Freelance writing is a business before it is a craft. These articles cover finding clients, setting rates, handling contracts, and building a practice that pays, written from decades of doing the work instead of theorizing about it.
Contracts and AgreementsDonato Giancola turned down an Asimov's cover after the magazine's new owner sent a work-for-hire contract with free revisions, no original art and a fee-clawback NDA, all for a decades-old fee. Here's when work for hire is fair, and when…
DelegationMy method for hiring a virtual assistant is blunt: do the task yourself first, write a script, hand it over, and keep replacing VAs until one can follow it. The script does most of the work.
Book DesignCouples would spend a fortune on a wedding and then try to hire the photographer for a couple hundred bucks. Here's why I don't do graphics, and what wedding photography taught me about pricing creative work.
Business BooksThis started as a money problem. The turning point was treating income generation as a science experiment instead of following it like a religion.
Contracts and AgreementsTalent is not what separates writers who get paid from writers who do not. Here is what really moves the needle, from voice and story to selling your work.
Business BooksTwo contracts arrived unasked for and paid $25,000 in advance, and the look on the client's face said the quote had been too low. On Gamify Business Tavern Tales with Paul Pape: the $980 book that works out to five…
AI WritingCheap ghostwriting is expensive. Content mills produce books that look like books and fail at the one thing a book is for: building authority.
ConsultingOverconfident, underprepared and completely naive, with my eye on six hundred dollars and no idea I could not do the work until I was in too deep.
SEE » The Authority Gap: 30 Days of Uncomfortable Truths series
Book MarketingI was going to write the great American novel. What nobody described was the part where writing is a business with invoices in it.
Book ROI & Business CaseThree hours on a review for a fifty dollar prize I did not win. Three months of contests for one fifteen dollar win. The arithmetic on micro-income schemes is worse than it looks.
Book ROI & Business CaseA thousand items, twenty-five thousand dollars, one year. eBay has changed under sellers since 2003, and most of the advice out there describes a platform that no longer exists.
Book ROI & Business CaseI had the display case open and the pins counted. Then I checked what they were worth, and the arithmetic stopped me. Knowing when to stop is the part nobody teaches.
Professional ghostwriting for executives, founders, coaches, and authors who want to get the book done right. 113+ books authored. 54+ ghostwritten for clients.
Ready to discuss your book?
BOOK YOUR PRIVATE CONSULTATIONNo pitch. No pressure.
© 2026 Richard Lowe. The Writing King. All rights reserved.
