The Renegade Writer Blog

When I started out in corporate writing in 1997, I relied heavily on Bob Bly’s book Secrets of a Freelance Writer. Now that I’m getting back into the field, I’m reading his book again. It’s brimming with useful information.

You can sign up for Bly’s free monthly e-newsletter called The Direct Response Letter and get a free marketing library worth over $100 at www.bly.com/reports.

With the economy as crazy as it is, many writers are considering diversifying into corporate writing to boost their income. Here, Bly talks about the benefits of corporate writing and how magazine writers can break in.

Q. Can you tell us how you got started as a corporate writer?

A. I majored in chemical engineering but writing was always something that appealed to me. When the corporate recruiters came on campus to recruit us engineering majors, one offered me a job as a technical marketing writer with Westinghouse — and since it was writing instead of engineering, I took it.

Q. What are the benefits of corporate writing (pay, working conditions, etc.)?

A. For many writers, it is pay. Corporate writing, as a rule, is much more lucrative than article or nonfiction book writing. My annual writing income is over $600,000 a year.

I also like the work conditions. There is no speculative work. The client hires you to write something specific, at their request, so you are paid for everything you do. This is the polar opposite of magazine and book writing, where you spend time without getting paid writing queries and proposals, hoping a publisher will accept it.

Q. What characteristics does a writer need to have to become a successful corporate writer?

A. There are many, but the key is that a corporate writer is writing to sell, especially if you are a marcom (marketing communications) writer.

St. John Ervine said, “The artist is not a man who gives the public what it wants; he is a man who makes the public wants what he gives it.”

Corporate writers are not artists. We are marketers and craftpeople. We give our clients what they want.

Q. Is it possible for magazine writers or book authors with no corporate writing experience to break in?

A. Yes. The best place to start is writing content for Web sites related to the topics of your magazine articles and books. Corporations need content for Web sites, and if you are a published magazine writer or book author, they will view you as a subject matter expert. For instance, if you write health articles, you can write content on health issues for a pharmaceutical manufacturer’s Web site.

Q. How can a writer break into this field if she has no corporate writing samples? Is it okay to use magazine clips?

A. Yes, as I said earlier, start with either Web content writing or PR writing. These assignments are more editorial in nature, which makes your clips relevant, particularly if they are in the same subject matter as the client’s business.

Q. What is the biggest challenge for corporate writers, and how can you overcome it?

A. More writers are going into corporate writing than ever, so the challenge is how you, as a novice, can differentiate yourself from all the other novice copywriters out there.

The solution is to be a specialist instead of a generalist. You can specialize in an industry (e.g., software) or a medium (e.g., Web copy).

Q. What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring corporate writers?

A. 1. Get good at it.

2. Specialize in a niche, preferably one with solid demand and not too much competition (e.g., grant writing, annual report writing). [lf]