Peter Eckersley at the New Scientist has posted a very interesting discussion on the intellectual property / open access debate. In a 24 June 2009 article, “Finding a fair price for free knowledge,” he acknowledges the conflict between advocates of scarcity and the advocates of abundance, and takes a balanced look at each side.

Finally, he suggests that “when we build institutions to promote the abundance of knowledge, everybody wins. When it comes to knowledge, you can never have too much of a good thing.”

This is a debate that freelance writers and editors need to follow. As producers of content and processors of knowledge, we are deeply impacted by intellectual property rights issues and the open access debate. While knowledge must be shared, there must be adequate financial incentives for those who process it and prepare it for general consumption. Although I would continue to write even if I couldn’t earn a living at it, I’d have less time to do it, as I’d have to earn a living another way. I believe this is true of most freelance writers, and fewer writers working fewer hours would ultimately result in less knowledge disseminated.

As Eckersley suggests, open access is here to stay, and that’s not a bad thing. I believe that if you follow this issue, you can be prepared for any changes that come, and ready to continue profiting from the work you love. What do you think?

NPR is sponsoring a new summer writing contest: Three-Minute Fiction. Listeners are invited to send in original short stories of about 500-600 words, or up to three minutes long. James Wood, the literary critic for The New Yorker, will select favorites and read them on the air during the summer. You can find more details at the NPR website.

I meet a lot of freelance writers and editors, and the ones who seem to be most successful have an “and” in their job description or elevator speech. One of our busiest NAIWE members is not only a proofreader and copyeditor, but is also the author of local histories. Another member not only writes middle-grade fiction, but also illustrates juvenile literature and does manuscript evaluations for others.

Isn’t this contrary to the idea of specialization and niching? Not at all, as long as you choose your “and” wisely. Troy Howell, the member who writes, illustrates, and evaluates is able to use the skills, knowledge, resources and contacts that he gained in the publishing field for all of his work. Susan Sheppard’s proofreading and copyediting skills stand her in good stead as she is writing local histories, and she is able to transfer her genealogical research skills to history writing as well.

We have other members who have discovered that diversification isn’t only for investment portfolios, and passive income is a wonderful alternative or supplement to a dollars-for-hours service business. I’ll be discussing this idea more in the next few issues of The Edge, so don’t miss them!

I was just skimming through Seth Godin’s Tribes again this morning. The idea of creating a tribe is a good one, and the prerequisite is a very specific, unique idea that serves as a guiding principle.

The guiding principle behind the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors, for example, is that “writers and editors, both commercial and literary, are worthy of respect, support, and success.” We believe that there shouldn’t be artificial barriers between commercial and literary writers, as those barriers tend to propagate a “starving artist” mentality and even an odd sort of disdain for writers and editors who are successfully (and perhaps spectacularly) making a good living at freelance work. This barrier-oriented mindset ensures that many very good writers and editors will spend their lives under-earning. Many never learn to think in an entrepreneurial way, thus sabotaging their own careers.

One of the greatest barriers to success is mindset, and as long as freelancers have mental reservations about whether financial success is compatible with artistic integrity, writers and editors will struggle. Our goal is to put that question into perspective and make success a reality for our members.

I recently received a copy of the following note from NAIWE member Mary Mowen. She had been contacted by a prospective member, who asked: “How helpful has NAIWE been to you as a writer?  From your vantage point, is the NAIWE a good professional affiliation?” She forwarded her response, noting that perhaps others had similar questions and would be interested in the answer. I appreciate Mary’s willingness to respond to a query like this, and hope that the response will be helpful to others.

Hello—

NAIWE has inspired me to market myself as a freelance writer/editor much more aggressively than I have in the past.  I think membership in a reliable, respected professional organization is important to members of any profession; and it is probably more crucial to those of us who work independently.

I appreciate the opportunities NAIWE provides for networking with other freelancers; ours is a pretty solitary enterprise, after all, and it’s good to know that there’s a free database of pros in almost every aspect of writing and editing available to me through the site, people I can call on when I find myself in need of expertise that’s different from my own.

[Director] Janice Campbell impresses me very much.  Besides providing a wealth of resources for members on the NAIWE site, she goes out of her way to provide as much personal help to individual members as they need.  I appreciate being only an e-mail away from her patient, kind, answers and the broad scope of her knowledge of writing, editing, and business matters, and have called on her several times in the six months since I joined NAIWE.   As a successful self-marketed professional, she truly leads by example, a trait I value very much.

I’ve decided to set up my business site on the NAIWE host pages rather than elsewhere.  I guess if I was going to sum up in a few words what the organization has meant to me, I would say that it has helped me to take myself and my abilities more seriously, and encouraged me to have a much more structured and diligent approach to working from home as a freelancer.

Don’t know what type writing or writing-related work you do, but hope this helps.  NAIWE seems constantly to be seeking to improve their services and their site.  That speaks very well for them.

Sincerely,

Mary Mowen
http://marymowen.naiwe.com 

P.S. I don’t know how I could’ve forgotten to mention that I am presently hard at work on a large and lucrative editing job received through a NAIWE referral.  A big membership plus, without question–opportunities to land more jobs increase through the NAIWE network.

There you have it: inspiration, networking, support, services, and referrals. Is membership in NAIWE the key to making your freelance business more profitable and rewarding? Join us, and let NAIWE help you build your ideal business!

NAIWE member and webinar speaker Ruth E. Thaler-Carter has had “Freelancing 101: Launching Your Editorial Business” published by the Editorial Freelancers Association. Details are at:

http://the-efa.org/res/booklets.php#freelancing

She is in process of updating her popular “Get Paid to Write! Getting Started as a Freelance Writer” booklet and expanding it for a publishing house. Details to come.

Ruth also recently made speeches on becoming a freelancer to the Rochester, NY, and national conferences of the Society of Technical Communication (STC) and a regional conference of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), and will make a similar presentation at the national SPJ conference in August in Indianapolis. At the STC national conference, she also presented a session on “Finding and Working Well with Freelancers.” She presented workshops on freelancing and websites for writers for the EFA in DC in May and spoke on “Writing Your Way to New Business” for the Rochester Professional Consultants Network’s spring conference.

Congratulations, Ruth!

Members, if you’d like to see your news item published, please send it to editor @ naiwe . com. Ruth hasn’t gotten very far on her NAIWE site, but here’s the link so that you read more about her when she does get to it: http://ruththalercarter.naiwe.com