A Career In Freelance Writing Is As Risky As It Sounds

This is a really good article about freelance writing, and how and why it has become so hard to make a living doing it. The word rates have not increased in twenty years, nineteen national publications have closed their doors since 2000, and most publications have cut staff drastically so that the competition for what spots remain is cutthroat. Many of those former staff people upon losing permanent positions were dumped straight into the freelance market, increasing competition there as well. The old print business models have failed, but no one has really figured out the internet yet in terms of how to generate similar revenues to what print could in the past. My personal career has been impacted by the dot-bomb, 9-11 and the collapse of the music industry. I also lived in NYC in the mid-to-late nineties when the drastic industry changes started to come in, so I have my own war stories. It's easy when you are young and working in somewhat of a vacuum to think that it is just you having problems, but then you talk to other writers and learn you were all part of a massive cultural shift. It's funny, I did some web writing last decade, and it was looked down on as not being as good as print, as this article says. Now it seems prescient, and I am glad I have early new media in my portfolio. And many of the magazines I could not get into back then as a fledgling writer are long gone - I outlasted them.

I found this link on Mediabistro, so I must give them credit for discovering it.

http://www.observer.com/2008/mag-hell-0?page=0%2C0