Income Quilt–Educational Writing Patch
May 31st, 2008 by Patricia
Though I got my degree in Writing for Children, if an idea occurs to me I don’t try to make it fit into my “speciality,” but look for the best way to express it. This is often, but not always, as a children’s story. And, when it comes to making money, if someone will pay me, I’ll write it, which is how I started working in the educational market. So far, I’ve written seven books and numerous stories and articles, all on a writing-for-hire basis.
For anyone not familiar with how this works, this means that I get paid once for doing the writing, usually on a per-page basis. No advance, no royalties, just a single check in the mail and on to the next contract. Many writers don’t like doing work-for-hire because you have to crank out a lot of content quickly and the publisher retains the copyright, so you can’t reuse or resell what you’ve written. It takes an easy-come, easy-go attitude toward your work and a certain amount of confidence that your personal word well won’t run dry.
You also have to willing to work within stringent parameters. Word count, page length, topic and how the publisher wants the material approached are all spelled out for you. I find this a refreshing change from my own writing, for which I have to create all the parameters myself. I think of it as being similar to writing free verse versus writing a sonnet. You can be creative in either form.
The educational publishing business is a different world from commercial publishing, and has been going through even more major upheavals for a while now, thanks to many factors, not the least of which is the No Child Left Behind Act which, so my teaching friends tell me would have been better titled “No Teacher Left Standing”–and no educational publisher, either. I have had editors I was working with disappear without warning, publishers get bought out by other publishers who either came up with a whole new set of specs in the middle of an assignment or cancelled the contract altogether, publishers who have always hired free-lancewriters deciding to do everything in-house.
It’s a nerve-wracking business and definitely not a basket into which I want to put all my eggs. It is an interesting patch that I enjoy having in my income quilt, however. I’ve done research on topics ranging from Ancient Egypt to Outer Ppace and street teens in Chicago to opal mining in Australia and have been paid to hone my writing skills while doing it. Not too shabby.
P.S. Here are the seven educational books I’ve written over the past four years. I put in their links even though I don’t get a royalty if you buy one. They are, though, useful teaching materials. The Fast Ideas books won’t be around much longer, which means you can get them really cheap at the moment:
