Writers and Editors: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is designed to provide information about a particular industry. Their section about Writers and Editors makes writing jobs seem vast, with salaries ranging from $27,340 to over $97,700. They describe the market as highly competitive because it is attractive and yet only held 306,000 positions in the year 2006. Your imagination whirls as you picture the staggering effect the economy has had on this data, right?

Wrong.

For current data for Writers and Editors, consult these statistics.

To view the complete page on Writers and Editors, visit here.

4 Blogs an Aspiring Novelist Can Learn From

Yesterday I wrote about the 9 Blogs an Aspiring Novelist Cannot Do Without. These blogs offer an inside look into the publishing industry from the vantage of literary agents, editors, sales, and their assistants/interns. There’s a PoV that is just as crucial, however: the novelists themselves.

Fortunately, there are fantasy writers kind enough to blog about their experiences as writers so that aspiring novelists (and fans of their work) may get a glimpse at how the publishing world is like from their eyes. The following are four blogs from authors that are in my Google Reader; I highly suggest you add them to your RSS feed as well!

1. Boys That Bite by Mari Mancusi
2. This is My Secret by Kristin Cashore
3. Sarah Tells Tales by Sarah Rees Brennan
4. The Spectacle by seven different authors

Also, I have a blog dedicated to my own writing endeavors. I am still seeking a literary agent for my novel, but I have been published freelance!

9 Blogs an Aspiring Novelist Cannot Do Without

I have had these blogs in my Google Reader for awhile, and they are just as invaluable of a resource as Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. Some of them are hilarious and all of them are immensely informative. They provide a day-to-day peek into the publishing industry that How-to-Write books will never achieve.

1. THE INTERN by publishing intern
2. Query Shark by Janet Reid, agent
3. Janet Reid – Literary Agent
4. Nathan Bransford – Literary Agent
5. Pub Rants by Kristin, agent
6. Buried in the Slush Pile by Buried Editor
7. Pimp My Novel by Eric, publishing sales department
8. The Rejecter by literary agent assistant
9. Agent in the Middle by Ravenous Romance, agent

The Seven Things Every Aspiring Author’s Website Must Have

This guest article on Nathan Bransford’s blog was such an interesting read, I ended up blogging about it on my personal blog on my writing first. For every Internet writer trying to represent themselves as an author, it’s a must read!

Fiction Factor, for Fiction Writers

Internet writing guarantees you will be spending a decent amount of time on the computer. While perusing the Internet on ways to help eye strain for an article for a health blog I professionally write for, I came across something I thought would be useful to all of us online fiction writers: Fiction Factor: Computer Eye Strain, and how to reduce it.

The entirety of the Fiction Factor site is an excellent resource for the online fiction-writing community, although the article I happenstance fell upon in locating their site I can vouch for as a must-read. Not only does it offer the general guidelines for reducing eye strain for computer users, but it looks into how it specifically affects the fiction writer that is transfering from paper to Internet: “If you are typing from a hard copy, keep the light aimed at the paper and away from your computer,” and so forth.

Stop by Fiction Factor to get a helping hand for your writing and address that eye sore from working on a computer! (Did you know studies indicate that as much as 50% to 90% of computer users suffer from noteable eye strain?)

July is National Blog Posting Month

If you haven’t done it already, register for National Blog Posting Month! I registered my fiction blog over there.

National Blog Posting Month, also known as NaBloPoMo, is an excellent form of exposure for your blog. All it requires is 31 blog posts over the course of July! (That’s right–you’ll be blogging on the weekends.)