The Freelancer's Rulebook: A Guide to Understanding, Working With and Winning Over Editors (Story Line Press Writer's Guides)

Editorial Review:

*A new SLP Writers' Guide

Many books on the market teach how to write. This book teaches writers how to sell their work. Freelancers learn to think like editors. They learn how to contact the right editor for their articles and books. Editing examples, samples, lists of best publications and web sites for freelancers, and practical interviews with professionals like Helen Gurley Brown, Fran Hodgkins, and others make this latest Story Line Press Writers' Guide a sure winner. It's a book that every aspiring freelancer will want to have on the desk.

Bonnie Hearn-Hill has been a freelance writer for more than thirty years, a newspaper and magazine editor for more than eighteen years.

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Some guidebooks for freelance writers mindlessly replay rules that no longer apply. Others are exhaustive ... and exhausting. The (Expanded) Freelancer's Rulebook is, thankfully, neither of the above. Written by Bonnie Hearn Hill, a longtime editor (for the Fresno Bee) and freelance writer, the Rulebook is practical, down-to-earth, and short but not slight. "This is not a book about how to write," says Hearn Hill. "It's a book about how to sell." Her approach is to show freelancers how to think like editors. While her rules are straightforward--have original ideas, be reliable, provide clean copy, don't use squirrel stickers on your query letters--it is remarkable, really, how few freelancers follow them. Send your query or manuscript to "a real, live human," advises Hearn Hill, who counsels that the slush pile is "as cold, unappealing and unproductive as it sounds." Supply heads and subheads in the style of the publication. "Force yourself to cut everything that doesn't contribute to the overall focus of the piece." And as for multiple submissions? Go for it. "The editor who acts fastest wins," says Hearn Hill. "What is so horrible about that?" --Jane Steinberg

Customer Reviews:

Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 / 5.0

A book for freelancers from a freelancer and editor:

This is a freelancer's book written by a former freelancer now editor. As such you get an insider's view on what is needed to be a successful freelancer. There aren't a lot of hints for improving your writing or picking subjects or any thing like that. The author assumes either you have the necessary ability and talent needed or you'll learn soon enough that you don't. Instead the focus is more on what to do to get in the door and stay inside. That is getting the attention of the editor and once you do get... more info

"Wish This Book Had Been Available Twenty Years Ago":

Highly successful author Bonnie Hearn Hill begins this book with an important distinction: "The process of creation, exhilarating as it can be, is distinctly separate from the process of publication." In this easily readable guidebook, Hill offers specific tips about the creative side of writing. However, she focuses most of her attention on "the business of writing."

Readers will respond favorably to Hill's mission: To save other talented writers from the mistakes she made early in her career when she... more info

GREAT writers' resource!:

If you are a writer that wishes to get your work published but need a tool to help show you how---this book is for you! Every writer should have this in their library. The author, Bonnie Hearn Hill, makes points in the book that are VERY important to a freelance writer. Well written, easy to read--I couldn't put the book down!

This book helped me to become a paid freelancer:

Thanks to the tips and suggestions in this book, I regularly freelance for magazines and newspapers. The pracitical advice and sound rules have actually had editors asking me for articles. My byline on the stories has even helped to promote my own book. This is a great book for anyone looking to break into the freelance field.

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