Tapping a Booming Market
February Speakers Will Offer Tips for Creative Freelancers

Three freelancing experts will share their insights on the current "hot" areas of the profession and discuss the skills needed to take advantage of this booming market during a Feb. 19 luncheon sponsored by the IWPA.

Wendy Lalli, a former writer and creative director at large agencies, is an account manager at Paladin. She evaluates, advises and places writers, editors, project managers, proofreaders, researchers, and other creative professionals in temporary and full-time jobs with advertising agencies and marketing and communications departments of corporations.

Margaret Littman is a Chicago-based freelance journalist who specializes in health and nutrition and business writing for magazines and newspapers. She has a master’s degree from Medill School of Journalism, where she has also taught. She is a regular contributor to Teen, University Business, and Crain’s Chicago Business.

Marilyn Stone has been a freelance editor for the past five years, working on a variety of projects from indexing books to writing brochures to copyeditng textbooks. Her clients include the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, the American Marketing Association, Macmillan Computer Publishing, and Elm Street Publishing.

Web Writing
"The Internet could be the best thing to happen to experienced news and feature writers since the electric typewriter," said Lalli. "At a time when just about every corporation, ad agency, and organization in the world is searching for copy content writers, there is a huge opportunity that freelance writers are in an ideal position to exploit." Lalli says:

• Web writers can always be "at the office" without leaving homes and their PCS (or, better yet, their laptops).
• News and feature people are trained in creating short, information-rich copy that is the essence of Web content writing.
• News and feature writers also know how to research a topic and evaluate sources to assure that their information is as current as possible.
• Journalists are trained to write quickly and accurately to meet tight deadlines--an essential element of Web writing.
• Because the Web is so relatively new, no one has more than a few years experience, at best, actually writing especially for it.

"In effect," Lalli says, "every writer is now starting off on an equal playing field, with the advantage going to those who can offer all of the skills touched on above."

Feature Writing
Littman will give her perspective on how to find clients, how much to charge, what kinds of assignments are more profitable, copyright laws, and marketing yourself. Her articles have appeared in The WomanNews section of the Chicago Tribune, Seventeen, Chicago, Popular Photography, New Woman, Sky (Delta Air Lines’ magazine), Weight Watchers, Woman’s Day, Mademoiselle, Self, and many others.

She has taught as Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and worked on the staffs of the Rochester Business Journal and Prepared Foods, and as a researcher for Forbes. She is a member of the National Writers Union, the Society for Professional Journalists and is an organizer of the annual Writers-and-Editors One-on-One Conference.

Book Editing
Stone’s talk is titled "The Vagaries of Book Editing." She will discuss what makes book editing unique and reveal the secrets of getting and keeping freelance clients.

Her work experience includes stints at Scripture Press Publications, ABC Publishing, the Joint Commission, the American Marketing Association, and Dartnell Corp. She works out of the basement of her home in Glen Ellyn, where she lives with her husband and two sons.

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