The Future of Freelance Journalism, Part 2B: Print is Dead. Long Live Print!

Flickr imitation by Rhys Alton

More notes, quotes, tweets, distractions, practical links for how to get $$, as well as during slightest a single stout fortitude from a right away long-ago though not quite mislaid confab during Stanford University.

**Nb. If you missed Part 1, begin here. Part 2A: Sweaty Balls is here.

Friday, June 18, 12:45 PM, Old Union Courtyard, Stanford University

WITHOUT THE DISTRIBUTED DEADWEIGHT OF LEMONADE as well as chicken salad sandwich wedges, a red cosmetic tablecover eventually submits to a breeze, bearing cups, plates, crumbs, cookies, as well as various cut ripened offspring pieces in a westerly direction, off a table, divided from a fountain.

Stanford University, flickr imitation by jeffpearce

Ive been chatting with Carolina Miranda, former staff reporter during Time Magazine, right away a prolific freelancer, transport writer, blogger, USC Annenberg Fellow, as well as contributor to countless Lonely Planet Latin America titles. Shes based in Brooklyn, as well as has flown all a approach opposite a continent in hopes of discussion large ideas. She hasnt heard any yet.

Theres been a lot upon what you should do to marketplace ourselves, she says. But how does all of this essentially change a nature of a job?

We collect a rubbish off a lawn, deposit it appropriately, then transport opposite to a bookstore for a cup of coffee. She talks about her passion for Lima contra Cusco as well as about visiting a Louisiana Gulf Coast in a days rught away following a rig explosion. We plead a relative disadvantages of receiving a scanty contributors price upon a Lonely Planet pretension contra receiving an even some-more scanty allege against intensity royalties upon an eccentric guidebook. We talk a! bout a d earth of low riders in Espaola, New Mexico, once reputed to be a Low Rider Capital of a World. She tells of a Canadian lady she met there who had a shrine to a Virgin of Ftima in her trunk. It wasnt full redemption, though it was a little consolation.

I go to a patron have use of table as well as ask a amiable work-study staffer to check a computer. This is not vanity, you discuss it myself. This is work. This is how you contingency have a vital as a writer.

Somewhere along a arena you comprehend dual things: (1) which when you contend Mens Journal most people listen to Mens Health (which actuality will serve remonstrate me which there have been no longer sufficient substantial differences in in between those dual magazines); (2) which this Carolina lady happens to be none alternative than a @cmonstah you have been following (and spasmodic retweeting) since earlier this sunrise when you discovered a using side commentary during a #ffrl hashtag. (Later you will learn from Carolinas LinkedIn profile which she was once named by The New York Times a single of 9 people to follow upon Twitter.)

2 PM, Stanford University Bookstore

In lieu of going behind for Digital Ventures: Which One Will Become Your Best Client? (in a Cardinal Room) or Google for Freelancers (in Nitery 209), you confirm to check a bookstores California Travel territory to see if my Yosemite book is there. Its not. you go to a patron have use of table as well as ask a amiable work-study staffer to check a computer. This is not vanity, you discuss it myself. This is work. This is how you contingency have a vital as a writer.

I outlayed a day once roving around LA with a earlier book selling guru by a name of Ken Wilson. We took his car. you appreciated a air conditioning as well as a miss of toddler detritus upon a floor. We gathering 100 miles (at $.50/mile). From Santa Monica to Pasadena to Encino as well as back, you visited thirteen bookstores, almost wholly Borders as well as B&Ns (there is in actuality a slig! ht dispr oportion in in between a two, you learned).

The whole thing price me $475, including mileage. My reasoning (and controversial math), in a absence of serve financial contribution by my dear as well as ever-shrewd publisher, ran something similar to this: if a adventure somehow led to a sale of 335 copies of a book (at 7.5% of cover price) you would mangle even. If not, you would during a really slightest learn something of inestimable worth about a businesses of publishing as well as distribution as well as retail.

Ken calls it Grassroots Guerrilla Marketing, which basically means you, as author, go to each bookstore you can find. You check a shelves. You have certain your book is there, which its in a right section, as well as which there have been during slightest 3 copies of it. (Apparently, a raft of sell studies has shown which a odds of selling a sole pretension decreases exponentially below 3 copies.) Then youre ostensible to introduce yourself to a store manager, may be give him or her a free copy if youve got a single upon hand (apparently even bookstore managers similar to getting free books), as well as suggest to sign a stock.

Ile de France, Flickr imitation by austinevan

Again, you contend to yourself (as Ken does), this is not vanity. This functions in dual directions: (1) studies have shown which autographed books have been some-more expected to sell than those which have been not autographed (especially if they have a fresh Signed Copy sticker upon a cover as well as have been accordingly positioned to locate a courtesy of shoppers); as well as (2) signed copies which dont sell cannot be returned to a publishing house (and have been therefore some-more expected to be positioned to sell by a retailer, who would cite not to eat a price of a book). Thus, everybody wins.

Finally, if your books not there during all (or if there arent sufficient of th! em), you have been to float subsequent to a physical education instructor during a mechanism whilst he or she orders 3 copies of your book as well as thereby brings a batch (and a change of a universe) up to date.

Remember, Ken explained, its in their seductiveness to sell your book as much as it is in yours.

Ken described a process as a single competence an avalanche waiting to happen: you trigger a certain array of orders from a informal distribution warehouse, which in turn triggers an even incomparable array of orders from a publishing house as well as you guess during a little point people begin essentially desiring which a thing competence sell, can sell, which it should be sole (i.e. positioned to sell).

Ken is a pro. He does this all a time, with first-time hacks as well as well read celebrities alike, as well as always with good flair as well as aplomb. Hes finished it for a likes of T. Jeff Parker as well as Josh Ferris. Sometimes (as in those latter cases) its even upon a publishers tab. The bookstore managers adore him. Who have you brought us today? they would contend when you walked in.

Late in a day you crawled behind in to my vehicle, rolled down a windows, pumped a gas as well as caused it to locate fire, organisation in a knowledge which a universe was mine. If you worked it right, you right away knew, you competence even be means to provoke my little informal manual right onto a LA Times non-fiction bestseller list. It was an idea Ken had planted, a tangible intensity of which you was soon means to confirm.

If you can sell sufficient books during 2 or 3 of a stores who report, in a same week, you can hit a local bestseller list, explained a crony who happened to be a president of a greatest eccentric bookseller in Southern California. No a single knows how most it takes. Some weeks a bestselling non-fiction book competence usually sell 25 copies.

In my box it may not have been a best week to play such a game. In teetering stacks upon tables near a entrance t! o each b ookstore in America were copies of a brand brand brand brand brand new book called Eat, Pray, Love, as well as another called Three Cups of Tea, as well as not a single though dual bestselling memoirs by a hip brand brand brand brand brand new presidential candidate by a name of Barack Obama.

and a Southern Sierra Nevada, you contend to a staffer during a Stanford bookstore assistance desk. By David Page.

Sorry, he says, raising his eyebrows in disbelief. But you can sequence it for you. Then he looks during me, curiously, pauses, then says, Are you a author?

How does he know? you think. Then you comprehend Im wearing a nametag from a conference: David Page. Fucking idiot.

Thats cool, you say. Thanks for checking.

3 PM, Clubhouse Ballroom; The Big Dig: Reorganization as well as a Future of Investigative Reporting

Were discussion about a decimation of informal magazines as well as alternative weeklies. When were articulate about a overall array of boots upon a ground in inquisitive journalism, says Clara Jeffery, Editor-in-Chief of Mother Jones, weve mislaid some-more than weve gained.

Danelle Rondberg

Which isnt to say, she explains, which there isnt still income out there for inquisitive reporting. There is. Its only which in these times its less expected to come from magazine publishers as well as some-more expected to come from non-profit outfits similar to ProPublica, or in a form of grants as well as fellowships scratched together by a enterprising bard upon his or her own.

@TheStripPodcast: Tons of $ entrance in to nonprofit broadcasting according to @rosey18 as well as @clarajeffery. Encouraging. #ffrl

In my conduct rings a sage voice of my lunchmate, from an earlier tweet:

@cmonstah: future of freelancing: bard has to cover own expenses, mags simply compensate writers fee.

Jefferys greatest concern, it se! ems, is not so much how to get a stuff paid for though rather how to beef up a peculiarity of what comes in. Investigative stating has prolonged suffered a necessity of account flair, she says. The need to be taken severely leads to severely depthless prose.

4:30 PM, Outside Nitery 209; Restoring Yourself as well as Journalism, Too: Fellowships as well as Grants

I cant bring myself to push in to a crowded event upon appropriation as well as fellowships. Instead, you implement myself upon a really comfortable sectional lounge only outside a door, within cords strech of an electrical outlet. Exchanging pleasantries with multiform alternative discussion goers, you kick back, watch a Twitstream, as well as bookmark 3 exciting (and intimidating) appropriation possibilities, each in a name of a single or some-more passed journalist:

1. The Dick Goldensohn Fund
Amount: typically a integrate of thousand dollars
* Dick died of a heart attack during age 39 in 1985. Since he had been a fearless inquisitive reporter, a Fund creates tiny grants covering research, stating as well as transport costs to freelance reporters operative upon general stories. Facility in English is a requirement.

2. The Alicia Patterson Foundation
Amount: $20,000-$40,000
* In mental recall of Alicia Patterson, editor as well as publishing house of Newsday for scarcely 23 years before her death in 1963. Winners have been selected by an annual competition. The foe opens in June; all entries contingency be postmarked by Oct 1. Applications have been accepted from U.S. citizens who have been imitation reporters with during slightest 5 years of veteran experience.

3. John S. as well as James L. Knight Foundation Journalism Program
Amount: Range of full-ride fellowships as well as important stipends for mid-career journalists
* Since its creation in 1950, a foundation has invested some-more than $300 million to allege broadcasting excellence as well as! freedom of countenance worldwide. Our priority grant-making areas: Digital Media as well as News in a Public Interest, Press Freedom as well as Freedom of Information, News as well as Newsroom Diversity, as well as Journalism Training as well as Education.

5:30 PM, Outside Nitery 209

A immature lady of decidedly modern birthright (South African, Argentinean, Jewish, Southern Californian) reaches opposite a ottoman, hands me her commercial operation card. Lets do this thing, she says, because this is what you do. If you had a commercial operation card Id give it to her. But you dont. you should have a little printed, you think. Theres an magnificence to a custom which somehow isnt replicated by a electronic sell of Vcards.

@cmonstah: you consider you need a bubbly beverage fellowship. #ffrl

@JessicaDuLong: Im so there, dude. RT @cmonstah: you consider you need a bubbly beverage fellowship. #ffrl

@whit_richardson: you second a need for a bubbly beverage brotherhood #FFRL

@davidtpage: yeehaw! RT @cmonstah: you consider you need a bubbly beverage fellowship. #ffrl

Coda: Print is Dead. Long Live Print!

October 26, 8:25 PM, Mammoth Lakes, CA

I HEAR MY DOG BARKING IN THE DISTANCE, substantially during a bear, or during a dancing moonshadow of a fir bough. Or may be hes only cold, sitting shotgun up there during a front door, as well as wants to be let in.

I decide, finally, all these months later, to skip over a rest, all those tiny moments which together (thanks some-more to a notebook than a brain) have up a lingering hint of certain days past a smell of eucalyptus, a popping of dry leaves underneath my bike tires, a tequila, a microwave calzone, a phone summary from my dad about how hed sliced off a tip of his finger (theyre trying to save it, he said), a self-doubt of bonobos, a curious late-afternoon glow upon a Bay as seen from a westbound lanes upon a San Mateo Bridge, a man in a pickle fit as well as basketball shoes tripping a light! illusor y upon a corner of East Yosemite Avenue in downtown Manteca.

The upshot of a thing: commercial operation models have been in flux, aged outlets have been giving approach to new, or elaborating to accommodate as well as take advantage of brand brand brand brand brand new technologies as well as social realities; producers as well as purveyors of consumer artifacts go upon to outlay outrageous amounts of income to get those products in front of a people who competence buy them; savvy publishers go upon to hasten as well as digest brand brand brand brand brand new ways to get as well as attorney a courtesy of their readers; talented writers as well as reporters go upon to find as well as write enthralling stories (the unstoppable ones even making a vital during it); as well as a collective thirst for those stories abides as it will for as prolonged as we, as a species, can hang onto a sentience really much undiminished. As Mark Robinson, Articles Editor during Wired put it behind in June, Our enlightenment has a integrate thousand year story of need for narrative.

From what Ive seen etched in to a basalt upon top of ancient, now-dry Pleistocene seas, Id contend it goes behind a lot over than that. But a points well taken. The trick, from a journeyman writers point of view, is how to sell a hard-labor of crafting stories in black for an competent quotient of food, shelter, knickknacks, toys, fuel as well as intoxicants. And down a highway to be means to look behind during a work hes done, after earthquakes as well as floods, a clamor of a marketplace (5 Genuine Experiences! 10 Affordable Exotic Destinations! The Last Great Undiscovered Waterfall!) as well as all alternative manner of tellurian unsteadiness as well as delusion, as well as see which it a raise of rocks hes done next to a highway still stands as a waypoint for travelers. Maybe even a single worth a $27 annual sub! scriptio n as well as a certain array of metric tons of (duly offset) carbon emissions.

Probably my slightest a one preferred extracurricular wake up is hanging out with people who want to talk about a death of print, a death of journalism, a death of books, a page, a word, a word count, a industry, a whatever, freelance guru David Hochman wrote a alternative day upon UPOD, his uncommonly utilitarian as well as inspiring forum for freelance writers. These conversations have been during best irritating though also unhelpful.

So what a hell, lets bring together a little engaging companies, with products you have use of as well as ethics you apply oneself (and money), lets pull together a best writers, photographers as well as illustrators upon a planet, as well as lets have a kickass brand brand brand brand brand new transport magazine. Why not? Whos with us?

Print is Dead. Long Live Print!