Hiya writer friends,
That sound you hear? It’s the tap-tap-tap of my fingers on the keyboard. I’ve committed myself to a book (only one this time, not three) and have been working on it slowly and surely between deadlines (and this newsletter).
I’m extremely commitment-phobic when it comes to work projects and end up going out with several at a time, so this is a challenging new feeling for me.
The faster I get it done, the quicker I can move on to the next one, right? Right.
Enjoy the issue!
Natasha Khullar Relph
NEWS & VIEWS
Let’s ghost
Ghostwriting is big business and, therefore, a big opportunity.
But we’re not talking about ghostwriting memoirs for celebrities or op-eds for C-suite executives. We’re talking about ghostwriting social media posts for your average brand or business owner.
Ghostwriters on LinkedIn, for instance, are earning as much as $500-700 an hour. “CEOs don’t have a lot of time, so if they’re like Anthony J James, boss of Trinity Consulting, and want to keep their roughly 4 million LinkedIn followers entertained and engaged, they’ll pay top dollar for well-written content,” Morning Brew writes. According to a Business Insider article, James pays $800 for an 800-1200 word LinkedIn article, while tech PR firm Crackle charges $5,000 per month for LinkedIn ghostwriting.
And LinkedIn isn’t the only game in town.
Twitter ghostwriters are making upwards of $2,000 a month to write Twitter threads that help grow follower numbers and reach.
Moral of the story?
If there’s content being created and that content is time-consuming, but important, for a brand to create, you can assume there’s an agency or writer of some kind involved. Reach out and pitch the right person, and there’s no reason it couldn’t be you.
SEE ALSO:
Must-know Substack tips for journalists: Farrah Storr, the head of writer partnerships at Substack UK, talks about some of the things journalists need to know to run a successful Substack newsletter.
How to keep a long writing project alive: Author Vauhini Vara talks about the endurance of writing a 13-year novel and how she kept going.
WRITERS WANTED
Our How to Pitch page now has 90+ pitching guidelines, including National Geographic, The Economist, Financial Times, Wired, and more.
(We’ve got dozens more markets being added next week + a literary agents database in the works. Stay tuned.)
WORDLINGS WE LOVE
We’ve been interviewing some pretty cool people here at The Wordling HQ in the last month. Here are our favorites, in case you missed them:
Jimmy Doom on Publishing a Story a Day on Substack
Casey Morris on Using LinkedIn to Get More Freelance Work
Angela Giles Klocke on Writing About Trauma
Sara Phillips on Environmental Journalism
THE WORDLING PICK
Learn how to pitch with confidence to get more assignments and better rates.
Based on years of writing success at the highest level, The Freelance Writer’s Guide to Pitching With Confidence teaches creative people to sell.
The Freelance Writer’s Guide to Pitching With Confidence will show you how to break out of the cycle of sabotage and start pitching with confidence. It will provide you with the guidance, the resources, and the self belief to start trusting yourself and hitting “send” on those pitches without delay.
WORDLING INSIGHT
You’re not supposed to have all the answers before you begin. You’re only supposed to know the next step and figure it out as you go along.
Do you know what your next step is?
Then that’s all you need to know to begin and to continue.
GLOBAL REPORT
EU: The European Union is banning three Russian state-owned broadcasters as part of a sixth sanctions package over Moscow’s war in Ukraine. “They will not be allowed to distribute their content anymore in the European Union, in whatever shape or form, be it on cable, via satellite, on the internet or via smartphone apps,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told EU lawmakers in Strasbourg, Reuters reports.
UKRAINE: “When the war started, journalists in Ukraine found themselves at the centre of the biggest story in the world. They became war correspondents overnight,” Isobel Koshiw writes in The Guardian. Kirill Gonchar, who had been a creative director of a production company, told Koshiw: “I just felt I had to act and this was something I could do. At first I thought I’d make a documentary but then I realised that I just needed to just do news so I could share what was happening.”
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“So what do we do? Anything. Something. So long as we just don’t sit there. If we screw it up, start over. Try something else. If we wait until we’ve satisfied all the uncertainties, it may be too late.”
– Lido Anthony Iacocca
SHARE THE WORDLING
We’ve been having fun dreaming up new ideas here at Wordling HQ that we can’t wait to share with you soon. In the meantime, pass The Wordling on to a writer friend who’s working on their own next steps.
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