The Business of Creative Writing: From Branding to IP to Work-for-Hire Gigs to Taxes, Everything You Always Wanted to Know But Didn’t Know Whom to Ask
It’s hard to believe, but Ryan G. Van Cleave earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in Creative Writing without ever having a single conversation with professors about copyright, submitting work for publication, networking, invoices, taxes, or any of the confusing business practices that writers regularly need to navigate. It took decades, but Ryan overcame these deficiencies by earning a second Ph.D. in the School of Hard Knocks en route to creating a robust writing, editing, teaching, speaking, and coaching career.
In this full-day workshop, Dr. Ryan G. Van Cleave—a consultant who now charges $200+/hour to work with celebrity and executive writing clients—will reveal the things no one bothers to teach writers but are desperately needed for anyone whose goal is success in the world of words. To put it plainly, this hands-on, practical, interactive workshop will help participants unlock the best practices for the business side of writing without doing what Ryan had to do—suffer through the incredibly costly and always-frustrating method of trial and error.
**Participants will walk away with templates, tools, and plans that can be immediately applied to their own practice.**
We’ll examine:
- Pitches Ryan successfully used to earn writing assignments/book contracts/speaking engagements
- Invoices Ryan uses to get paid on time and in full
- A magazine contract for one of Ryan’s Writer’s Digest magazine articles
- A NY publisher’s contract for one of Ryan’s books
- What’s “under the hood” at Ryan’s blog com
- Other real-world documents that demystify and illuminate the business side of writing
In this workshop, you’ll:
- Discover how to get started as a writing professional
- Understand where (and how!) to find your community
- Identify how to create a critique group that works
- Appreciate the vital role of literary citizenship
- Investigate branding, publicity, and marketing options particular to writers, such as:
- memorable business cards
- engaging social media
- effective affiliate partnerships
- lead-generating blogs
- knockout writer websites
- Examine submission rules and practices (including what to avoid)
- Recognize how publishers actually sign up manuscripts
- Appreciate how to make sense of industry contracts
- Discover what copyright and intellectual property (IP) actually is and why it matters
- Understand the implications and financial expectations when freelancing and/or taking on work as an independent contractor
- Recognize what makes an effective written estimate and money-delivering invoice
- Understand how to make informed decisions regarding taxes, small business management, healthcare, and insurance
- Compare sources of employment and income types associated with various career paths for writers
- Investigate a multiple-revenue-stream model that creates financial security
- Review how magazine writing can be a major source of income that underwrites less commercial efforts
- Understand how to set your prices and negotiate like a pro
- Discover how to talk confidently about money
- Locate crowdfunding, patronage, and grant opportunities
- Examine the power of selling services (editing, coaching, consulting, and offering webinars/workshops/clinics)
- Evaluate how to generate writing opportunities through partnerships, collaborations, and influencers
- Identify networking strategies that actually work
- Recognize the value of graduate school, fellowships, writing conferences, and retreats
- Appreciate the power of branding and strategic messaging
- Define your ideal platform and plan your route to success
This session is a great fit for:
- Serious beginning writers who want to shorten the learning curve
- Established authors who want to break through to the next level
- Creative writing students who want to supplement classroom learning
- Novelists, script writers, bloggers/online writers, freelance writers, magazine writers, and teachers of writing
- Anyone who wants to create a rewarding part-time or full-time career in the wonderful world of words
Difficulty level:
Speaker(s)
