I’m compiling the SPAWN Market Update this week. It’s a large task which I usually enjoy and always learn from. The SPAWN Market Update is a newsletter which is posted in the member area of the SPAWN website each month. (That’s Small Publishers, Artists and Writers Network.) This unique newsletter features opportunities for freelance writers, authors, artists, screen writers, photographers and others who are interested in publishing their work. In any one issue, I might provide directories representing thousands of jobs for freelance writers, lists of book review opportunities, paying work for artists, opportunities for poets, calls for screenplays and feature films and a list of several new publishers who are seeking manuscripts.
I also include industry news—which magazines, publishers and writers’ websites are folding; what new policies are being discussed by Amazon; which distributors have gone out of business and how will that affect you and so forth.
I will often feature an area of publishing or promotion. For example, recently, I featured 24 regional organizations that offer face-to-face meetings; I sometimes focus on book festivals and writers’ conferences across the country. And I provide tons and tons of resources for our members. Here are a few of the topics I’ve covered in recent months:
• Publishing law sites
• Hundreds of jobs for artists and photographers
• How to get on the radio
• Speaking tips and opportunities
• A review of writing/publishing newsletters and magazines
• Reports on book and ebook sales
• Agent searches
• Competitions
• Resources to help you self publish or find a publisher
• Online courses for writers and authors
• Tips for promoting your book through magazine articles
• Resources for locating the right writers conferences
• How to devise your marketing plan
• List of speakers’ organizations
• The returns policy explained
• Resources for children’s book authors
• How to locate those elusive submission guidelines
Once, when I told someone that I am a writer and that I write on many different subjects, he said to me, “You must be the smartest woman I have ever met.”
I said, “No, I just know how to conduct research.”
And that’s exactly how I can provide such extreme value in the SPAWN Market Update newsletter—I am pretty much in constant research mode. In the process of responding to clients’, students’ and members’ questions, conducting research for the many articles and blogs I write, studying the myriad of writers/publishers newsletters that come across my desk every week, I collect tidbits of information, news and resources by the bushels and file them away for the next issue of the SPAWN Market Update.
As part of the compilation and writing process, I check out the resources, information bytes and news before including it, so our members always have the most updated and valid material available to help them through the writing, publishing and marketing processes and to assist them in earning a living within their fields.
If you are considering joining SPAWN, and you’d like to see a sample of a SPAWN Market Update, contact me here: PLFry620@yahoo.com. Join SPAWN for $45/year and receive a free book/ebook from a choice of six. You’ll also be eligible for participation in our email discussion group, you’ll be listed in our member directory, you can place announcements (promote yourself) in SPAWNews (2,200 circulation), you’ll be eligible for discounts, you can place your book in the SPAWN Catalog of Members Books and Services for a fee, you can participate with us in events such as the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books (also for a fee) AND you will have access to the SPAWN Market Update each month as well as several years of archives.
I can’t tell you how many people have earned double or triple their membership dues from the opportunities and resources in just one issue of the SPAWN Market Update. Others have saved tons of money by heeding the warnings we’ve posted in the SPAWN Market Update. And still others are earning money through freelance opportunities, getting published, selling books, etc. only because of leads they discovered in the SPAWN Market Update.
So—I’d better get back to work on this, my 91st edition of the SPAWN Market Update. Do we have archives—oh yes!!! And we provide a search feature so you can search for the information and resources you want.
Be a part of this exclusive club that has access to this amazing newsletter. Join SPAWN today. I can promise that you will benefit to the degree that you participate, utilize and apply the opportunities and material we provide. http://www.spawn.org