Books I Love: Robert Bly’s 88 Money-Making Writing Jobs

There’s perhaps no better choice for my first book review for this site than Robert Bly’s latest effort to help writers in all fields find more lucrative work, 88 Money-Making Writing Jobs, published by Sourcebooks on the first day of the new year in 2009. Packed with, you guessed it, 88 nuts-and-bolts chapters on how to make money in a wide variety of writing venues, this book should be on the shelf of any writer who wants to make a living with words.

And when I describe the book chapters as “nuts and bolts,” that’s exactly what I mean — Bly’s book isn’t meant to be read from cover to cover so much as to be a reference, in which writers can pick and choose the areas in which their interest lies to learn more. Each chapter provides an overview of the field (such as advertising copywriting), plus info on how to break into the field, how much it pays, where to look for employment, what writers who work in the field actually write, and more.

Practical, No-Nonsense Advice

If you haven’t heard of Robert Bly, his work is well worth getting to know for any working or aspiring writer in any field. A professional writer for more than three decades, he’s the author of more than 70 books, including The Copywriter’s Handbook (and its companion volume The Online Copywriter’s Handbook), Secrets of a Freelance Writer, and The Elements of Business Writing, among many others. I own both the Copywriter’s Handbook and Secrets, and they’ve both been essential to my development and career as a writer.

What you’ll find in Bly’s latest is much of the same practical, no-nonsense advice you’ll find throughout his other works, which can be boiled down to this: many, many writers flock to career paths for which there is fierce competition and often low pay, as is often the case with newspaper journalism and magazine and book publishing. However, there are literally dozens of fields for which the competition is generally much less intense and which are often far more financially rewarding than what are widely thought of as the traditional career paths for writers and editors.

The Full Spectrum of Writing Employment

What I like most about this book is that Bly leaves no stone unturned when it comes to the range of potential jobs and employers writers should consider seeking out. From freelancing for magazines and writing copy for print advertisements to producing annual reports and corporate histories and biographies for large companies (and even fields like crossword puzzle editing, eBay product page writing and greeting card writing), the book covers perhaps the most complete list of writing-related employment possibilities I’ve ever seen compiled into a single volume.

Of course, there are certain quibbles I have with the book — often, the additional resources Bly cites for a field consist of books he himself has written — but they’re generally minor compared with the value I think most writers can get from it: lots of practical advice on how to get started in a wide variety of fields as a writer, plus the steps you can actually take to do it. For my money, it’s well worth a read.