Artwork donated by Pati Nagle.

The Freelancer’s Survival Guide: The Benefits of Hindsight

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

I don’t know if we get wiser as we get older, but we certainly gain a lot more experience.  The experience comes in handy, if we chose to use it.  And sometimes that experience is just there, a part of our personal history and nothing more.

I had a discussion with someone this recently about hindsight.  We both discussed our fathers, both of whom discouraged us from our first marriages.  The person I was talking to is going through a divorce right now.  I went through mine 24 years ago.

We both agreed, in the course of our conversation, that our fathers had been right. We also agreed that if we had looked at those relationships now—from the outside (with someone not us) and with the benefit of another couple decades of living—we would see the upcoming problems as well.

Relationships follow patterns, and people often get attracted, particularly early on, to someone who might give us an opportunity to heal problems that currently exist in our own lives.  Watching other people’s relationships have given me insights into my own.  But that all comes from experience (and an annoying tendency toward nosiness).

The conversation with my friend wasn’t a bitter one though.  In fact, we both laughed about our poor fathers’ inability to stop us, and we both expressed some empathy for our fathers in that situation.  Because as clearly as our fathers could see the situation, their experience didn’t extend to preventing it.

Then, of course, both of us contemplated what might have happened had we listened to our fathers. If I hadn’t married the first time, I would probably never have met my current husband.  If I hadn’t met Dean, I certainly wouldn’t be typing this now.

As I’ve said before, I don’t regret that first marriage, despite the pain and anguish it caused me and my ex.  Not only do I (we, I hope) have some good memories, but that relationship was a critical one in forming both of us.  Fascinatingly to me is this:  Had my ex and I stayed together, his children would never have been born.  Had we done things “right,” he would have lost the family he has now, and probably not had a different one in its place.  I never wanted children, which we discussed at the beginning.  My ex, at nineteen, figured (without telling me) I’d change my mind.

I never did.

Most of us use hindsight the way I did here, to explore the various possibilities of our lives, the paths not taken.  I actually looked at that very topic in a story I just published in Analog, called “Red Letter Day.” The idea being if you could write a letter to your younger self, helping that person either change something in their life or not, what would you write? Would you write at all? (Still haven’t entirely answered that one for me.)

But we can use hindsight for more than what-if exploration.  We can use hindsight as we build our businesses.  In fact, I believe hindsight is an essential tool of business building.

In my post on failure, I wrote, “Failure is something we need to practice.  Handled well, failure leads to success.  In fact, I know of no long-term successful business person who lacks a failure in her background.”  Later in that post, I wrote that I believe that failures handled well are more properly termed setbacks.  Of course, I wrote three posts on the topic of setbacks as well.

What changes a failure to a setback? Attitude.  I know a number of people, several of them men, who have not remarried after their divorces.  Most of those men never even dated again.  They were so rocked by the failure of their marriages that they simply could not conceive of another relationship at all.  They weren’t willing to try again.

Sometimes this attitude is healthy.  It comes from suffering physical pain.  It’s hardwired in.  When we get hurt badly, we don’t want to repeat the behavior that caused us that pain.  This makes sense when it comes to touching a hot stovetop with your bare hand—you’re not going to do that again if you can at all help it—but makes a lot less sense when applied to everything in life.

If we avoided everything that hurt us, emotionally and physically, over the years, we’d eventually stop doing anything.  I’ve turned my ankle crossing a room without tripping on anything; does that mean I shouldn’t walk again?

Back in the failure post, I used the analogy of the child learning to walk. Toddlers don’t give up.  They want to move on their own too much to stop, even though they fall constantly and often hurt themselves.

But that’s a simple analogy.  I don’t think (don’t remember, honestly, and don’t really know) whether or not toddlers analyze what made them fall.  I suspect toddlers just get right back up and try again without any real thought except some version of I’m going to conquer this thing; everyone else I know has.

That bullheadedness serves us well in many areas of life. Sometimes you need to get right back on the horse, the bike, whatever cliché you prefer.

And sometimes you need to analyze what went wrong.  You need to use hindsight.

Because I have a driving desire not to ever make the same mistake twice, I get really angry at myself when I do make a single mistake over and over again.  I don’t quit whatever it is I’m doing—I’m closer to that bullheaded toddler than I let on in public—but I do rethink it, and sometimes I take a vacation from it.

Case in point: Business.  Business, unlike writing, is something I learned as an adult.  I’m a very organic writer.  I read, gather information, and eventually apply it.  I can teach what I’ve learned—somewhat.  But as I recently explained to a group of professional writers who had all come to study with me, if you delve too deeply into my ability to express my knowledge about writing, you’ll learn that my ability to describe what I know is pretty shallow. At some point, I just shake my head and say, “Look, just do it.  If you can’t do it then, we’ll see what else we can figure out.”  Not because I’m frustrated with the student, but because my own learning process in that area is so subconscious that I can’t even articulate how I know what I know.  And sometimes expressing what I know is equally hard.

On the other hand, I learned business in the school of hard knocks.  And when I say hard knocks, I mean the kind that make little cartoon birdies and stars revolve around your head for years.  I can point out each wound and scar, each dent to my thick skull, and every single slight that every happened, my fault or not.

Why am I not bitter?  Sometimes I am.  I occasionally indulge in the pity party or the nasty analysis of someone who has hurt me years ago.  But mostly, I learned relatively young that looking backwards and wallowing in regret does me no good whatsoever.

Life moves forward whether we want it to or not.  Our choice is whether or not to move with it or to give situations the permission to batter us around.

Hindsight is the tool that allows us to move forward.  It is also the tool that allows us to go near a stove again.  We assess what went wrong, and then we see if it’s even possible to move forward again without repeating the same mistake.

Once you put your hand on a hot stovetop, you realize that you have to approach that stove with caution.  A toddler might stay away from the stove entirely, since a toddler can’t see the top, and judges the entire thing harmful and can’t yet understand a stove’s benefits.

But an adult realizes that there are many ways to approach that stovetop, most of which will not hurt, if you’re careful.  One thing most of us do, however, is keep our bare hands away from any part of the stove that’s on.  Most of us never put our hands on that top without looking at it first.

Simple caution, based on experience.  It allows us to have a useful, if dangerous, item in our home.

But let’s move hindsight away from the realm of the physical into the realm of the mental.  Pain can be emotional.  The emotion comes from severe stress and trauma.

I’ve owned many businesses, and I’ve failed at a lot of them.  I’ve approached each one with the idea that I won’t make those same mistakes again.  Often, I decided not to go into the same kind of business again.

When Dean decided to open a collectibles store as a hobby, I wanted nothing to do with it.  I had worked retail from the age of twenty forward, and my ex and I owned a frame shop and art gallery that was a retail shop.

I hated most of the aspects of owning a store.  I hated the hours.  I hated the stuff.  I hated the cash outlay required to get inventory, to rent (or buy) a building, and most of all, I hated waiting for customers to come in.

But Dean had owned several shops, and had loved them.  I was not about to stop him from doing something he loved.  So I helped him plan, using the mistakes my ex and I had made in the past, combining those mistakes with the ones Dean made in his early stores.

That planning, and all of that hindsight, allowed us to build a successful business.  I didn’t ever stand behind the cash register, but I was part owner.  Dean and I made the major decisions together.

Our experience paid off.  Dean’s expertise in collectibles made the store a destination stop within its first year.  The inventory came from Dean’s collections, and his judicious purchases of other people’s collections.

Because Dean knows himself quite well, he also realized that the joy in any project for him is building that project.  (That’s why he became an architect.)  He literally built this business from scratch, making a deal with an owner of a strip mall that we would pay to fix up a dilapidated space inside that mall in exchange for three years of rent.

The nice thing about that rent deal and the previously owned inventory is that together, they gave us the opportunity to walk away from the business if it didn’t work.  We had three years of free rent, so we had three years to see if the business could sustain itself.  We had more than a year’s worth of inventory, so we had relatively few start-up costs.

The business became so successful so quickly (which we did not expect) that Dean realized he was going to have to put more time into it than he had planned. That realization too came from experience.  He had done this before, and he knew how to grow a business.  He did not want to become a collectibles mogul. This was supposed to be his hobby, not his life.

Once he made that realization, he sold the business—for a profit—six months after Oregon, already ahead of the curve, had sunk into this deep recession.  The new owner, who had worked at the business from the start, maintained it, and it continues to grow even now, doing extremely well in this tough economic climate.

Every single plan we made about that new business came from hindsight.  We knew, first of all, that Dean needs to build things.  He always has something going on besides his writing.  Before he wrote, he had two or three new things happening as well.  He must create on a variety of levels, and it’s impossible to hold him back—although he’s great at analysis, and able to figure quickly if a new project is the right project for him.

That ability to figure out if a new project is right also comes from experience.  In our lifetime together, he’s started projects only to abandon them within the week as it became clear that he wasn’t suited for them. Time has taught us to evaluate first, sink money in later.

Experience taught us to do the financial plan up front.  We’d both started businesses by the seat of our pants, with just a vague idea that it would work out.  Once or twice it did, but mostly it failed.

We also learned that we needed to spend as little on start-up as possible because we were taking no outside investors.  We needed to be able to walk away from this business.  Because of our years of experience we knew that the economy was headed downward (long before the “smart guys” in Washington had it figured out), and we had to make the business as recession-proof as possible.  We’d both started businesses in a recession, and we lost Pulphouse Publishing in part because of our response to the recession of 1992.  So we knew how dangerous the overall economic climate could be to a business.

We planned for that.

We also knew the price we needed if we decided to sell the business, and we knew it up front.  Mostly, we expected to shut it down if it didn’t work. The fact that we found a buyer with little effort had more to do with Dean’s planning abilities than with me, but he doesn’t like building things only to take them apart.  So he worked hard to keep potential buyers interested, even while he started the business up.

All of this planning was extremely different from the planning we had done in our early businesses.  Those, as I said, were done without enough planning at all.  In fact, as I mentioned in the business plan post [link], I didn’t understand why places like the Small Business Administration wanted a business plan.  How could we know how the business would operate when we hadn’t operated a business?

I recently watched a business go through the same by-the-seat-of-their-pants start-up, and I haven’t even talked to or met the owners.  I recognize the signs from experience alone.

Down the hill from our house, a lovely Italian restaurant went out of business but not because of financial mismanagement.  The place was wildly successful.  Instead, it closed because of what I think of as a weird Oregon Coast phenomenon.  The owners got sick of tourists.

We went to this restaurant a lot, and in hindsight, the signs of the closure were obvious.  It started when the owner decided that locals could make reservations, but tourists could not. Then it migrated to little signs on the table, telling people to control their children and not to use their cell phones.  Then the hours got strange—staying open on Monday and Tuesday (traditionally days on the Oregon Coast when business are closed because there are no tourists) and closing on Sunday.  In their last year, the owners closed for the summer (the high season) and reopened in the winter (when the town is empty).  The reopening didn’t last.  In fact, the restaurant closed for good during, of all things, spring break.  The owners loved to cook. They loved to cook for people they liked. They hated dealing with rudeness, demands, and all the other things that come with owning a restaurant.

They had owned their building, and it sat empty for two years, waiting for a buyer or for someone to rent it.

This spring, someone rented it.

Because the restaurant is so close to us, we watched the newcomers build it.  A small sign went up immediately, announcing the future home of the new restaurant.  The front door sat open during the business day, as the new owner painted and did a slight remodel. The official sign went up in late May and with it, an announcement on the changeable sign below, that the restaurant would open on June 25.

Well, I could see the interior of that place, and it was clear to me that they would have to push to hit their June 25 deadline.  On June 20, the furniture got delivered.  On June 24, the sign changed to a July 2 opening.  Fourth of July is the biggest weekend in our little tourist town, so it became clear that these new restaurateurs wanted to take advantage of that.

But both Dean and I have worked in restaurant start-ups, and a menu, a good chef, and a well-designed interior do not a restaurant make. Every single successful restaurant that we’ve worked at—and that Dean has managed—has given itself a month to work out the kinks.  Mostly, the restaurant holds practice nights with the newly hired wait staff, without opening the restaurant at all.  One restaurant in Superior, Wisconsin, when I was a teenager invited the relatives of every single person on the staff to come into the restaurant and eat free for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night.  That restaurant did so for two weeks.

By the time it opened, the staff knew the menu, knew the quirks of the kitchen, had made (and corrected) dozens of errors, learned where everything is kept, and learned how to pace themselves through a restaurant slammed with customers.

(Our local six-plex movie theater did the same thing, by the way, just to get the bugs out of their system.)

Dean worked varieties of the same practice session.  Every restaurant that does this opens to acclaim, if not for the food, at least for the service.

On July 1, the restaurant below announced a July 5 opening date.

On July 4, the opening date was gone.

On July 17, the place held a stealth opening.  They’d lost an entire month of revenue from their business plan (if indeed they had one), and they have so far gotten no word of mouth throughout the community.  The stealth opening allowed them to practice a little, but they probably lost customers who expected a more polished staff/restaurant.

I hope they’ll survive, but their cold opening probably made things harder than they needed to be. And the cold opening is a clear sign of inexperience.

So how do you make hindsight work for you?

1. Do a fearless inventory of what went wrong in your previous business(es).  Make a list and be honest.  If you’re not honest, there’s no point.  If you did something wrong, or several somethings wrong, admit them.  You need to understand where all of the mistakes are, not just some of them.

2. Evaluate whether the mistakes came from a) the economy; b) your response to the economy; c) your inexperience or d) your personality.  If the mistakes came from the economy, then you better make sure you know how to weather the same economic climate.  If they came from your response to the economy, then you better learn how to be more flexible in response to a crisis.

If the mistakes came from your inexperience, don’t get overconfident.  Just because you have experience now doesn’t mean you’re all wise.  Plan to make more errors.

If the mistakes came from your personality, you better find a way to negate that part of you that has the tendency to do things wrong for the type of business you’re opening.  I’m great at publishing and editing, but I’ll never edit again.  I’m good at it, but not suited to it.  No amount of “change” will make me and editing suit.  I might be able to do a small project or two, but I won’t make a career out of it—not without a personality transplant.  Been there, done that, spent enough to buy a factory’s worth of t-shirts.

If the mistakes came from your personality, you might need to hire someone to take that part of your personality out of play.  I could own a publishing company (in partnership with Dean) again, if I don’t edit.  But I would have to remain hands-off with the new editor.  I would have to trust that person—which is a tall order. As I said, I’m very good at editing, and I’d see mistakes right off.  I’d probably drive that person out of the business if I wasn’t careful.

Hiring a person to do the part of the job you’re not suited for has all the pitfalls of hiring an employee for other aspects of your life.  See the employee sections of the guide.

If your previous business failed due to your personality, then you might want to reconsider stepping back into that same kind of business at all.  Sometimes it’s better to say that you don’t suit than it is to keep pounding your head against the same brick wall.

3.  Use other people’s hindsight.  Ask them about the mistakes they made in the same type of business.  Do this even if you’ve owned a business before.  You’ll learn something, guaranteed.

However, make sure you listen to their advice.  At least three start-up publishers interviewed me and Dean about what went wrong at Pulphouse Publishing.  We were very honest with them, told them about various warning signs, and told them to call us if things got dicey.

All three of those start-ups failed, one spectacularly.  All three of them followed the exact same path that Pulphouse followed, and all three responded to the problems the same way we did—which is to say, the wrong way.

They were forewarned.  Of course, they took no notes during our meeting, never contacted us when things got dicey, and only one remembered our advice at all.  He later admitted to us that he was in the hospital (the failure caused a physical collapse that put him in the hospital for weeks) and he kept hearing our voices, telling him what exactly would go wrong if he didn’t take our advice.  He says we haunted him, and he apologized for not listening.

He didn’t owe us an apology.  He owed himself one.

5. Let hindsight help you in all aspects of your business.  Because I know how a failing business behaves, I often will not work with a business that is exhibiting the symptoms of a business on the edge.  Because we had a publishing house collapse, I particularly know the signs of that, so I won’t approach a company that even whispers of trouble.  The trouble is often obvious to those of us who have been through something similar years in advance.

In fact, when Dean and I talked with one of those start-ups all those years ago, the owner told us in the middle of the meal he was buying us that he “would never ever make such dumb mistakes.”  We immediately decided never to work with him—not because he insulted us, but because his ego was so large that he believed he was immune to our stupidity.

He compounded our stupidity, and his failure was so spectacular that people within publishing still discuss it as an example of what not to do when running a business.

6.  Remember the most important lesson of hindsight: You are fallible. Sorry, kiddo.  You’ll make mistakes just like the rest of us.  In fact, you’ll  make mistakes every single time you start a new business.  You’ll make mistakes after owning that business for ten years, fifteen, twenty.   Face it: You’ll make mistakes.

Now longtime readers will understand where I get my mantra.  The key is to avoid making the same mistake twice.  You’ll always make new mistakes.  Be creative about them.  Make new mistakes in the pursuit of the perfect, mistake-free business.  Then learn from those new mistakes.

That’s what hindsight is for.  Toss out the regrets and the “I wish I hads.”  Stop fantasizing about going back in time and fixing things.

Move forward with the right attitude—after you’ve fearlessly looked backwards, of course.

One more topic! Seriously, I’m down to one more topic!!!!!  Not that I’m thrilled about this or anything, but one more topic!!!!  I’ve already put two small sections of the Guide on Kindle and Smashwords.  I’ll have more up by next week.

If you want the whole Guide—and you want to set your own price, not pay mine—hit the donate button now.  I’ll be sending a free e-book of the finished Guide to everyone who donated about three weeks after I declare the Guide done on my website.  (That might be as soon as next week because there’s one more topic!)

So thanks again to all of you who have already donated, participated, and sent letters or comments.  See you next week!

“Freelancer Writer’s Survival Guide: “Hindsight” copyright 2010 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

Artwork donated by Pati Nagle.

The Freelancer’s Survival Guide: Incorporation

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

I spent most of this evening putting another Freelancer’s Survival Guide Short Book together. The first short book, When To Quit Your Day Job, is available now in an electronic edition.  It’ll be on all the sites eventually, but right now, you can get it on Smashwords (in any e-format).

What I’m doing as I put these short books together is setting up the sections for the final Freelancer’s Guide—all 150,000 words of it.  Those of you who have donated will get the big book (unless you e-mail me with requests for the shorter books as well), and that should come to you sometime this fall.

Things are coming together, which feels quite good.

Because I’m organizing, I’m also going over my topic list.  I’ve missed a few things as specific topics, but I’m discovering that they were covered in brief in other posts.  One of the missed topics is incorporation.

I’m in the middle of another novel, which makes me very spacey, and that means my desk is piled high with papers.  I’ve gone through them twice tonight, and can’t find the initial letter asking me about incorporation.  (Sorry!)  I know it’s here somewhere, but rather than wait to locate it, I’m just going to dig into the topic.

I agonized over writing about incorporation and twice crossed it off my list.  I am not a lawyer, nor am I a tax expert.  I really didn’t want to tackle the topic.  But I talked with a few people about whether or not I should write about incorporation, and all of them seemed enthusiastic.

A few suggested I contact my “panel of experts” to discuss incorporation.  While I know dozens of attorneys, many of whom are tax attorneys or copyright attorneys or corporate attorneys, I don’t feel right asking them to comment for this article.

I know what they’ll all say.  It depends on the business.  It depends on the financial situation of the business.  It depends on the structure of the business.  It depends on whether or not you want investors, what your tax liability is, and what it might become.

It depends, it depends, it depends.

It also depends on which country you’re in. Since I’ve received donations for the Guide from Japan, England, the Netherlands, and Canada (to name only a few), I don’t want to spend a lot of time on a topic that I know only from an American perspective.

So I’m going to handle this very complicated topic in a very simple manner.

First, let’s discuss business structure.

Most freelancers are sole proprietors. They run their own business by themselves. They own it, they run it, and they manage it alone.  They file a Schedule C on the United States tax form.  They use a simple accounting system.  Often their business doesn’t even have a name, except their name.  People in the arts work this way, often.  So the tax document is filed under the owner’s name.  Business cards have the freelancer’s name on them, and maybe a description of what the freelancer does.

That’s it.  Simple and easy.  For most of you, this is a fine system.  No need to mess with it.

But let’s say you decided to name your business Green Frahg Productions.  You have become the owner and operator of Green Frahg Productions.  You want all bank accounts, receipts, bills, payments, everything financial to funnel through Green Frahg Productions.

There are many ways to do this.

To open a bank account in the United States under the name Green Frahg Productions, you’ll need a DBA document.  That’s a Doing Business As form which you can get from your bank.  You’ll need to file that form with the state.  Once you’ve filled out that form with all the pertinent information, you can then open your accounts under the name Green Frahg Productions.

It’s really that simple.  Each state has different regulations.  Your banker will tell you what the regulations are for your state.  I have a hunch it works this way in each country as well.

You’ll be on the DBA as the owner and operator, but Green Frahg becomes the public face of your business, not you.  The check for any purchased material will come to Green Frahg Productions. The only problem comes in signing the contract. Someone has to sign as a representative of Green Frahg, and that someone is you.

A DBA is the simplest way to assume a name other than yours for your business.  A corporation is an extremely complicated way, and if you want a corporate identity only for the name, then you don’t understand corporations.

Under U.S. law (and under the laws of many other countries), a corporation is a separate entity.  In other words, it exists, like a person exists.  In the U.S., we’re constantly arguing about what that means.  The major Supreme Court case this year, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, that caused so much controversy is a case about (among other things) the definition of a corporation under the law.  These things change all the time, and there are books upon books upon books defining what a corporation is, what its tax liability is, and what regulations it must follow.

Not to mention that inside the United States, corporations can take various forms.  Some have limited liability.  Some are public—meaning that anyone can buy stock in it (through the correct channels).  Some are private.  There is subchapter this and structure that, and they all follow different rules.

One thing each corporation holds in common is this: If you decide to incorporate, your paperwork will increase exponentially.  You’ll have to have board meetings. You’ll need to document everything.  Your finances must be handled a certain way.  Your taxes must be handled a certain way.

If you fail to follow those rules, you are legally liable for all kinds of nastiness.  Taking on a corporation is a mighty task, one you shouldn’t do lightly, if at all.  It’s certainly not something you can decide on your own.  You’ll need to hire an attorney to help you incorporate.  Make sure that the attorney you hire is a business attorney who handles corporations routinely.

You’ll also need a certified public accountant to help you set up the books of your corporation.  Those books must be set up to a particular standard, and that standard has to be maintained.

If you have stockholders, then you’ll need to do reports, filings, disclosures and all kinds of things like that.  Corporations, in case you can’t tell, are a gigantic pain in the butt.

So…if corporations are a pain, why do people incorporate their businesses?

For a variety of reasons.  Many will incorporate to minimize their personal tax liability.  If your business starts making profits in the hundreds of thousands, then you might want to consider incorporating.  Your tax liability (in the States) might go down.  It might not.  I know people who have so badly mishandled their corporations that their tax liability went up.

If your business is a risky one, then you might want a corporation to stand between you and any legal liabilities.  If you’re afraid that you could get sued routinely for standard business practices, then you might want to incorporate.

It sounds like I’m talking about criminal businesses here, but I’m not.  I’m talking about a business, like a gym, where injury might be common, and lawsuits are expected.  People hurt themselves all the time on gym equipment, and it doesn’t matter how often you explain how to use the equipment correctly.  People will sue.

If you own the gym as a sole proprietor, then any legal damages could come out of your own personal wealth.  Your kid’s college savings might go instead to the dumb guy who decided he could bench-press an extra 50 lbs and broke bones doing so.  Yeah, you warned him, but you didn’t take the weights away from him.  And the jury found for the dumb guy.  Your kid suddenly isn’t going to college.

Unless your gym is incorporated and—here’s the rub—it’s the right kind of corporation, then you might be protected.  Some corporations aren’t protection against a lawsuit like that. Some are.  The ones that are will act in this way: the court will take the damages from the corporation’s finances and leave yours alone.

Again, it depends on what you need the corporation for.

So if you are thinking of incorporating, either to protect yourself from huge tax bills or to protect yourself from standard (and expected) lawsuits that are the cost of doing business, do these things:

1. Research, research, research.  Read up on corporations. Then find the right people to talk to.  Research the attorneys you might hire. Research the accounting firms.  Figure out what you really need before you ask for help.

2. Hire the correct attorney and listen to what she has to say.  Ask the right questions.  Tell her exactly what you want the corporation for.  Ask her about taxes, liabilities, benefits and drawbacks to the various corporations she proposes.  You might want to see a second and third attorney to get their opinions as well.  You don’t want to have the wrong type of corporation when all is said and done.

3. Hire the right accountant and listen to what he has to say.  He’s going to help you set up your finances.  He’s going to set up your accounts, and he’s going to tell you how the accounts work for your type of corporation.  Follow his instructions and setup to the letter.  If you don’t do this, you could be subject to extra taxes, fines, and all kinds of ugliness.

4. Keep a wall between you and that corporation. Don’t blur your finances.  Don’t blur your taxes.  Don’t tell people you are the business when you are not.  Think of the corporation as another person and don’t ever, ever steal that other person’s identity.

5. If you have shareholders, keep them informed.  The law requires this, of course, but so many small corporations don’t do it.  Do it.  That prevents shareholder lawsuits.

If all of this talk of tax  liability and rules and thick books and lawyers and accounting regulations and lawsuits scares you, good.  It should.  Because incorporating is a big decision and not one you should take lightly.

It’s a decision that most of you should not take at all.  Be happy with your DBA or your unnamed sole proprietorship.  Plug along at your small business, and keep it small.

Once you become a corporation, you’re playing with the big boys, and believe me, they play nasty.  Stay out of their game if you can at all avoid it.  If you decide to join them, then be prepared—and follow the rules.

You’ll be glad you did.

Writing about corporations give me heartburn.  It’s a topic I wouldn’t have covered without reader input. Thank you for the question, and thanks to all of you for the comments.  Those of you who have kept me going on this very long project with your donations deserve my special thanks as well.

If you donate now, you will get a copy of the full ebook this fall.  I’m winding down here (and getting sooo tired).  By my count, I only have two topics left.  Unless I missed something you really, really want to see.  If I did miss it, e-mail me this week.  Because I’m getting ready to do my sprint to the end. Those two topics might take me a few weeks to get through (they’re not small), but after that, I’m done.  Thanks, everyone, for the year-plus of support.

“Freelancer Writer’s Survival Guide: “Incorporation” copyright 2010 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

Every year, Dean and I do some classes for professional writers, mostly to help them with the business.  We do one class (the Kris & Dean Show) for unpublished writers.  We have the list of workshops that will take us into mid-2011.  I’m not sure what we’ll teach after that.  2011 is shaping up to be a busy travel year, and 2012 might be as well. So there’s no guarantee that we will teach these again any time soon.

Here’s the upcoming list, with information on how to contact us at the bottom.  If you’re interested, let Dean know at the e-mail address below.

———————— 2010 WORKSHOP SCHEDULE —————————

September 2010

CHARACTER VOICES WORKSHOP. Sept.18-25, 2010 (Starts 7 PM on the 18th, ends
late 25th). Cost $600. Limited to 14. Room Rate $50.00 (5 Spots left)
Taught by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

October 2010

NOVEL WORKSHOP. Oct 10-13, 2010 (Starts at 7 PM on the 10th). Cost $200.
Limited to 12. Room Rate $40.00
Taught by Dean Wesley Smith with feedback from Kristine Kathryn Rusch

NEW TECHNOLOGY. Oct. 14–16, 2010 (Starts 7 PM on 14th, ends noon 16th). Cost
$300. Room Rate $40.00

(Taught by a number of people, going into the ways writers can use Kindle,
eBooks, POD and anything new by then to make money and sell more copies of
their stories.) Open to all levels.

MARKETING WORKSHOP. Oct 16-23, 2010 (Starts 7 PM on the 16th, ends late
23th). Cost $600. Limited to 14. Room Rate $40.00 (4 Spots Left)
Taught by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith

—————————————-

2011 WORKSHOP SCHEDULE

FEBRUARY 2011

Novel Workshop Feb 21-24, 2011. Fee $250.00
Taught by Dean Wesley Smith with feedback from Kristine Kathryn Rusch

—-

Denise Little Short Story Workshop Feb 24-27, 2011. Fee $500.00
Taught by Denise Little and Dean Wesley Smith.

MARCH 2011

Kris and Dean Show. (Publishing Overview) March 12-13, 2011. Fee $250.00
Overview of Publishing…open to all comers at any level…pass the word to your
beginning writer friends. This workshop will give you an understanding of
publishing, how to break into it, how to start selling your fiction, and so
much more.

—-

Marketing Workshop. March 26-April 3rd, 2011. Fee $650.00.
Taught by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Limited to 12, so
deposits required.

APRIL 2011

Character Voice Workshop. April 16-24, 2011. $650.00.
Taught by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Limited to 12 so
deposits required.

MAY 2011

How to Be Your Own Literary Agent: May 13-15, 2011. $350.00.
Contracts, negotiations, the whole ball including when and how to seek help.
This is an expansion of the copyright and contracts workshop held last year.
Revision clauses and so much more critical things you need to know even if
you have an agent. Only people who have taken the Master Class within the last few years or the Marketing Class qualify for this workshop.

—

Novel Workshop. May 16-19, 2011. $250.
(same as above)

—

Secrets of Making a Living with Your Fiction. May 20-22, 2011. $350.00.
Taught by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch

JUNE 2011

Short Story Workshop. June 18-26, 2011. $650.00.
Taught by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch

—————–

Sign-ups now being taken for all workshops.
Questions or more information or to sign up, just e-mail Dean at
dean@deanwesleysmith and put workshops or writer in your subject line.

Artwork donated by Pati Nagle.

The Freelancer’s Survival Guide: 21^st Century Thinking (Advertising Part 2)

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Last week, I mentioned that I’d been thinking about advertising in a very 20^th century manner.  I’ve been thinking about a lot of things in 20^th century manner, which makes sense, considering I spent 40 years in the 20^th century, and only 10 in the 21^st (so far).  But as I mentioned last week, everything is changing rapidly (particularly in my profession, publishing) and keeping up is becoming a challenge.

Witness advertising.  Everyone is trying to find a new way to do it and by new, I mean effective.  Of course, that’s been the quest from the beginning.  What works? What doesn’t? What does it cost?

As I mentioned last week, what caused me to finally start on the ad topic was an e-mail. I got a request to put a paid ad on my website.  I’ve gotten them before, and dithered. This time, I didn’t dither.

I questioned and thought, and thought some more.

I’m going to share my process on this because I’m not the only one dealing with these questions.  Last week, I discussed ways to advertise your business.

This week, I’m going to talk about someone else buying ad time or ad space with you.

I almost wrote, “Realize that I’m new to this,” but I’m not.  I’ve worked for radio stations that sell advertising time.  I wrote the ads the customers bought.  I’ve worked for magazines that ran advertising.  I’ve sold advertising for magazines and newspapers.  In other words, I’ve worked for businesses that have made every single dollar they earn off ad revenue.

I hadn’t given that much thought, however, since I made my living from those ad dollars only secondhand.  Those businesses paid me for my writing and/or performance skills (yes, I read some of those ads, and engineered a few as well) with dollars those businesses received from their ad revenue.

Which brings me back to my blog.  This website, right here. The one you’re eyeballing.

I’ve had a website for at least ten years.  In the beginning, that website was a “static website,” back before anyone even used the term.  It was a strictly informational place.  If you wanted to know what else I published, you went to that site.  If you wanted to know what’s coming up, you went to that site.  Nothing more.

I was an early adapter on a static website, but a late adapter to an active website. Some of that came from a fear of flamewars.  In the early days of the internet, listserves, and e-mails, flamewars (or fights for those of you not into the jargon) happened a lot, and over the most trivial things.  People would object to a word or an idea and then scream about it, sometimes defaming you all over the net.

Which, since the net’s audience was small back then, wasn’t that big a deal. But it felt like a big deal.

So my initial foray into putting actual content on my website was tentative, with commentary off.  I didn’t want flaming to dominate my site.  After a while, I polled some friends and asked how bad the flamewars were on their websites.  Most long-term bloggers had the occasional good discussion, but no real flamewars.  The days of constant flaming seemed to be over.

So I turned on the comments section, and haven’t regretted it for a moment.  My columns on other sites have generated some flamewars—one war started by a semiprofessional flamer (a person who goes around agitating people), but so far, nothing untoward here.

And thank you all for that, by the way.

About the same time I started accepting comments, I started the Freelancer’s Guide. As I’m reviewing it to put it into book form, I can see just how much my thinking about the blog, the website, and the Guide have changed in the past 67 weeks.  My nervousness about this whole project is long gone.

I no longer see my website as a static place that informs people of things.  Now it’s an interactive site where I learn as much (I hope) as y’all do from me.  I also use it to inform you of my books and stories, as well as about things that interest me.

For example, my Recommended Reading list came out of editing.  The thing I loved best about editing was sharing new writers and new stories/new discoveries with like-minded readers.  The thing I liked least about editing was being limited to a genre.  With the Recommended Reading list, I thought, I could just point out good things to read from any place and any genre and any time period.

It has worked that way, and I know I get a slightly different audience to that list than I do to the Guide.  What I didn’t realize until earlier this year was that I was providing free advertising to people whose work I like.  A New York Times bestselling writer, who happens to be a friend of mine, contacted me after seeing my recommendation for his novel (which I read in proofs that I got from a local bookstore) and asked if the recommendation could be used to sell the book to bookstores.  Of course, I said yes.  I’ve gotten that request a few other times, and I know that several other writers/publishers have quoted from my list without asking permission because they know the list is public, and they can do so.

But the Recommended Reading list does not exist so that I can get free books (although I occasionally do) or to promote someone for the sake of promoting them.  It exists because I like sharing things that I consider very, very good.  And that’s the only reason.

I also share other fun things—an occasional movie or a song (the Janis Ian song is a case in point) or links to someone else’s website.  The website has become an extension of me, but the me that you find at a convention, not the me that my closest friends know.  (I doubt you folks want to know my cats’ latest antics or what I had for breakfast.)  When I’m here, I talk about things I’d talk to you about if we were sitting around a bar after the sessions ended.  Or I have a formal discussion, like I do when I give a speech or speak on a panel.  Of course, I mention my own work.  That’s one reason I’m there. But the other reason I go to conventions is to have fun.  And that’s become a reason to hang out on my website as well.

I did monetize the website when I started the Freelancer’s Guide because I wanted to write this, and I didn’t want to wait for money from the publishing industry.  I wanted the Guide to be published now rather than years from now.  You’ve helped me fund that, and I greatly appreciate it.

So…when I got this e-mail about putting a paid ad on my site, I actually considered it. The first few e-mails I got, some as long as a year ago, I dismissed with a polite letter.   I felt uncomfortable even considering advertising.

Two weeks ago, I discovered I had moved past uncomfortable.

But I was still uncertain.

So I contacted other professional writers on various listserves and asked them what they thought about taking ads on my website.  The first three answers I got reflected my ambivalence.

One writer said that my website advertised me and I shouldn’t confuse the issue with running ads for other products on the site.

Another writer said that I should consider the ad, but be very cautious because it would reflect on me.

And a third writer told me to take the money and run.

All of this made the issue as clear as mud.  I had already come up with those answers and, depending on the moment, vacillated between all three of them.

Then I got an e-mail from Cindie Geddes.  Cindie makes her living as a nonfiction writer, but she’s also a hell of a fiction writer. When her short story collection comes out, you’ll find it on my recommended reading list with a link.  Right now, you can find out more about her work at cindiegeddes.com.

Cindie wrote, “I’m a lover of technology and love blogs as much as I do essays, magazines, books, etc.  (Don’t tell.)  Anyway, when I see a few tasteful ads on a site (IF I even notice them) it tells me that the site has enough popularity and/or credibility for someone to be willing to pay to put ads on it.  It shows a level of professionalism.  And since I’m reading it, it’s obviously run by someone I like and I think, ‘Yay! Someone else has good taste like me’ and ‘Yay, this person I like is making money, so they can spend more time on content I like.’ In talking to friends who don’t write or produce web content but do consume web content, the reaction was universally the same (unless the site is for a charity, oddly enough, or a politician).”

She then pointed me to blogger Allie Brosh.  Allie Brosh dealt with the whole advertising question in April, and in a very creative way.  Take a look at her April 9 post.

Instead of asking other bloggers what they did, she went directly to her audience with a little quiz.  That quiz showed that she was dealing with some of the same questions I had.

I read the posts (and explored the site.  Interesting stuff there), then I finished reading Cindie’s letter.  She closed with this,

“You’ve been making a living writing. You have a Donate button.  Ads fit perfectly with what you do.  Hell, with all the opinions you’re getting, you could do a blog on the benefit or problems of taking ads on your site.”

Bingo! And that’s when the mud cleared.  Or whatever tortured metaphor you want.  Because I remembered what ads are.  They piggyback on existing content that has an audience.  Ads use that audience to try to cobble together their own audience, one that will purchase the product.

I looked at the other posts from the other writers, and realized I disagreed with one of them. The one that said my website advertised me and should just focus on me.

That thought had bothered me from the start, but I didn’t know why.  After Cindie’s letter, I could articulate it and here’s how I did.  Oprah Winfrey is starting her own television channel soon.  Oprah’s channel will take ads, just like her magazine does.

Just like the radio stations I worked for did.

Just like the magazines I worked for did.

My website is not an advertisement.  If it were, you folks would leave after one visit.  It’s a channel, a program, a magazine.  It’s content.  The moment you don’t like the content, you’ll switch to another channel, go to another blog, do something else.

In other words, a website—like so many other things in this culture—is entertainment.  And in a consumer culture, we fund entertainment with advertising.

I do promote my own stuff here. But I also promote other people’s things as well, and not just in the Recommended Reading.  I promote magazines when they’re publishing my work, and I promote book companies that publish anthologies or that publish my novels.  I promote artists who do great book covers.  I’m constantly pointing to other content.  Sometimes for free, and sometimes for the price of buying my own work.

An ad fits into that.  A paid ad.

However, in order to run a paid ad, I had to set up some mental ground rules.  If my website were an actual company, those mental ground rules would be written down.  Every company I worked for that took ads had rules, and the advertising department had to live up to those rules.

My mental ground rules are:

1.  The advertiser can’t offend me. That sounds weird, but I mean it.  If someone wanted to put an ad for an adult film company on my site, I would say no.  If they killed baby seals to make fur coats, I would say no.  If their product was in any way offensive or the website that promoted their product was offensive, I would say no.

2. The advertiser couldn’t be political. I have a lot of friends in politics and, much as I love y’all, I’m not taking on your political ads.  My website is a politcs-free place, and it will stay that way.

3. Nor can the ads be for a religious organization.  The same rule applies as it does to politics.

4. In fact, anything controversial will stay off my blog. And, by the way, the person who defines “controversial” is me. You readers might feel something is controversial, but I might not agree.  I get the final vote.

5. The ad has to be relatively unobtrusive.  I asked the ad rep for some sample ads on other websites.  He pointed me to one at the bottom of a post.  Since I was traveling, I didn’t explore the whole website, so I was under the impression that the ad would run under every post.  That would have been obtrusive, and I would have said no to that.  But that’s not what the ad rep wanted.  He wanted it at the end of one post, and one post only.  I accepted the ad.  Go find it.  I dare you.  (Okay, I’ll reveal where it is later in this post.)

6. Unobtrusive means no pop-up ads, no music, no flash, no video.  Allie Brosh mentions this on her blog.  She writes in her post on the ad, “You will never see me write a paid review of anything.  I will never molest you with pop-ups or pop-unders or anything that flashes or moves or causes my page to freeze.  There will be no pop-ups or moving things.  None. Ever.”

I agree.  And as for paid reviews—nope.  Never did it, never will.  If I recommend something, it’s because I like it, not because someone paid me to tell you about it.

7. I will not take ads for my static websites.  I have a site for my “Diving into the Wreck” universe, and I’ll soon have sites for my Fey universe and the Retrieval Artist universe, as well as a few others. Those sites are pure information and advertisement for my series.  They’re not active, and they do exist just for those products.  I’m not going to confuse the issue with other ads.  But on this site, and any other active site I start, I’ll take paid ads if someone wants to place them on the site.

That’s my short list, my mental list, for any potential ads.  I’m sure that if I get more ad queries, I’ll end up with a longer list.

I know the radio stations I worked for took paid political advertising, within limits. Those stations also had time limits, word usage rules (no swear words, for example), and balance issues.  One radio station’s hard and fast rule: they would not take public service announcements for a product that was the subject of a paid ad somewhere else.

At the newspapers, the ads had size limitations. The magazines I worked for insisted the ads were “camera-ready,” meaning that the ads could be inserted into the magazine’s proof copy without any work by the magazine at all.  (The newspapers and radio stations I worked for would often prepare the ad for the client.)

If you’re going to take ads for your blog or your magazine or your video, you’ll need your own set of ground rules.  And the first, of course, is whether or not you’ll take advertising at all.

I put a lot of sweat and angst into that question.  I peppered the poor ad rep with a ton of e-mails.  I finally accepted the ad, and got payment via PayPal.

And once I accepted the ad, I had to laugh at myself.  All that angst, all those questions.  The ad is at the bottom of this post. Two lines and a link to a page in Vista Print’s catalogue.  It’ll stay up for a year.

I felt a bit ridiculous.  But I’m happy I did the assessment. Because it clarified some thinking for me.  And it got me to wondering: is this what the first radio stations went through one hundred years ago as they decided to take advertising?

I’m feeling my way around in this changing technological universe.  And so, clearly, are other content providers, as Allie Brosh’s post shows.  We’ll all decide what’s best for us, and for our business.

And that’s what freelancing is all about.

Some of you have probably noticed that I’m getting my inventory into electronic editions.  I realized, as I started organizing the Freelancer’s Guide so that it can actually be in book form, that some of the subheadings fit as small books.  (The overall book is going to be huge: 140,000 words and counting.)  I’m posting the first of the small books on electronic sites this week.

I’m not sending the small books to those of you who donated (unless you e-mail me and say you want them), but I am going to send you the finished Guide as an e-file in its huge glory.  So that e-book will come to you after these smaller editions come out. The smaller editions won’t cover all the Guide’s posts, either.

Figured I should explain that, since so many of you have supported me for so long on this project. If you want to donate now to help me finish, I appreciate it. Anyone who donates will get the e-copy of the finished Guide (and the option of getting the smaller books too).  As I’ve said before, I’m happy for all the support not just in the form of money, but also in the comments, e-mails, and sharing that you do.  Thanks for reading the Guide and letting me know what you think of it.

“Freelancer Writer’s Survival Guide: “21^st Century Thinking (Advertising Part 2)” copyright 2010 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

Artwork donated by Pati Nagle.

The Freelancer’s Survival Guide: Advertising Part One

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

I have had this topic in my topics list for nearly a year, but it became relevant just last week when I got my third request to put an ad on my website.  For once, I didn’t dismiss the request with a polite note.  I actually considered it and as I did, I realized the reason I hadn’t written about advertising was that I was considering it from a very 20^th century perspective.

A little background:

As those of you who’ve read the Guide for the past year plus know, I’ve held a wide and varied number of jobs.  Some of those included selling advertising and placing ads.  If you have a business, somehow you have to get word of that business out to the general public or to your possible clientele, which is even harder than it sounds.

If I were writing the Guide just for freelancer writers, I would call this topic self-promotion.  But I’m not and besides, my opinion on the whole writing/self-promotion thing is evolving as well.  It’s a brand new century, and nearly the second decade in that brand new century, and things they are a-changin’.  Rapidly, in fact.  So rapidly that I think I need a scoreboard to keep track.

Even my handy dandy dictionaries can’t keep up.  When I was growing up, everyone thought advertising was a dirty word, an occupation practiced by sleezeballs who wanted to manipulate you into buying something you didn’t want.  Somewhere, back in the dark recesses of my memory, I recall hearing about “subliminal advertising”—secret messages embedded into things like films that would force young innocent creatures like me to go into the lobby and buy greasy, fat-covered popcorn.

I knew a few ad execs back in the day. They didn’t have a lot of self respect.  In fact, they didn’t have a lot of respect for anyone.  (The TV show Mad Men captures some of this attitude.)  By the mid-1980s, advertising became a profession like any other—that whole smarmy manipulative thing was just accepted or tolerated or perhaps better understood—and more importantly, it became something in which seasoned professionals helped the little guy (read: us) improve or sell or grow a business.

Writers, artists, musicians all bemoaned the fact they couldn’t get advertising.  Store owners complained that advertising was so expensive and, worse, they were expected to design their own ads.  Local radio and TV stations had advertising departments that would write and develop your ad for their medium, but whoa could you tell the locally produced ad from a national ad.  The locally produced one was generally awful.  Cheesy, cheap, and unprofessional.

I guess we all learned how important the advertising professional was.

About ten years ago, we entered the brave new world of advertising on the internet. There was a big debate about whether or not websites for places like CNN.com should run ads from somewhere else. There was a concurrent debate about whether or not internet advertising was effective.  And yet a third debate about how to measure its effectiveness.

Then there was the age-old argument about whether or not the new entertainment form (the internet) would ruin advertising for the older forms. This debate happened as radio came in (“it’ll take ads from newspapers!”), and as television came in (“it’ll take ads from radio!”).   Ads have migrated to the internet, and they haven’t hurt the other forms.  Other things have decreased the effectiveness of advertising in those forms—the decline of local radio, the decline of the newspaper, and the advent of the DVR, enabling people to fast-forward or skip through commercials.

But here’s the dirty little secret about advertising that I learned back in the 1980s, long before the advent of the internet.  (She writes with some perplexity, feeling old.)  Not all advertising is effective for all products.

Yep, unlike the myth, advertising is not a one-size-fits-all proposition.  You see it with movies.  With the exception of a truly big budget film like the Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz vehicle Knight and Day currently on the market, all movies from major studios get the same kind of treatment.  A big advertising campaign in all media for a week, sometimes two, sometimes three weeks before the movie’s release.  After that, the ads die off, and the movies rely on word of mouth.

The big blowout ad budgets used to bring the theater goers in during the all-important opening weekend, and those opening weekend numbers were used to calculate a film’s success.  It would take a week or more for the public to understand that stinker really stank and attendance would drop off. By then, the movie’s advertising had done its job and given that movie a #1 status or the biggest weekend for that particular genre or whatever—some kind of tagline that could be used to advertise the DVD when it came out six months or a year later.

Now the big blowout ad campaigns work less effectively because of Twitter and other social media sites.  The first attendees will often tell later attendees that the show is brilliant or it stinks.

But let’s go back to the days before Twitter (she writes tentatively, feeling old). Just because movie A and movie B had the same advertising in the same markets didn’t mean that movie A and movie B had the same kind of opening weekend.

Some of that might have been the names associated with movie.  Theater goers used name-brand recognition just like everyone else.  Until the last decade, a movie with a bona fide movie star usually had a set opening number.  (Until too many stars made too many stinkers.)

Some of the difference in the opening weekend had to do with the audience itself.  No matter how hard movie studios tried, they couldn’t get single young men ages 18-35 to go to a romantic comedy even if those guys were on a date.  Nor could they get women ages 35-50 to go to a violent action movie or carve-em-up horror flick even if they were accompanying their teenage sons.

The advent of multiple TV markets made it possible to advertise the chick flick on Lifetime television and the horror flick on Spike TV. All of those ads might have been produced with equal care, and they all might have aired on the three major networks, but they’d air in different timeslots.  The chick flick ad would air during Desperate Housewives, the horror flick during Lost.  Targeting the correct customer base is all important in advertising because we’ve all heard the phrase “wasting advertising dollars.”

Advertising dollars are limited, no matter what business you’re in.  And each dollar spent on ads should bring in at least two dollars in revenue.  (I’m sure there’s a real formula for this that I am not going to look up.)

Big businesses like the movies have done studies of their demographics, the effect of advertising on those demographics, and an understanding of what kind of response each form of advertising has for its business.

You, as a small business owner, can’t do that.

In fact, some small business owners forgo advertising altogether.

And that’s a mistake.

Somehow you have to stand out in all the noise.  If you have opened a retail shop, you need to let potential customers know you exist.  If you’re a lawyer, you have to distinguish your practice from all the other legal practices out there.

Artists (and by this I mean writers, visual artists, musicians) have a two-pronged problem. We want people to buy our product—the stories, the art, the music—but we also want to let potential clients (publishers, design studios, music labels) know that we will do good contractual work.

Any business can do a lot of free advertising through networking.  (To see how to do effective networking, look at the multitude of posts on networking.)

But let’s talk about paid advertising for a few minutes.  When should you do it? Or should you do it at all?

The answer is yes, no matter what your business.  You need an ad budget and you need to know how to use it.

Advertising is, according to that handy dandy Encarta World English Dictionary so thoughtfully provided by my software company, “the promotion through public announcements in newspapers or on the radio, television, or Internet of something such as a product, service, event or vacancy in order to attract or increase interest in it.”  There are some sub definitions, but you know those.

Let’s take the main definition and look at it.  The key words here are “promotion” and “attract or increase interest.”

People can’t go into a store they don’t know exists.  They can’t buy a book they’ve never heard of.  They won’t attend a concert if they don’t know when and where or even if it’s being held.

I can already hear the professional writers sputtering.  I’ve had books published, they say, and no one spent a dime advertising it.

Really? Did that book get reviewed? Did the publisher produce galleys?  Because all of that costs money, and that money comes out of—you guessed it—the advertising budget.

It’s the rare book in the modern era that doesn’t have some form of advertising budget, however small.

It’s the rare business that thrives on word of mouth only.

So how do you go about advertising for your business?

1. Figure out who your target audience is. Do you need street traffic—strangers coming through the door to buy your product? Or do you need clients?  Do you need to appeal to a handful of big organizations (like some artists often do)? Or do you need to appeal to as many people as possible?

You can’t figure out advertising until you know who your ads need to reach.  Sometimes an article in a trade journal is a lot more effective than an outrageously expensive ad during the Super Bowl.

Do this work first or you’ll waste every single ad dollar you ever spend.

2. Set an ad budget—and stick to it. You might only be able to devote a few dollars toward advertising, but every little bit counts. And remember, free is good.  When my ex and I owned the art gallery/frame shop, we gave away free framing services (limited to certain inexpensive frames and mats) in exchange for promotion.  Local restaurants participate in cook-offs and other events sponsored by the community in the hopes of drawing in new customers.  Right now, our local businesses are doing a weird free promotion that has caught my attention.  They are taking a dressmaker’s dummy, putting a t-shirt or a sign around its neck, and placing it outside the business for two days.  That dummy has been all over town, wearing t-shirts for the local gym and for a local bookstore.  It’s a creepy looking thing, done up with a sense of humor, and it does catch your attention.  One business even gave the dummy an arm (it didn’t have one) and had it point at the business from the parking lot.

I have no idea whose idea that was, but it works for anyone driving down the main drag of our little town.

Merchants often go together to buy ad space. The strip mall where the collectibles store that Dean started does group advertising every quarter, at a fraction of the cost an individual ad would have.  The ad is also bigger and more noticeable.

3. Be creative. Be different.

In the 1990s, Debbie Macomber was the first writer to make bookmarks with the cover of her novel on them and send those bookmarks to bookstores carrying her book.  Now everyone does it, and bookstores often toss out the bookmarks without ever setting them out. Talk about a waste of advertising dollars. But when Debbie did it, hers was a unique product, the only bookmark at the checkout, something for the reader to look at even if they weren’t buying one of her books.

Brilliant stuff.  She’s always been on the forefront of writer marketing, and her look is always creative and always different.

The worst thing you can do in advertising is exactly what everyone else is doing.

4. Get the most bang for your buck.  That’s hard because you’re going to lose some money as you start out.  Because I had sold ads for newspapers and written ads for radio stations before my ex and I opened our frame shop/art gallery, I knew that ads had varying effectiveness. We had an ad budget, unlike other retail stores in the same strip mall, and for our first foray into advertising, we placed two ads, one in the local morning paper and the other on a local radio station.  Then we quizzed every single customer who came into the store:  where did you hear about us?  We got two answers.

The first: I heard about you on the radio.

The second: I saw your sign as I drove by and decided to stop.

The newspaper ad was a complete and total waste of our advertising dollars and we never ran another. But we ran radio ads on various stations, particularly when we had sales, and those ads brought in a wide variety of customers.

One reason was my experience.  I wrote our radio ads.  Each radio station insisted on having their own disk jockeys read the ads, and we heard through the sales force (and I heard from the djs) that they loved our ads because they weren’t cheesy or hard to read.  There’s a trick to writing for radio and in them thar days (she writes, feeling old again) I knew it cold.

Obviously my skills at newspaper ads were less effective.

Keep track of the results of your ad buys.  I do that even now, even when I’m not spending the money.  Some years ago, my publisher ran an ad for one of my Smokey Dalton mystery novels in the New Yorker.  This was a quarter page ribbon ad, running next across from the letters column, where most prominent book ads get placed.

The ad made no difference in sales.  None.  No blip on Amazon.com, no increase in sales on my royalty statement.  A complete waste of advertising dollars.

My British publisher Max Crime sent out review copies of my novel Hitler’s Angel in June and that book got favorably reviewed in one of England’s largest newspapers, The Daily Mail.  Sales of that book jumped through the roof that very weekend, and so far those sales have continued at the greater number.

Even if no one else reviews the book (and other publications have), that single review was worth every single review copy the publisher sent out.  That was an effective use of advertising dollars—probably more effective than taking out a paid ad in The Daily Mail itself.

5. Don’t do the same thing over and over again.  Yes, continue with the effective advertising, but mix it up.  Debbie Macomber may still be doing bookmarks for all I know, but she has entire other promotion schemes for her books now.  A local mattress business here in Oregon has run the same TV ad for years now, and even though I can recite the damn thing word for word, I really don’t pay attention to it any more.  Why should I?  I know what it says, and it didn’t draw me into the business in the first place.  Why would it draw me after repeated daily listens?  I don’t patronize a business just because the ads have worn me down.  I doubt you do either.

6. Remember that advertising creates or increases interest in your good, service, event or company.  “Creates” or “increases”  “Creates” is important because in the beginning no one knows who you are.  But “increases” is equally important because after time, you cease to be the hot new thing.  People forget. Or they assume you’ll always be there.

Consumers and clients have finite reserves as well, and if they go to a new business that has “created” interest, they may forgo yours just because you no longer have their attention.

You need to recapture it in an interesting, non annoying manner.

How do you do that?

It differs from business to business, service to service, event to event.  It also differs from year to year.  I’d have given you different advice on where to advertise your business ten years ago than I’d give you now.  The world is changing, the way people find out about new products, services, businesses has changed, and the way advertising works has changed as well

7. Remember that time is a precious commodity—for you and everyone else.  If you want a minute of someone’s time, you’d better earn it.  That doesn’t just apply for televised ads. It applies to anything you do to promote your business or your work.

For example, I do very few book signings at bookstores.  Most of those signings simply aren’t worth my time. The bookstore puts out a few copies of my book, does no advertising outside of the store (and sometimes not even in the store), and I sign a handful of copies.  Some bookstores will return unsold signed copies for full credit to the publisher, so the books don’t even remain in the store as autographed copies.

But I will always say yes to a book signing at North by Northwest Books run by Sheldon McArthur here in Lincoln City.  Shelly used to run the Mystery Bookstore in Los Angeles; indeed that’s where I first met him, when he sponsored a signing for one of my Kris Nelscott mystery novels.  I was on a publisher-sponsored book tour, and even then, Shelly’s work stood out.  I signed fifty copies of my book, half or more of which went to affiliated bookstores in California. At other stores, even big chain stores, I only signed about ten copies.

Now that Shelly’s semi-retired, he’s opened a small bookstore here to keep his hand in. But when he does a signing, he goes all out.  He promotes it both locally and nationally.  He sends out a mailing to his most valued customers all around the world.  He writes reviews and pays for ads in the local paper. He puts flyers all over town.  And he contacts individual book buyers whom he believes might like my work, even if they’ve never heard of me.

Shelly has sold more copies of my books than anyone except my publishers.  And that’s not an exaggeration.

So when he calls and asks, I’m there. And when I need a bookstore to order books for me, I go through Shelly.  I also promote him on my website (note who got mentioned by name in this section of the Guide?) and I send tourists down to his shop whenever I get a chance.

My annual two hours in Shelly’s store are never wasted.  And I know, since he asks me back whenever I have a new release, that he feels he’s getting something out of my signings as well.

I’ll talk more about advertising next week, buying it and receiving it.  If you’re stuck in what other people have done for advertising or if you’re still thinking of advertising the way you thought about it ten years ago, then it’s time to re-evaluate.

Publicity is a good thing for a freelancer.  When the right people know about you and your business, they’ll knock on your door. The key is figuring out how to reach them. And that might take a t-shirted mannequin beside the highway or it might take a free download of a song off your album.  You need to figure that out.  And if the first thing you try doesn’t work, try something else.

Just remember: be yourself. You’re the best advertisement for your business.  And remember advertising is only effective once if the product is bad.  Once you get someone to try a bad product, no amount of advertising in the world will make them return to that product.  Word of mouth can be good, but it can also turn against you.  Make sure you do the best you can, no matter what.

That’s the best advertising of all.

A lot of you return week after week to the Freelancer’s Guide, which pleases me to no end. Not only do you return, but you tell your friends and colleagues about it.  You’re making this one of the most enjoyable projects I’ve worked on in years. Thanks for all the help and support.

“Freelancer Writer’s Survival Guide: Advertising Part One” copyright 2010 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.