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NATIONAL WRITERS UNION GUIDE TO FREELANCE RATES & STANDARD PRACTICE. National Writers Union. Cincinnati, OH: National Writers Union, 1995. 202 pages, including index. $19.95 (softcover).
It should be standard practice for every freelancer to read the National Writers Union Guide to Freelance Rates & Standard Practice (NWU Guide).
Technical writers and writers of all other flavors (journalists, book authors, corporate and non-profit communicators, magazine writers, and academics) should find a comfortable chair and read this book before the next contract negotiation. Money talks, and this book talks about it from multiple angles with no holds barred. For less than 20 bucks, you can reap hundreds or thousands of dollars in return on your investment. Analyze the book's considerable data, and use it to plan your next contractual moves for copyrights, rates, royalties, advances, and much more.
Who Is Talking?
So who is the NWU anyway? The National Writers Union, some 4,000 members strong, is Local 1981 of the United Auto Workers. I assume that you have heard of the AFL-CIO? Unions, long known for their protection of workers' rights, have had a very quiet history among word artisans. But maybe you will start listening when you hear that "By the time you read this, the National Writers Union will have won a total of $1 million for writers through its grievance procedure."
The NWU talks to you in four parts:
1. Rights and Responsibilities
2. The Markets
3. The Politics of Writing
4. About the...