The writer’s guide to making a digital living is “a professional development resource for creative writers. Its primary target audience is any writer (young or old, emerging, mid-career or established) in Australia or overseas, who aims to earn income as a professional creative writer and is interested in how the new media industry can enhance their craft skills and income earning potential.”
The Australia Council for the Arts recently released The Writer’s Guide to Making a Digital Living: Choose Your own Adventure by Therese Fingleton, Christy Dena, Jennifer Wilson. It includes information about the new media industry, what opportunities and possibilities that creates for writers and how to take advantage of them (business and planning skills). It also includes guides to promotion, distribution and copyright, case studies, audio and video resources and a ‘media myth busters’ section.
The writer’s guide to making a digital living: choose your own adventure by Fingleton, T. Dena, C. & Wilson, J. for the Australia Council for the Arts is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.
Information used within this article is reproduced in accordance with this license.
There are 3 sections that I particularly found interesting:
1. Key players in the Australian Internet industry
This list is not designed to be exhaustive, but all of the companies below are Australian, very active and dominant in the Australian Internet industry. Indeed, the Internet Advertising Board (IAB) was founded by Fairfax Digital, News Interactive, ninemsn, Yahoo!7, Sensis and Google. Each of these companies has large numbers of staff focused on ‘writing’ specifically for the digital content industry. While most use journalists, some companies have creative writers (designed to attract new audiences), some have small games development teams and many commission digital content (notably ABC2) to help deliver audience.
Ninemsn: Largest Internet portal in Australia. Joint venture between Microsoft Networks (providing tools such as MSN Messenger, Hotmail and Spaces) and PBL Media (Channel 9, ACP Magazines). Provides original online content as well as brand support (magazines, TV program) content.
BigPond: Telstra owned company. Started out as an Internet service provider (connectivity) and is still the largest in Australia, now re-branded as a media company. Provides video, news, entertainment, music and downloadable services. Aims to provide convergent services across both online (Internet) and mobile phones.
Sensis: Another Telstra owned company. It mainly focuses on search and directories and includes Sensis (search), WhereIs (maps and local information), WhitePages, YellowPages, Trading Post and CitySearch. Sensis also has an advertising arm that provides the online sales for BigPond, Telstra and some non-Telstra customers.
Yahoo!7: Joint venture between Yahoo! and Channel 7 (includes Pacific Publications magazines) – similar to ninemsn.
Fairfax Digital: The digital division of Fairfax Media. Apart from digital versions of newspapers (Sydney Morning Herald, Age, Financial Review) offers digital guides (Drive, Domain), transactions (Stayz, RSVP) and has recently moved to digital-only news sites (Brisbane and Perth) and demographic-focused sites (Vine, Essential Baby).
News Ltd: Similar to Fairfax, responsible for the digital versions of news mastheads (Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, Adelaide Advertiser, Brisbane Courier, etc.), news classifieds (online classifieds – cars, real estate, etc). Very active in the mobile space mainly across their own titles and services.
ABC: ABC TV content, news – extensive local services. Also additional children’s focused services outside of programs, including user-generated content services (Rollermache). Currently have a new Internet TV player product (iView) and in their digital channel (ABC2) commissions new media content.
2. Copyright for Creative Writers
The guide identifies three high-level career paths for professional creative writers:
- employed writers who generally do not retain any Intellectual Property (IP) or ownership of copyright
- self-employed writers who usually retain their IP, sell the rights to a publisher or distributor who will then manage the sale of the writer’s work and pay them royalties, or retain some control over their copyright
- entrepreneurs who maintain full ownership of their IP and control over how to exploit their copyright
Each one has specific implications for IP ownership and copyright use and exploitation, but the cornerstones of the copyright system, which have been around for hundreds of years still apply. It is essential for all writers, whether they are working in new media or not, to understand that there are many ways to slice and dice the copyright pie; by territory, format, publishing platform, language etc and that they must seek professional legal advice to help them develop the best strategy for their work. Read more over at the Australia Council site.
3. Marketing and Distribution And The 4 P’s
Product
Concepts discussed include: intangibility, cross-platform and personality. The intangible nature of digital technologies, the relationships between various forms e.g. digital files, formats, websites and adaptations and the value of the creator.
Place
In relation to new distribution channels and strategies:
- Digital distribution channels e.g. portable media devices, Bluetooth, Internet
- Communicating to global (and local) audiences and communities
- Record and upload, live streaming, guerilla distribution
- Media Release Strategies
- Sequential and simultaneous
Price
Media pricing strategies used to promote a product or service:
- Free then fee
- Free and fee
- Fee then free
- Three for a fee
Promotion
Advertising and marketing topics include:
- Online presence
- Social (media) marketing
- Advertising through and with social media
- Banner ads
- Sponsorship
- News feed marketing
- Profile
- Social Media Optimisation (SMO)
- Increasing your linkability
- Making tagging and bookmarking easy
- Rewarding inbound links
- Helping your content travel
- Encouraging the mashup
- Virtual launches and tours
- Citizen marketing
- Supplying assets
- Experiential marketing
- Trailers and branded entertainment
To read all about the topics listed above, check out the Marketing and Distribution section of The Writer’s Guide.
