Monica Valentinelli: Author, Game Designer and Consultant

Posted on February 4, 2008 - by Monica Valentinelli

Freelancing for Newspapers | a Book Review

Freelancing for Newspapers

Writing for an Overlooked Market

Written by Sue Fagalde Lick
Published by Quill Driver Books

As the title suggests, this book is a comprehensive “how-to” for freelancers wanting to break into the newspaper print market. I stress the words newspaper and print, because the material here was written by a professional lady with lots of experience in tried-and-true journalistic markets. Her experiences alone are great for any freelancer to read up on and understand, but it also means that her take on freelancing for newspapers is a fairly traditional one based on years of experience.

Content & Style

I give this work an A++ for content. Not a lot of writer’s resources that I’ve read will provide pragmatic advice on the three tiers that, in my mind, every freelancer needs to be concerned with: writing, marketing, and research. The holy trinity for any writer, Ms. Fagalde Lick breaks down each subject and covers everything from the query letter to researching your target market for print media. I felt that the content was extremely valuable for anyone who wants to break into print media; many of the “rules” written here can also be applied elsewhere.

Written from the first person point-of-view, the style of the work was a nice touch because it came across as being helpful and opinionated — which is great for writers communicating with other writers. The style removes the oppressive “you-must-do-this” mentality and brings it down to a personal level. Coupled with the fact that the author used a lot of “real-world” examples, the advice came across as sound, sane, and applicable.

Structural Format

This is not a pretty book, there are no pictures or illustrations decorating the chapters. At times, I got bogged down in “text” and the way the book was formatted. Copyright headers are thrown in throughout the book, so if you have a particular question about copyrights (as most of us do), you’ll have to follow along. Structurally, I thought the order of content in the book was very logical and strong; I really liked the fact that “Freelancing as Business” was the last chapter.

Included within the last chapter, are some really great additional “recommending reading” books and websites, which adds to the authors advice and credibility. As she also devotes an entire chapter to “Researching your Article,” you can tell that the author also applied that same dogma to researching material for this book. In this way, these additional pieces add to the content, instead of distracting you from it, and helps you design your own strategy in order to breach this competitive market.

In Conclusion

If you pick up Freelancing for Newspapers, keep in mind that much of the content is applicable to more than just newspapers. So many books out there are written by “multi-taskers” who perform extensive online research but don’t have the “real-world” experience — Sue Fagalde Lick does and it shows in the quality of the advice.

The highlight of this book for me was her comments about research and interviewing sources. All too often, we accept articles and other media at face value as an audience member or reader but, as the author points out, writers need to perform their own research to come up with the facts for a well-written article. I felt that the idea of “citing your sources” was directly applicable to writing for the web, as it is true of my own experiences as a ghostwriter. Not only does it lend your work more credibility, but it gives you an air of professionalism that will allow you to stand out. She writes:

Just because someone has posted something on the Internet does not mean he knows any more about the subject than you do.

Freelancing for Newspapers is available at Amazon.com

To get in touch with the author, Ms. Sue Fagalde Lick, visit her blog at: FreelancingForNewspapers.blogspot.com

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