Article Writing

hobbyman

Not exactly money saving as much as money making! When most people get to the age of 50 or beyond, they have a whole host of interesting experiences in their brains. Article writing can pay very good dividends. Since the PC became common, writing is a lot easier than it was. No more messing about re-typing mistakes or dealing with carbon paper. Images of very high resolution can be burned on CDs or sent over the internet using a home PC. Articles with images can be sent World-Wide by e-mail. Payment rates are usually excellent.
Highly recommend pastime for the older person.
hobbyman

Voyager2002

Alas, publishers have always been besieged by boxloads of manuscripts. Only a tiny minority are of publishable quality. And of course there is an entire industry of 'vanity publishing', where the author pays the publisher to print their book.

hobbyman

That is very true, of course. But if you don't try, you don't suceeed. I write regular articles and have had one book published, but from the time they accepted it, to publication was about 18 months and I don't have the patience for that sort of thing. But I now write e-books and burn them onto disks myself and sell them (the disks) online. In that way, I am fully in control of the situation and find they sell well enough. I print one hard copy for myself and have it bound in town. Took one in this morning and it cost £2.50 to spring bind a copy (A4 size).
Just an idea, but you do have to have something to write about.

hobbyman

RadoJo

Hobbyman - do you have any advice on actually getting article published? There are thousands of sites out there where you can submit content, but actually getting paid for it is a different matter. Do you have any pointers towards success?

hobbyman

It is always best to write about a subject you know well. When I started, I got a Writers & Artists Year Book that gave the addresses of all the publications (World Wide) and what they paid. Articles don't necessarily have to be all that long, sometimes only a few hundred words. One drawback is that after acceptance, it often takes months before they publish and pay) for them. I once tried to get round this by sending one to a publication that said "payment on acceptance." They acknowledged receipt of it, but a full year passed before I got a letter saying they had accepted it and enclosing a cheque!

The Year book is quite expensive, but it will no doubt be in a reference library or a local library could get a copy.

hobbyman