SCBWI Workshop Address by Susan Heyboer O’Keefe
given 9/16/2000
I think somewhere along the line my topic was mistakenly described as
making a living at children’s writing, which honestly is next to impossible.
I mean, think of it: even Jamie Lee Curtis is doing movies. So what can
the rest of us do?
I wanted to talk about this because I’ve heard so many different
people say, "Susan -- I need some money real fast. I’m gonna write a children’s
book." When I get done laughing, I say, "No, you’re going to have
a garage sale." "Money," "fast," and "children’s books"
do not belong in the same breath. And this is not just a children’s writing issue. It’s true
for all writers. I’ve heard that of all the people who write books in the U.S.,
only about 200 make a fulltime living solely from their books. 200 -- out of the
tens of thousands of writers who publish books each year.
Despite that, I’ve been a fulltime writer for twenty-two years and
of that, a fulltime freelance writer for twelve years. First I’m going to
tell a little bit how I got started freelancing. And then I’m going to
describe some of the things I think you need to make it as a freelance writing. I always knew I was going to be a writer, but I never wanted to be a
children’s writer. It just didn’t occur to me. But after years
of rejections in the adult market, I was pretty much blocked. I was working
as a writer, writing direct mail ad copy, AKA junk mail, but I had no luck
with the more creative writing. So I signed up for a four-week workshop in
children’s writing. I was in complete denial and thought I was signing
up for a course about children’s books. I was shocked to discover I
was actually supposed to write.
So I wrote. And at the end of the workshop, I had a picture book. Actually, it had enough material for an 80-page picture book, but I didn’t
know any better, and so sent it out. The second publisher who saw my
first manuscript asked me to cut it, which I did, and then they accepted it.
That was Little Brown.
I thought, Wow, this is easy! So I took the most logical step in the
world and quit my job. I had a whopping advance of $2500 and some profit-sharing
from my job. My grand plan was to publish two picture books a year. I
figured that between the of-course steadily increasing advances from
the picture books and my profit-sharing, I had a solid two years to write
my adult novel. And of course I’d have no problems writing once I was
home doing it fulltime. By that point, the advance from this mythical novel
and the royalties from the now-published children’s books would buy
me another two to three years to cover the writing of my next adult novel. Well, I‘m still here so the question is, how did it all turn out? My first book was titled One Hungry Monster. It’s been in print
for eleven years, has gone through several hardcover printings and several paperback
printings. It’s been picked up and anthologized in different places
and translated into French and Italian. It’s a best-selling Scholastic
school bookclub selection. It’s been done as an audiotape. Next year it’s
being re-released as a board book. And it’s sold so far about three-quarters
of a million units.
Did anybody see the red Ferrari outside as you came in? It’s not mine.
One Hungry Monster is just a moderately successful book. It’s had
an incredibly long life. Most books, and that’s adult books as well
as children’s books, go out of print after their first printing. You’re
lucky if it even sells out of that first printing. One Hungry Monster’s
success was created pretty much by the Scholastic version. However, the Scholastic
version is not a book. It’s like a two-sheet newsprint edition and
I think I get about a penny for every ten thousand they sell. No Ferrari. In
fact, if you want honest figures, I’ve made about $48,000 from the book.
Great -- but that’s the total, spread out over eleven years. I was counting
up rejection slips recently to talk to kids during a school visit about
perseverance and I found that in one recent year alone, I had 119 rejection
slips. BUT I also did get one book acceptance that same year. Probably the main way I’ve survived was to let go of this idea that
I had to be solely an adult novelist or even solely a children’s writer,
and of course let go of the idea that I’d regularly be getting six-figure
advances. And I began to say "Yes" to opportunities that dropped into
my lap, yes to other kinds of writing, mostly business, in order to be able to have
the flexibility to write what I wanted to.
An open attitude is just one of the things you need to be a successful
freelancer. So here’s my list of what else I think you need: At the top of the list -- You need a big soft cushion of money. Articles
on financial planning recommend three months’ worth of salary in the
bank for emergencies before you start to invest. If you’re going to be a
freelancer, you need a very comfortable amount above and above that. Different freelance jobs have different pay rates -- on acceptance, on publication,
every-other month royalties, twice-a-year royalties, you bill at net
30 days, you get it, maybe, after 90 days. And no matter what the policy
is, you can always be sure that the check is NEVER in the mail. You need your own health insurance. If you’re covered under your
spouse, wonderful. If not, be prepared to pay much higher rates, easily $500
to $800 a month for family coverage. That means a writing income of $6000
to almost $10,000 a year just to cover your health insurance. Private health
insurance is astronomical. Group health insurance is available through
organizations, such as the SCBWI. You can get individual coverage through
an independent agent -- you can look them up in the yellow pages -- but
be aware that insurance is regulated by the state and all agents are licensed,
at least in NJ. If you can’t get a recommendation for an agent from
anyone you know, at the least, check that he or she is licensed. Also get references. If you’re leaving a large company on good terms, someone
in the Human Resources Department may be able to give you a recommendation for
someone local.
You need to set up and contribute to your own retirement accounts. There
are all sorts of things you can do, from continuing plans you bring with
you from work, to opening up Keogh accounts, IRAs, and more. Be prepared
to contribute a lot, though, because there’s no more matching funds
from the company. On that same thought, be prepared for higher taxes. Your taxes
will increase because even though you don’t see it on your paystub,
the company picks up a good portion of your Social Security taxes. You need to approach fulltime freelancing like a fulltime, 9 to 5 job.
Forget all the commercials about working in your pajamas. I’m up
and showered and awake and at the keyboard by eight. I never know who’s
going to call at 8:15. If I sound as if I’m half-awake, it’s a bad
impression. And I already have to counter the impression that I live in the zoo because
of my parrots squawking in the background. Approaching it like a fulltime
job also means, no regular three hour lunches unless you’re with
clients, no stopping in the middle of the day to watch the soaps, no suddenly taking
on new domestic hobbies like sewing new drapes for the entire house. If
you wouldn’t do it in a regular office, you probably shouldn’t
do it in your home office.
You need multiple sources of income. If one client is responsible for,
say, sixty percent of your income and suddenly decides to cut its budget,
you might be the first to go. In essence, you’re fired. You’ve
now just had a sixty percent pay cut -- with no unemployment to fall back on, however
little that is. So it helps to have as many sources as you can juggle
so that if one falls through, it doesn’t hurt so much and it gains
you time to replace it without having to get a regular job.
Suggestions for different sources of income: School visits head the list. Most children’s writers who make a
living freelancing do school visits. Of this group, they make an average of
26 visits a year, or one every other week. And they charge an average of
$500 to $2,000 a day, plus expenses if they have to travel. When I went to
the websites of writers who do school visits, the thing that surprised me
was that I had never heard of most of them. They had a bunch of books but
they weren’t famous. I said, hey, just like me. So that gave me a bit
more confidence in daring to ask for $500. I price myself on the low end,
whether or not I should, because many of the writers and illustrators
in the higher range put on a dog-and-pony show -- slides, costumes, they bring
a guitar and sing, etc. I would die trying to do that.
Besides earning the speaker’s fee, these writers also get a chance
to sell their books. You can do this two ways. If you don’t want to hassle
with carrying tons of books, you send out an order form that the school runs
off and sends home with the kids. It announces the visit and says if you
want a book and/or to have the book autographed during the visit, make your
selection and send in your check. This is done ahead of time so the school
knows the quantities. Then the school orders the book directly from the
publisher, so you don’t handle the books until you’re going
to autograph them. The school gets a discount from the publisher and can either keep
the difference as a fund-raiser or charge the kids the discounted price to
encourage reading. So you get your speaking fee, plus you sell, hopefully,
a good number of books and get the regular royalties on those. The second way takes more work but you get a bigger payoff. And that’s
for you to order the books from the publisher at your author’s discount,
then you bring in the books and you sell them to the school. You can set your
own price. You can charge full retail or you can give, say, a 20% discount
as an incentive. The school sends home the flyer and collects the checks
as before only now it adds up all the individual checks and makes out one
big one to you. This is important. The kids cannot bring in checks made out
to you directly, because then you’ll have to pay sales tax. Schools
are nonprofit institutions and don’t pay sales tax, so the check must
come from them. Just be sure you get their nonprofit ID number for your records.
How much can you make this way? Say you’ve got one $15.95 picture book,
your author’s discount is 50%, and you decide to give the kids a 20%
discount. If you sell 100 books, you’ve made $475 on top of your speaker’s
fee. So it’s obviously worth it.
The really good news is, if you have an outgoing personality or teaching
experience, you don’t need to have published twenty books. One or
two books, even just articles are fine. All you need is enough to establish
your credentials as a writer.
If you’re serious about school visits, some really helpful tips
are to take a public speaking or an acting course, make your presentation interactive
to really hook the kids, and try to make your presentation related in some
way to the curriculum of the age group. This will make you appealing to both
the teachers and the kids.
You can get school visits by sending pitch letters to the schools; you
can call the local chains like Barnes & Noble because very often schools
call them to see who’s available; if you have a book, tell your publisher
you want to do visits because sometimes schools contact publishers. When
you’re at a school and it’s the end of the day and everyone’s happy,
ask for a testimonial you can include in your letter to the next school. Ask for
recommendations for other schools they’re friendly with. Also look
at whatever the state offers for writers-in-residence or artists in residence
for schools. Public parks have summer programs and would like to have
you as part of their activities.
Other sources of income -- write for other fields, other age groups,
for packagers. Write ad copy, write articles, write training materials, write
annual reports. There’s a ton of stuff that needs to be written,
especially in the corporate world. Every time you see a word, down to the directions
on a can of peas, somebody had to write it. It might as well be you.
Take work-for-hire jobs. I know there’s always an ongoing war about whether
or not writers should give up all rights for a lump sum. I say, if you know
what you’re giving away, if the lump sum is big enough, and if it
helps you achieve more important goals, do it. To me, it’s no different than
working on staff at an ad agency or a newspaper.
Still more sources of income are the various opportunities to teach writing.
If you have enough experience and feel confident, you can run adult-ed
classes on children’s writing or even general how-to-write better
classes. If there are no schools around to hook up with, you can offer private
lessons. Post flyers in libraries and take out very small ads. You can
meet in your home or some publicly available place. You can run creative
writing workshops for kids as an after-school program. You can become
a correspondence teacher, like for the Institute for Children’s Literature.
The pay isn’t great -- $12.50 an hour -- but it’s more than
flipping burgers at McDonalds.
If you’re looking for other sources of writing income, you need
to be online. Period. It’s a must for writers for countless reasons. It
lets you freelance outside your area, do research, contact experts for quotes.
Publishers everywhere are now used to getting articles, even whole books
by e-mail. Comments and rewrites get zapped back and forth through the air,
which also means you save a ton in postage.
Also, there are zillion more markets now on the web, with all the sites
needing content. Most of the want their content for free, of course,
but there are a lot who pay and pay well. Plus the networking opportunities
are unlimited, not just with fellow writers but with anyone whose interests
are similar to yours. If you’re online and have any computer skills,
you can also get into web design and webmastering.
Also, the Net is great for promotional work, especially if you’re
a shrinking violet like me. I can do a bookstore visit and have a dozen
people show up, which unfortunately is the average crowd unless you’re
J.K. Rollings or Steven King. Or I can use that hour and a half (throwing
in travel time) and instead post a message or an article and have it seen
by hundreds, even thousands of people. Hopefully they’ll remember my
name the next time they go into a store. Maybe they’ll even click on my name
right then and go visit my website.
Other things you need to make a living writing -- You need to get rid of preconceived notions. Working at home is not like
bringing a bit of work home to do at night or when you’re home sick.
It’s totally different. You also have to get rid of preconceived ideas about
what you’ll actually be doing. You may have to spend far more time
on the pays-the-rent writing than on your own creative stuff. But if that’s
what it takes to give you freedom and flexibility, do it.
You need a very understanding family. Your family might have gotten used
to your leaving for work at seven-thirty in the morning and coming back
home at six. If you freelance, they might also have to get used to your working
nights and weekends, sometimes virtually round-the-clock. This kind of crazy schedule does make you available to your family in
other ways, like being able to chaperone school trips (which is certainly a
mixed blessing) and chauffeur kids to their endless round of karate, piano,
and so on. Not that they’ll remember that part. They’ll only remember
that they couldn’t get online to instant message their buddies because you
were working. Another plus of this is that it can build character for your
family and force them to do such unheard of chores like the laundry or
cooking dinner.
Because of these demands though, you also need to be able to balance
your life and to know when to say no. It’s hard to turn down a potential
paycheck but sometimes you have to. If you found it hard to balance things
in a 9 to 5, you’ll find this even harder -- because there is no
starting and stopping time. You don’t get holidays, you don’t get vacations.
You can literally work every day and every night of the year unless you stop
yourself.
You need to be able to endure long hours alone. Writing’s a solitary
occupation. You may not talk to anyone except a phone solicitor for hours
at a time, day after day after day. It’s one of the reasons why
I have parrots, so that, even though I’m actually talking to myself all
day long, it doesn’t look half as crazy as it really is. The loneliness factor
alone has sent many people back to a 9 to 5.
You need some sort of support. Particularly because writing is so lonely,
you have to deliberately structure in companionship. Fellow writers are
ideal for this. If you can find a good supportive critique group, hold
onto it for dear life. If you can’t find one and you’re online,
try one of the many writing groups. There are chat rooms, and boards, and instant messages; there are e-mail groups where you just read people’s comments
and questions. Even if you just read without responding, it makes you feel
as if you’re part of a larger community. There are tons of groups,
e.g. Egroups.com alone has over 3000 different writing groups, covering every
imaginable genre and level of professionalism.
You need to scale down your spending habits and scale down your idea
of how much an acceptable fulltime income is. There’s the McDonald’s
worker’s fulltime income and there’s the CEO’s fulltime income. Success
in writing can’t be measured by a paycheck but only by what you write for yourself
and get published.
And finally, you need patience, which is another place where that big
sum of money I mentioned in the beginning comes in. You need to give the whole
thing time -- time for you to settle into a routine, time to develop
different writing habits, time to make networking connections, time to
get clients, time to learn how to fit your children’s writing into your
new way of living. You can’t say, "I’ll give myself six months
and that’s it." What if you’re not going to make it till the seventh month? Or the
seventh year? You have to be willing to stick it out.
Children's Book-of-the-Month Club author Susan Heyboer O'Keefe has
written ANGEL PRAYERS, COUNTDOWN TO CHRISTMAS, GOOD NIGHT, GOD BLESS, and
several other books. Please visit her website at http://www.susanheyboerokeefe.com
for a complete online story, embarrassing personal stuff, and great parrot photos. © 2000 Susan Heyboer O'Keefe
