Constant Content

Just writing to wish fellow members of CC a Happy Christmas and New Year.

Ed, thanks - I would appreciate a pointer to those resources you mention. After my last post I went off to look at some sites to compare what I am did with the norm for good writing. However looking at a few articles from the front pages of the the New York Times and BBC News I couldn't see much dif...

I don't know what proportion of things will sell. Looking at the top authors who've been here a long time, Celeste is way out in front with maybe 90% of work sold. (I didn't actually do the arithmetic - even I'm not that analytica!) But the other top authors are way below that. [Thinks, I bet Ed wou...

Good thought about leaving it for a while and coming back to it, I'll do that. Maybe it's the difference between what I find appealing and readable and what others do. What appeals to me looks "choppy" to Ed, but Ed's version looks "lumpy" to me. But maybe Ed has a better feel fo...

Nice to know you can add to the extract, because really I have no idea how much or how little to put there. Though I think Elizabeth's crucial point was about the short summary - i.e. that is all people get to see at first, and if it doesn't get their attention they won't even look at the other stuf...

I love the sign asking up to Help Handicap Children. Must admit I even get irked with the BBC for misusing words. For example they seem to love "snub" in headlines, probably because it's short. Often the body of the piece completely contradicts the sense of the headline. Though as for typo...

Ok, I got my first rejection, for my third article. Eep. Couple of questions... The rejection info saod the problem was with the way I grouped into paragraphs. I'll think it over more closely, but I'd say that is a matter of writing style. i.e. Whether to sometimes break out sentences into paragraph...

Good thoughts people! One thing I am picking up from a number of the threads is that it's important to have quite a body of work out there. And it's probably good for visibility to keep up a steady rate of adding new pieces. Then people can stumble across you, decide they like what they see, and tak...

We'll see what happens. As I said, I'm experimenting! I can always lower it later if that seems like a good idea. I don't really want to sell that one for use anyway. In this case I also think the content is extremely valuable knowledge, distilled from years of experience and training. So I'm darned...

Fantastic tip Elizabeth. I'm really glad I started this topic now. :)

We can go back and edit summaries without having to resubmit can't we?

Hi there, and welcome to CC.

I'm a newbie myself so I can't offer any words of wisdom, but I can join in the welcome.

Is Louisa a place in VA, or your name?

Btw, I pitched my second article (which is still waiting to be reviewed) at $225 use / $295 unique / $375 full rights. It's 1400 words, over 4 hours of work. Still not sure is that's too high for the full - or too low for use! But it can always be tweaked. Always assuming it meets with Ed's approval...

Barry,

Thanks for your thoughts. Esp interesting to hear that clients see samples of your work and that can lead to private requests that might be loosely related.

Thanks for the tip on what people seem to be looking for, will give it some thought. On the subject of pricing, I made a spreadsheet and crunched some numbers. The author gets 65% of gross, and then in my case Paypal will take another few percent on the currency conversion and transaction fees. Then...

Any now that pesky forum software says: "You cannot make another post so soon after your last." So I'll have to twiddle my thumbs until it lets me submit. <Continued from previous post> 5) The bulk of sales seem to be for full rights, certainly in terms of revenue if not numbers of sales. ...