receiver to do with it what they will. But we have spoken the truth and that is very important.

 

Nicole Evelina is a USA Today bestselling author and biographer who writes historical fiction, nonfiction, and women’s fiction. Her six books have won more than 40 awards, including four Book of the Year designations. Nicole was named Missouri’s Top Independent Author by Library Journal and Biblioboard as the winner of the Missouri Indie Author Project in 2018, and she has been awarded the North Street Book Prize and the Sarton Women’s Book Award. One of her novels, Madame Presidentess, was optioned for film.

More Info Needed? How to Get All You Need the Second Time Around

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Reporters typically connect with a source once, get what they need, and go on their way to write a story. Sometimes you have to revise a story based on your editor’s suggestions. What happens when you don’t just need to edit, but have to ask a source for additional information? Maybe you realize you didn’t have everything you needed once you start writing the story, or your editor comes back with more questions during the revision process. Either way, returning to a source for more information can be tricky.

Mostly because you want to make sure you get exactly what you need out of your second interaction.

I’ve been there — not too frequently, but it has happened to me. Sometimes the editor raises additional questions when reading your story, or they weren’t clear about what they wanted from the get-go when they assigned it. Writers can equally be to blame, because sometimes we realize what we need — and don’t have — only when we start putting an article together. And sometimes, you simply forgot to ask something or didn’t prod the source for enough details.

Whatever the case, here are some insights to help if you have to conduct a second interview with a source.

  1. Define what you need. Whether your editor is requesting more information, or you are the one inquiring, it’s essential to know exactly the information you’re looking for. This may involve doing more research or more work — or combing through any other interviews — to ensure you know specifically what you need. Writing out bullet points helps pinpoint the concepts that need to be addressed.
  2. Devise exact questions. As you know, the information you get can largely depend on the types of questions you ask. If you need a yes-or-no response, ask a yes-or-no question. But if you need more, be specific in your question. Ask for things like a real-life example of a situation. Explain that you understand the subject but need more information about what that means or does. It can help to “bullet-point out” some concepts and have your questions prepared. While you can always try to go back to a source for information, you want to interrupt them as little as possible. Even if they say they’re there to help, it’s your job to get in and out with what you need.
  3. Consider the interview. Will you be emailing additional questions, or do you need to set up a call or meet in person? Sometimes the conversation of a live interview could lead you off track, so you’ll want to be mindful of time to ensure that your priority questions get answers.
  4. Examine the answers. The source’s responses to those questions may prompt you to ask additional questions. Be prepared to do some digesting on the spot so you can then, in turn, ask any follow-up questions to best understand their answer.
  5. Ask for information. Not understanding something? That’s okay. It’s your job as the reporter to ensure that you do, and most people want everything to be accurate (especially what they say) and will take a moment to explain things. If you are unclear about something, the best thing to do is just ask. Keep in mind that if the source spouts off something like an acronym, you can probably figure it out within the context of the subject you’re talking about by doing a quick internet search. But if you’re really lost, ask.
  6. Double check. When you’ve received the answers to all of your questions, go back and check again to check off everything on the list. Remember, you don’t want to have to go back and forth with a source and your editor will appreciate as few rounds of revisions as necessary.

Writing can be a long process, especially when the editing process includes conducting additional interviews. With a little planning and finesse, you can turn around a draft that has everything it should.

 

Kristen Fischer is a copywriter and journalist living at the Jersey Shore. She worked as a reporter and copyeditor for Gannett before launching her full-time freelance business in 2005. Her work has been published in Parents, New Jersey Monthly, Prevention, Woman’s Day, SheKnows, and Healthline.

Journo Sources

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One-third of Americans rely on news platforms they acknowledge are less reliable, mainly social media and peers. The other two-thirds of the public consider their primary news sources trustworthy, mainly print news and broadcast television, according to a new RAND Corporation report.

The report draws from a national survey of 2,543 Americans to examine how reliability, demographics, and political partisanship factor into news choices and how often people seek out differing viewpoints in the news. It is the latest in a series of RAND-funded reports into Truth Decay, the phenomenon defined as diminishing reliance on facts, data, and analysis in American public life.

“A lack of time and competing demands may explain why a third of Americans turn to news sources they deem less reliable, which suggests improving the quality of news content or teaching people how to ‘better consume’ news isn’t enough to address Truth Decay,” said Jennifer Kavanagh, senior political scientist and co-author of the report. “Media companies and other news providers may need to provide more easily accessible and digestible ways for individuals to consume high quality investigative journalism.”

About 44 percent of respondents reported that news is as reliable now as in the past, while 41 percent said it has become less reliable and 15 percent — mostly women, racial and ethnic minorities and those without college degrees — said it is more reliable.

Respondents who lean on print and broadcast platforms were more likely to deem them reliable. Those who rely on social media and peers for news, however, don’t see those platforms as reliable yet still choose to get their news from these sources.

“Our findings suggest that perceived reliability is not the only factor that drives what Americans choose as their go-to news sources,” said Michael Pollard, a sociologist and lead author of the report. “Despite acknowledging that there are more reliable sources for news, people with demands on their time may be limited to using less reliable platforms.”

Asked whether they ever seek out alternate viewpoints when catching up on the news, 54 percent said they “sometimes” do, 20 percent said, “always or almost always,” 17 percent said “infrequently,” and 9 percent said, “never or almost never.”

“Political partisanship was linked to whether or not individuals were willing to seek out different viewpoints,” Pollard said. “For example, those who self-identified as more liberal were more likely than conservatives to report that they ‘never or almost never’ seek differing views.”

The report also identified the four most common combinations of news media types consumed by Americans: print publications and broadcast television; online; radio; and social media and peers.

The survey was conducted via the RAND American Life Panel, a nationally representative, probability-based panel of more than 6,000 participants who are regularly interviewed over the internet. Age was an important predictor of how respondents obtain news. Perhaps unsurprisingly, those who are younger were more likely to get news from social media and peers, while older individuals were more likely to get their news from print publications and broadcast television.

Those who are college-educated were less likely to get their news from social media and peers, instead opting for radio and online sources. Those with less than a college education were more likely to report “never or almost never” seeking out news with alternate viewpoints.

Those who are married were three times more likely than singles to rate their peers as the most reliable source for news. Unmarried people were more likely than married people to report they “always or almost always” seek out sources with differing views.

Past reports in the Truth Decay series have looked at different aspects of the changed media and information landscape, including a linguistic analysis that found increasing subjectivity in “new media” sources compared to more traditional forms of news, as well as an examination of media literacy initiatives in the United States. Future reports will include research into Americans’ trust in public institutions and the prevalence of Truth Decay in Europe.

 

Kristen Fischer is a copywriter and journalist living at the Jersey Shore. She worked as a reporter and copyeditor for Gannett before launching her full-time freelance business in 2005. Her work has been published in Parents, New Jersey Monthly, Prevention, Woman’s Day, SheKnows, and Healthline.

 

Hunting for Editor Emails

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One of the most frustrating parts of being a freelance journalist aside from the actual writing is finding editors to pitch your work to. I’ve grappled with this for years, and I think I always will. Why? Editors frequently leave their posts. Not every editor informs you they are leaving, or who their replacement will be. You’re often left in the dust. This is kind of how the business rolls.

Of course, there are ways to make it a little easier. You’ll probably have to pay for those resources, but they can be well worth it. I’m a big supporter of Freelance Success. Their newsletter and community are very forthcoming when it comes to sharing contact information. Others, such as

Here’s a new tool I found: Hunter. While it does not spell out which editor to contact, it does let you plug in a URL and see what email addresses are affiliated with it. Most of the publication websites—especially the ones with print options—didn’t light up, but it was helpful to see what formulas are used. Hunter also gave a few personal emails that I then plugged in to see if the person was still working there and pitchable.

Hunter is not a GREAT tool, but you need all the help you can get to keep tabs on editors—especially if you pitch different publications frequently.

 

Kristen Fischer is a copywriter and journalist living at the Jersey Shore. She worked as a reporter and copyeditor for Gannett before launching her full-time freelance business in 2005. Her work has been published in Parents, New Jersey Monthly, Prevention, Woman’s Day, SheKnows, and Healthline.

Why Authors Need a Website

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Why does an author need a good website? And why should they pay for one instead of using one of the many free ones? Or isn’t it easier to use Facebook or the writer’s blog they have been using? However, the best answer for writers is to have a website is yes. Unlike social media and blogging, an author website means you will spend time building your writing platform. Every author’s online platform is their most significant asset, and creating one is vital for your long-term success.

Of course, some writers may point to using their profiles on Facebook, X, Instagram, or other social media sites because they have friends following them. Yes, there is value in social media profiles for writers. However, social media platforms come and go. Just ask anyone who used MySpace or AOL. With your website, you will always have control over whether it lives or dies. You will work to keep it alive, as that is the one stationary spot for potential readers who are searching online to run across your website.

More reasons for having a website:

You get to control what messages about you and your writing projects go on your site. Even if your site is filled only with static pages, you can decide what content goes on those pages.

You can write your own content, provide readers (and other media and publishing professionals) with the best way to contact you, share links to your social media profiles, give information about your writing projects and books, and much more.

You have to figure out how much to invest in your website. It may start with you locking down your domain name. Next, it may be creating an essential static website. As your writing career expands, you may want to invest more time and money in the website.

Besides readers, some companies will find out about you through your website, and you might get contacted to do a three-day weekend book signing, like what happened to me this year. Busch Gardens Williamsburg, an amusement park, contacted me a few months back to schedule a weekend in October to sign my books at the park. I agreed and signed a contract. The event gave me the opportunity to meet potential readers.

So, go ahead with that Facebook page, Instagram, or other social media, but think about a website. As that is where your author brand will shine the best as a beacon of light on the internet.

 

Pamela K. Kinney gave up long ago ignoring the demanding voices in her head and has been writing ever since. Her horror short story, “Bottled Spirits,” was runner-up for the 2013 WSFA Small Press Award and considered one of the seven best genre short fiction for that year. She has various short stories and poems published in fiction and nonfiction anthologies, magazines, and online zines, a science fiction novella, an urban fantasy novel, five nonfiction ghost books, and a nonfiction cryptid book. Her horror poem, “Dementia,” got her mentioned in Best Horror of the Year, Volume Thirteen. She has stories and poems in two horror anthologies to be released in 2024, plus a YA dark fantasy novel, Demon Memories, first book in the Moon Ridge trilogy.

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