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March 2, 2009 by Karen Berger

Blech.

It’s THAT time of year again. Well, maybe you’ve already dealt with it, but for me, pulling my tax information together is one of those uber-procrastination issues.

Some of my colleagues use Turbo Tax, and I have a few friends who have recommended it highly, but to tell you the truth, I’d rather clean out a slaughterhouse than try to put my own taxes together. It’s as much an emotional issue as anything — I’d probably need therapy if I had to figure out both a new computer program AND which column what number goes in at the same time. Considering the cost of therapy, an accountant is cheaper in the long run.  I have a very nice competent person who is willing to look at all my various lists and sort them into categories and add everything up and tell me what I owe.  Only downside: He wants my stuff, er — soon.

In nearly 20 years of self-employment, I have figured out a few things to help smooth over a proccess I’m not very good at.

1) Keep good records. Some people use spreadsheet programs like Quicken. I’ve actually drawn up my own Excel program to keep track of income from various income streams. Whatever you do, keep it up to date. I log all checks before depositing them. Cash and barter income has to be accounted for as well, if you have any. (I don’t;  I prefer checks because they are traceable,  but if you’ve got any retail products, you probably have some cash to account for. Keep up with that, because you’ll never remember.)

2) A business checking account and a business credit card separate out business expenses from personal ones.

3) I try to pay for everything with debit card so that I have a receipt record AND a record on my bank account of where all my business expense money went. It’s a back-up system that means I won’t forget any expenses.

4) Keep a log of expenses: What they were, what they were for; how they relate to your business. Ideally, your annual log should have all business related travel expenses, home expenses that have a business application, office and business equipment, repairs, advertising, etc. If you get audited down the road, such a log makes it clear what you were doing, what its purpose was, and how it pertained to your business.  

5) Your accountant is probably pretty busy right now, but after April 15, while things are still fresh, set up a time to talk with him or her, especially if your business has undergone any major changes (such as a new income stream, a new category of expenses, or  you’ve found yourself making significantly more or less than usual).  There may be some things you should be thinking about to get ready for NEXT year.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a bushel-load of papers to go through….

Posted in Business Issues, Freelancing | Tagged | Leave a Comment »

More on Pay-Per-Click Writing

January 21, 2009 by Karen Berger

I’m surprised at how much I’m enjoying this new Internet writing project.  It’s nice to know that after all these years of writing for a living I still — love to write.

The formats are tight and inflexible: 400-600 words,  no first person, or even second person (although the imperative is okay).  But I love having an hour or so free, and sitting down and thinking, Okay, I’ll write about this.  I LOVE the autonomy.  Love Love Love it. And as soon as the article is up, it starts getting clicks, and clicks lead to revenue.

Although right now, I think I’ve made about 57 cents.

Okay, so the jury is still out on revenue. I’ve done the math every way I can figure, and it still seems a crap shoot to me. I can see where it could work out very nicely long term, but I also don’t think anyone in their right mind would want to wager a whole lot on how Internet revenue models are going to work for writers a few years down the road. But if, a year or so from now, I decide it’s a bust — I’ll still have rights to my work, and can repurpose and repackage it.  I’m feeling optimistic, and I have to say that that hasn’t been true in the writing biz for a long time.

Here’s my bio page: http://www.suite101.com/profile.cfm/karenberger

And here’s a list of articles: http://www.suite101.com/writer_articles.cfm/karenberger

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Writing Site Recommendation

January 20, 2009 by Karen Berger

A few weeks ago I blogged about some of the challenges of freelancing in the current economic conditions, and some of the steps I’m taking to not only survive in this difficult economy, but make the best of it. 

http://createworklive.com/2008/11/22/silver-linings-in-stormy-clouds/

http://createworklive.com/2008/11/20/surviving-the-recession/

Here’s another site, called The Writer’s Place, that’s giving some great advice to freelance writers this week: http://nancychristie.blogspot.com/

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Writing for Pay-Per-Click Websites

January 8, 2009 by Karen Berger

Is it a new business model to empower writers or a new way of making money off of writers?

After 28 years in the business (my first bylined article was published while I was still in college) I’m ASSUMING the latter.  I’m just cynical enough to look through jaundiced yellow glasses at anything that promises writers a way of doing business that actually works for writers.

God knows it’s not happening in our traditional markets. The facts of the matter are that newspapers and magazines are folding, rates for freelance writers have not budged for the ENTIRE time I’ve been working in this industry, and in some cases, they’ve actually gone down.  Ad pages are down, which means editorial pages are down, which means work available to freelancers is down. Contracts have gotten more and more restrictive and editor-writer relations are, across the industry, at an all-time low.

I’m lucky — I have some regular markets and some editors who like me. As long as they stay employed, all is well and good. In the last year, I’ve done stories about hiking in South Africa, England, New Zealand, Colorado, and British Columbia, helicopter adventure travels in 10 different countries, iconic music cities, helicopter hiking, beaches in Massachusetts, beach hiking in the Hamptons, winter hiking in five locations nationwide, and a host of other topics I can’t even remember.

But I’ve been looking at the future, and from where I sit, it seems uncertain, especially in the current economic situation. So I’ve been researching websites that act as a sort of online repository: They get writers to submit articles, then pay them a royalty based on how many people view the articles and click on the ads. In a sense, it’s not that different from a traditional book publishing arrangement, except there isn’t an advance up front.  Then again, with the speed of the Internet, articles earn money the minute they hit the ether. Or, at least, that’s the point.

So I’ve signed on for one, called www.Suite101.com.

Here’s the deal: You have to apply by sending writing samples and a resume.  Suite101 claims 12 million readers (whatever that means) a month, and they ask writers to submit about one 400 – 600 word article a week.  You give them a year’s Internet exclusive (you can still sell print rights). After a year, the stories stay on Suite101, but you can republish them on other Internet sites.  You get paid monthly, based on clicks.  

It seems like there are upsides and downsides, and sometimes the mirror has two faces.

Upside: If you adhere to the basic template, the editors basically leave you alone.

Downside: If you adhere to the basic template the editors basically leave you alone.  As someone who has to edit and re-edit blog posts for typos 20 times even AFTER spell check, I really DO appreciate good editing. Or any editing. Suite101 expects you to come in clean.

Upside: You can write anything you want, and as long as it fits the template, everything is fine.

Downside: Anybody else can write whatever THEY want, including something on the same topic you’ve just written on. And if their work isn’t clean, or well-written, it drags down the level of the whole site.   

But here’’s the beauty of it: No query letters. Someone else deals with the ad people and the money. Someone else deals with the search engine optimization. Instead of having to build a site and an audience from scratch, you hook in immediately to a market of readers. And your writing becomes an income stream that pays off as long as it keeps earning eyeballs.

Don’t we writers often whine about how all we want to do is write? Don’t we say that we don’t want editors making us tailor our copy to their advertisers or demanding answers to questions we answered in our first draft?  

True, the templates are extremely limiting. I write a lot of service stories (meaning stories that offer useful take-away information to the reader), and I usually prefer to write them in first and second person. Suite101 requires all third-person writing, although a quick look shows that some editors are stricter than others. It’s a challenge for me to write in an engaging non-passive third-person style, and not resort to tired (but grammatically correct) language and lazy answers: “There is …” “There are…” “If one want to do this, one should do that…” 

But I can only be what I am, which is a writer. So I carefully edit, and spend more time than perhaps I should.

And here’s the fantastic great news: I LOVE to write. That’s the not-so-secret secret these sites know about us writers. If they give us the freedom to write — we will write. And write. And write.

I feel like I’ve been let out of jail: All of these stories are springing forth; I’ve got a list of 100 topics to hit in the next year or two. I wrote seven stories this week alone — stories on diving in Belize and sailing the Grenadines and skiing in the Berkshires…

I have no idea if my enthusiasm will hold, if this will take root, or if the financial return will be worth the work. Like a book, there’s an element of risk for the creator. But I am amassing a huge amount of material I can repurpose later, I’m writing what I want to write about, and there is an income stream involved.

The Internet has been a double-edged sword to creators. It has decimated the recording industry, shaken the copyright laws to their roots, and is now taking on newspapers and magazines. It would be nice to think that it offers the creators themselves some opportunities: To reach audiences without a middlemamn, to profit from their work.

I don’t know if this is the answer, but it might be part of an answer. I’m willing to write… and see.    

Check out my page at http://www.suite101.com/profile.cfm/karenberger

Posted in Freelancing, Internet Issues, Writing | 1 Comment »

2008: Looking Back

December 31, 2008 by Karen Berger

I got inspired by a fellow writer’s blog post on her top five things from 2008 ( http://sherionwriting.blogspot.com/). So I’m going to derail from my “how starving artists can buy a house” series to reflect a bit, and post about some of the highlights of my 2008.

1) 2008 was about finding balance between my writing life and my music life. How to balance traveling while teaching piano lessons? How to deal with lots and lots of students wanting lessons – while fewer and fewer editors are buying stories? And what about practicing the piano (which is its own juggling act, as I bounce between jazz, classical, and rock music)? I won’t say I figured out the answer, but I found some new writing markets, went on some great trips, have my teaching studio at a manageable level, and enjoyed playing out. Can’t ask for more than that. 

2) Trips: Scuba diving in Belize, St. Vincent, and St. Lucia reminded me (as if I needed reminding) how much I love being underwater. Diving the Lesleen M. wreck in St. Lucia was an absolute highlight: Swimming through the corridors between windows covered with brilliant coral was like floating in fairyland.

3) Learning that my DK book, Backpacking and Hiking, was translated into 12 languages. When the publisher sent me — unexpectedly, and with no forenotice — the Czech and Hungarian editions, it occrred to me to think it was pretty strange that a book would be translated into only Spanish (an edition I already knew about) and two relatively obscure eastern European languages. Some vanity-googling discovered editions in several other languages, and a request for info from the publisher revealed that there are actually 12 editions out there. I gave the Czech edition to my dad, who is Czech. He rerpots that the translator used informal “street” language — which “hurts his ears.” 

4) Playing out: We had some fun gigs in 2008, especially the  Riverside Jam, which took place in Fox Lake in August, the Dewey Hall Folk Series, where we headlined in October (bet you didn’t know you could get away with playing “Time Bomb ” at a “folk” series!), the Monterey General store, where we not only gave a couple of our regular shows, but were also featured as an act in the semi-annual “big big concert” in the church across the street, and of course, Fod Fest, where we celebrated the life and music of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl by performing at the beautiful Mahaiwe Theater in Great Barrington at the tour’s kick-off concert. 

5) The elections. The elections. The elections!!!!!!

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Home Sweet Office: The Home Studio

December 15, 2008 by Karen Berger

The work-at-home artist has a particularly challenging job when looking for new digs. You have to think about all the things everyone else has to worry about – how soon after the purchase the furnace will self-destruct, when was the roof put on, what is that funny-smelling green stuff in the basement, and how much is it going to cost to replace the half-rotten 40-year-old dark-brown cork paneling in the family room. And you have to  think about all the things people worry about when they are buying a business: Is it convenient for clients, is there enough space, where will people park, is high-speed internet available, what if you have to expand?

Imagining how space could be reallocated or improved is the creative part, but there is also a practical element. Building costs are sky-rocketing, and no one likes dealing with contractors who don’t show up for months on end. It pays to get it right the first time.

  • Think about your needs in two separate packages: Home and family versus business and clients. How many people will be working at home? One person working at home creates a completely different situation than two creatives sharing a workspace (When you are sharing space 24 – 7 — you need a LOT of space). If you’ve got a family on top of that, you should be looking for a property that has clearly delineated work and family areas – preferably separated by walls and doors.
  • Look at different configurations: In rural areas, houses often have outbuildings that can be turned into studio space. A garage (or the second floor of a garage) can be a recording studio,  rehearsal space, writing room, photo lab, or artist’s studio. But don’t make assumptions: If you’re serious about a property, get a contractor to give you an estimate of what it’s going to take to turn that old cowshed into a state-of-the-art video lab. 
  • In rural areas, look for properties zoned mixed residential-commercial, especially if you plan to sell your creations, or if walk-in and client traffic will be large parts of your business. Rural areas have a long tradition of living in the back and selling or working out the front.
  • In suburban areas, you may be looking at garage space, or attics and basements. Split levels often have separate entrances for the lower level, which keeps business and family separate. Rambling houses to which new rooms and wings have been  added on over the years can also be suitable for a separate-feeling workspace. An ideal set-up might include a waiting room (if you teach), a separate entrance, and a separate powder room.  
  • In urban areas, lofts are one ideal situation, at least for solo artists, but in many cities, the cost of lofts has spiralled out of the price range of your typical self-supporting artist. Another issue: They also don’t always work well with families, although creative people come up with creative solutions: I know one couple, both artists, who shared a loft, and whose three-year-old had his own “room” in a large freestanding mountaineering tent pitched in a corner of the living room. Small apartment buildings, two-flats, or brownstones with ”carriage houses” in the back are another option. In more standard apartments, you may have to settle for less space — or consider renting and sharing separate work space with other artists.
  • If your work involves paints, chemicals, and fumes, make sure there is adequate ventilation in the space where you plan to work.
  • Is noise going to be an issue? Power tools or music can disturb the neighbors. And neighbors can disturb you. How much will sound-proofing cost?
  • Parking: If your business involves frequent visitors, there has to be a place for them to put their cars.  (Or, if you’re in an urban area, and parking is tight, you need to be near a reasonable public transportation conduit.)
  • In rural areas: Will your home-office-studio be accessible year-round? That picturesque country road that looks so colorful and pretty in September might be the last on the county’s plow schedule come January. (If , that is,  it gets plowed at all. )  
  • Zoning is a biggie: Check with the town office and READ THE BY-LAWS yourself (AND run them by your lawyer)  before you make an offer. By-laws can determine (among other things) which businesses are forbidden, which are allowed, which are allowed in what parts of town, which types of businesses need certain amounts of parking, how many clients or students you are allowed to see each week, which hours you can work, and a raft of other issues — most of which you can’t even begin to anticipate. 
  • Choose wisely: Unique, funky, one-of-a-kind homes are great for artists; If you plan on staying put for a number of years, your home can be as idiosyncratic as you like. But resale value is also important: A house that makes a perfect music studio and pottery shop might not work for the vast majority of buyers who come in with standard-issue families and needs.
  • Be realistic about your work habits and needs: Over the long haul, most people find they need some space separation between work life and home life, or else they goof off when they should be working, and work when they should be with their families. Make sure your space matches your work style.
  • Take a non-artist with you when you’ve narrowed down your list. You need someone to point out that a hole in the roof is not a skylight, and that the flooded areas in front of the house is neither a lake nor a skating rink .

Also see: http://createworklive.com/2008/12/10/home-sweet-home-buying-a-house/

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Home Sweet Home: Buying a House

December 10, 2008 by Karen Berger

Note the wagon-wheel light fixture

Moving Day: Note the wagon-wheel light fixture

Buying a house sits right there on the top of virtually every American’s dream list. For the self-employed creative, it can be a daunting process (and we’ll talk about mortgages and other icky business issues in another post).

But today, I’m thinking about the process of choosing a house, and I’ve come up with the idea that we creative types are at a distinct disadvantage — or is it advantage? — when choosing the house that will become our Home Sweet Home. 

You be the judge. 

Take your basic linear thinker. I’m not trying to pigeonhole anyone here, but I’m  talking along the lines of your stereotypical accountant — Someone who sees the world as logical and orderly. When Mr. and  Ms. Logical go to buy a house, they arrive prepared with a list of  “must haves.”  And their “must haves” are mostly in line with lots of other people’s “must haves.”  So they want a nice private master bath, and a “media room” and a backyard big enough to play in but not too big to mow, and they want appliances from the latest status kitchen appliance maker (or if necessary, affordable knock-offs).  Their budget may dictate just how much of their list they get to have, but in the end, what they end up with will look a lot like what they imagined, if maybe a wee bit smaller.  For the most part, your basic home-buyer isn’t going to say, “Oh, look honey, I know we decided on a three bedroom split level with attached garage, but just look at that cute little yurt!”

Us arty types, on the other hand — we’re all about the yurt.

Or the possibilities of it. 

The real estate agents can see us coming a mile away. They hear the word “artist” and every crumbling outbuilding (originally used to milk cows in 1782) becomes a “potential studo.”   A writer might fit perfectly in that basement with the not-quite-six-foot ceilings — writers sit down all day don’t they? As for a  musician – - That house on top of “You-can’t-get-there-from-here Hill ” would be perfect.  No neighbors to complain about the late night drumming….  And so what if there are no services like cable TV, high speed Internet, or  cell-phone reception: Artists need solitude, no?  

And we play right along with it. A house with a jacuzzi in the living room? How original.  An apartment with no kitchen sink ? (Don’t laugh — A musician friend of mine didn’t happen to notice this little quirk when she signed a lease, and ended up washing her dishes in the bathroom.) A three-story home where the first story was once used as a barbershop? How quaint — except that the fixtures are all 75 years old, and the property is now zoned residential. (Not to mention: What DOES one do with the ruins of a 75-year old barbershop?)

“Imagine the possibilities,” the real estate agents gush, and we do…  After all, if there’s one thing we’re good at, it’s imagining things. We’re the ones who see a leaky basement and imagine a swimming pool. We see the old barbershop, and hear a quartet.

I got lucky. When I look back at the houses I was shown in my quest for a home, I feel like I dodged a barrage of bullets, each one a different ridiculous house with a different ridiculous quirk.  And that’s saying something, if you could see the house I ended up in:  A homeowner-built ski chalet with lots of what the real estate agent referred to as “personality.”

Personality is a good thing — in a person. In a house, not so much.  

When Mr. and Ms. Logical are ready to take their next step on the ladder of American dreams, they won’t have any trouble selling their split level.  Someone else may have to update their Corian to marble, or their granite to concrete, or maybe it will be time for the newest color in kitchen appliances. But there will be a next person. 

I’m pretty sure there will be a next person to fall in love with my house,  just like I did. But it won’t be Mr. and Ms. Logical. There isn’t a single thing about my house that is standard. Everything is oversized and overscale, from the 50-foot long living room to the 18-foot tall fireplace. It has wide-planked pecan (I was told) wood floors that would be near impossible to replace, barnboard walls (chestnut, we think) salvaged from a falling-down barn, and thick stone floors (also salvaged) in the basement. And a 6-foot diameter wagon-wheel light fixture hangs from the ceiling — taken, I was told, from a local slaughterhouse. (I was going to get rid of it, but truth is, it has grown on me, and it perfectly fits the house. The native American dreamcatcher we have hung from  it seems to have dispelled any bad karma.)  And the kitchen? From the cracked laminate countertops to the Rube Goldberg contraption that functions as an exhaust  fan, we are talking one big  make-over-in-the-making.

And THIS is the most “normal house” I even considered buying. Fortunately, I plan to stay here forever. My house is perfect for two work-at home creatives. It is big and open, with enough space to offer privacy. It has enough room for 20 people to jam together, and for office desks to be tucked into corners where they look out on the view, but don’t get in the way. There is space for two pianos and an organ, and two people can give music lessons at the same time, or one can write and one can teach. There’s an outbuilding that may one day become a guesthouse, and a garage with an unfinished second floor we might someday turn into a recording studio.  And yes, it is located on top of “You Can’t Get There From Here Hill,” which ices over every winter and washes out every spring, and where our nearest neighbor just happens to be a drummer.  Sometimes, on summer nights when the windows are open, we can hear him practicing. One of these days, we will make time to play together.

It’s true, this house is not for everyone.  But when, and if, it is ever time to move, I have complete confidence that some other creative type will wander in — and immediately “imagine the possibilities.”

Posted in Freelancing | Tagged | 1 Comment »

The Office Christmas Party

December 6, 2008 by Karen Berger

I’m sure many freelancers would agree that NOT having to attend a mandatory office Christmas party is one of the GOOD things about working for yourself…. 

So, when a couple of weeks ago, David asked me if I wanted to have an office Christmas party, I looked at him as if he had grown two heads. He explained that Crissey Farm (http://crisseyfarm.com/), a neighborhood banquet hall where we have hosted and attended some music events, was putting on an “office Christmas party” for small businesses in our community, and that since the two of us are a “business,” our “office” could attend.  The idea being that an office of four or five or six (or, in our case two) people might not be able to put on a big holiday shindig, but various small offices could band together to be part of a larger event. With 150 or so people, you can put on a real dinner party, complete with a DJ and dancing, and you can have it in a nice space, too.  (Crissey Farm is a spanking new green building, with a warmer, more personal feel than your basic hotel banquet hall;  it’s ideal for events up to about 200 people).

It’s a great idea, really: I remember that when I worked in “real jobs” in “real companies,”  the office party was seldom my idea of a good time. I mostly found that in a business setting, as in life, there are people you gravitate to as friends  and people you don’t, and the latter outnumber the former. Enforced jollity with people you have mostly chosen not to socialize with can be awkward, especially when coupled with office hierarchy. 

But at this party, you could network, chat, and socialize all around the community; you could roam around, outside the confines of your own little group. We were seated at the table of a publisher of a local ad magazine, who made us feel very welcome. Our dinner companions included a fellow writer and a fellow musician; it was all very congenial, and who knows, maybe we’ll get the musician over to our place to jam sometime. 

It turned out that David and I knew a handful of people from various different offices: Some were students, or friends of students, or parents of students, or fellow musicians.  Next year, we plan to try to put a table together, and make sure that other self-employed creatives we know in our community — fellow teachers and musicians, the owners of the local music store, piano tuners, and such — know about the event and can come and join us. 

So I’m looking forward to an office Christmas party, a year in advance. Who’d have thought THAT was was possible?

Posted in Creative Communities | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

Black Friday Jam

December 4, 2008 by Karen Berger

I can’t think of anything worse than setting foot inside a store — any store — the weekend after Thanksgiving. To me, Black Friday is an idiocy; I don’t care if they’re GIVING HDTVs away; I’m not going.

So I’m part of another, different tradition: A group of us get together to play and perform music. 

Thanksgiving is actually my favorite holiday (secular celebration of thanks, no blow-up helium lawn ornaments and nerve-jangling Christmas muzak, and in my case, no fixed traditions that must be adhered to). Even if the Thanksgiving story we tell IS a fairytale, I like the IDEA of it. It may not be entirely true, but it SHOULD be.

Black Friday? Not so much. 

Fortunately, our friend Greg has been hosting a “Black Friday” jam at his place in New Jersey. Invites go out to a core group of musicians and friends, and anyone else in the area we happen to know. Lately, Black Friday has expanded into a music weekend, as we’ve gotten an annual “gig” at a teeny little coffeehouse. In fact it’s so small there’s barely room for the band, and the last couple of years, I’ve set up my keyboard in the store window, which pretty much put my butt right out there into the street (We called ourselves “Amsterdam” the first year). This year, however, the window was already all pretty for Christmas, so I had to keep my butt inside. The fun of this gig is that it’s –well — FUN. It gives us a chance to try out new material and see if we really can play in unison on “Low Rider” (Verdict’s still out on that — the sound set-up was was pretty challenging, making it difficult to hear when the vocals were coming in…).

But most of all, it puts sharing music where it belongs: In the middle of a holiday with good friends.

So : You can go to the mall, get trampled, fight over a TV that you probably don’t even need — or you can get together with friends and play music.

No brainer, as far as I’m concerned.

We’ve been invited back for next year. The gig is the Saturday after Thanksgiving; It’s in  Hightstown, New Jersey at the Slow Down Cafe. See you there.

Posted in Music, Performing | Tagged | Leave a Comment »

Show Me the Money: Getting What’s Due

November 30, 2008 by Karen Berger

So, you turned the work in on time.  Or your book or photo or article has been published — and the expected checks and statements haven’t arrived.  

The path from submission to payment can be labyrinthine, but for the purposes of this article (getting paid what’s due), we’re going to skip through all of those gnarly acceptance issues and the corn-maze process of 13 editors reading and critiquing and rewriting your article 14 times. Let’s make some assumptions: Either your piece was  acceptable when you submitted it (and the editor told you so). Or ir wasn’t, but you revised it to the editor’s specifications. 

Now time has passed, you’ve invoiced, and there’s no check.  What you do is going to depend on many factors, including the contract you had with the publisher (For example, did it specify “payment on acceptance”?)

  • Give the editor a reasonable amount of time to process your invoice, then e-mail a friendly, “Thanks for your note saying my article looked good. I’ve send the invoice, per the contract. Is there anything else you need to me do?”
  • Your preliminary conversations with the editor should have elicited information about the path to payment: Ie, you should know who to send the invoice to, and you should have an idea of how quickly the publisher pays. Start the clock ticking, and keep track of where you are on the timeline. 
  • Unfortunately, the next step is to start being a bit of a pain in the butt. The trick is to get paid without alientaing an editor who you might want to work with again. Often, slow payment isn’t the editor’s fault: she may simply be working for a slow-paying company whose policy is to take advantage of the “float” on unpaid funds. This is not a good thing — and most of us would prefer not to work for such companies. On the other hand, they aren’t deadbeats; they are simply playing a game that is legal under the rules of capitalism. Your role in this game is to be a squeaky wheel.
  • Phone calls are even more unpleasant (for everyone), although the truth is, most often, you won’t get through. These days, everyone screens their calls, either with assistants and receptionists or with caller ID. Still, the appearance of your name on their message list may be enough to get some action. Sometimes you’ll have luck trying to get an editor before 9, after 5, or during lunch — editors often work long hours, and these are the times their phones are less protected by assistants and receptionists. Again, personally, I prefer not to play these games, and I prefer not work for people who clearly screen my calls and never return them. But I don’t make the rules here.
  • Don’t be afraid to let the person you’ve been dealing with know that since you haven’t heard back, you feel like you’re forced to go up the ladder to find out what’s going on. IF she has been sitting on the invoice, this might shake it loose. 

At some point, it might become clear that you aren’t dealing with slow payment: You are dealing with no payment. Yes, Virginia, there are publications that outright stiff writers. This has only happened to me once (slow payment, though is an other thing….) and I did have some recource because the arrangement involved more than one party.

  • Keep a record of any contact with the company, including phone logs and e-mails. If recording a phone call is legal in your state, do it. (Is it legal? Check out http://www.rcfp.org/taping/ )
  • Your first written communications should be polite and firm. Some writers have had success quoting the contract, saying the process of submissions and acceptance, reminding the deadbeat that they have fulfilled all their obligations, and that you hope they will do the right thing and rectify the problem immediately, as you know they are an upstanding company. Hold off on the legal threats, except, possibly, to say that legal action is something you would hate to pursue. (This implies that you WILL if you have to — but no one wants to.)
  • Further communications may get a bit more legal: I have also sometimes reminded slow payers that since they haven’t paid for my piece, they have no right to run it in their magazine. You might also say that since they are in breach of contract, you wish to withdraw your submission (do this if you know the issue has already gone to press — this would put them in a terrible position.)
  • Make sure you are communicating with the right person. In addition to going UP the ladder, you might try going lateral – to accounts payable. 
  • Keep the conversation civil. Your blood may be boiling, and you may have thought of no end of colorful names to call your deadbeat, but that’s not going to get you anywhere.
  • Along the same lines, ALWAYS realize that the person you are dealing with might truly be caught in a Catch 22 that she can’t get out of… Try to give people the benefit of the doubt as long as you can,  because most are NOT out to screw you, and they will help you more if you keep it civil. This means not letting loose with your barrage of legal lingo and threats at first. First, when you find someone who may be able to help you, give them time and a chance to make things right. There will (unfortunately) be plenty of time to escalate the discussion.
  • Remember that most people LIKE to think of themselves as the “good guys.” So approach them that way: Tell them you KNOW that this isn’t the way they normally do business, but something has gone wrong, and you need to ask them to cut through the red tape, do the right thing and GET YOU PAID. You want the person who can help you to be on your side.
  • If that person simply refuses, and you’ve gone as high up the ladder and are certain that there is a real problem, you can remind them of legal recourse. Generally legal recourse either involves breach of contract or the copyright law.  Most non-payment issues are breaches of contract. (This means you soud have a copy of your contract — with everyone’s signatures on it. A lot of writers, in this day of e-mail, simply have copies of unsigned copies of contracts. While these have been held legally enforceable if it is clear that everyone has agreed to the terms, a signed contract is better). Be sure your work is copyrighted, as well: While non-payment is generally not a copyright issue, without paying you, a publication has no right to run your piece or sell your book. This is something to remind them of in your correspondence.  
  • CC’ing a lawyer isn’t a bad idea, even if it’s only your sister-in-law who only does deeds and real estate. I was actually once told by an agent (through whom I was pursuing a deadbeat client) that “the cost of litigation won’t make this worth it.” “I’m sure that’s what they are counting on,” I said. “But I’m lucky: I have lawyers in my family, so I don’t have to worry about the cost.”  
  • Get help from any writers’ groups you belong to. Some provide a grievance committee or (limited) free or low-cost legal advice.
  • Post questions about the non-payment on writers’ boards: You are warning other writers away, and this is also a chance to find out if others are suffering the same problems, or what they did to shake loose the money. 
  • Small claims court is an option (although collecting a judgement can be a problem! A true deadbeat who is contemptuous of his contractual responsibilities under the law may also be contemptuous of a judgement — you may have to hire a collection agency.)  Each state runs small claims differently; you may have to appear in person, the amount you can sue for is limited, and you may not be able to use small claims if your business is incorporated. Nonetheless, many writers have had to go this route.

Don’t let it go! This is your livelihood — and non-payment is stealing.

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