3. When Client Ignores You Completely: Nudge Harder

What if your client won't return your email or phone calls and Accounts Payable department only has a voice mailbox? (This is a sure sign of trouble!)

Make sure that your contact person is actually in town! I've had editors leave for three weeks without any notice and Accounting department couldn't pay freelancers without approval from Editor. If this is case, you'll have to call (or leave a message for) accounting department and fax them a copy of invoice and initial contract. Explain that copyright doesn't transfer to their company until you're paid and that signature on contract authorizes your payment. (It's a matter of CYA for them...Cover Your Assets)

If you're still being ignored, and it's almost been a month, it's time to get serious. Before you go report them to Better Business Bureau, or decide to sever your relationship, make sure it's worth losing their business in future.

Try sending a "friendly" past-due postcard from this collection agency website: http://www.madagency.com/postoffice.html. (I've used one of "light" postcards twice and didn't lose either client!)

Make sure you note all of dates and times you've called and keep copies of all of your correspondence. If you work for this client in future, make sure that you ask for a larger up-front deposit, just in case.

4. When Client Is No Longer a Client: They're a Debtor

Once you've figured out that you're NOT getting paid without some outside interference, don't panic, harass, or spread vicious rumors about your client. There *are* steps you can take, but if you're owed a lot of money, it's wise to tread lightly and remain civil to stay out of court.

If you're a member of National Writer's Union or another organization for writers, it's time to make a phone call. Your union representative can help mediate disputes with clients. If you're not a union member, you can try contacting Angela Hoy at Writer's Weekly. She regularly "goes after" non-paying clients in front of an audience of 67,000 readers/writers!

Report to Writer's Weekly http://www.writersweekly.com/forms/report.html

If your client is a member of Better Business Bureau, you can contact their local branch. You may also want to consider hiring a collection agency. If you handled transactions solely online, you can also consider reporting them to FBI's Internet fraud department at www.fbi.gov. You can also start sending snail-mail collection letters with 30, 60, and 90 days "past due" notices.

You can download some sample collection letters here: http://www.toolkit.cch.com ools/letter_m.asp

Sometimes, however, no matter what you do, your client won't pay. They may "skip town" or go directly into bankruptcy, absolving themselves of debt. Unfortunately, as a freelancer, you can't write this off as a "loss" in your taxes. What you CAN do is go to court and try to collect what ever you can. As long as you keep records of all of your correspondence, you'll have a decent court case. However, even if you go to court and a judgment is entered against them, chances are slim that you WILL get paid.

The only certainty about a non-paying client is that you'll learn from your mistakes. It's a painful lesson, but at least you can go back to warnings boards listed in first section of this article, and share them with your fellow freelancers.

Luckily, paying clients usually outnumber non-paying and late-paying clients about 30-to-1. And they're ones who make freelancing worthwhile, anyway.

More and more websites are creating audiences rather than readers, and writers are helping them through polls, feedback forms, and message boards. However, it seems that web has not completely transformed web into a completely interactive medium yet. Content writers will create a way to force reader not to be an audience, but a part of play. As a writer, I think that we'll give audiences more and more room to interact and influence actual events and mediums.

Where We'll Take Content Writing

In future, I see nonfiction e-books allowing readers to pick and choose chapters based on their skill and knowledge levels. Students will be able to skip grammar review in an online textbook if they feel their skills are up to par or took an online skill test to "test-out". Web designers will skip HTML basics and move straight to HTML 5.0 new features and XML. Writers will be writing both for a general audience and a skilled audience, and readers will participate in process by choosing specific information they need. "Take what you need and leave rest" will be new online writing mantra. Contentville.com already did this (although they are now defunct) with a huge database of articles, thesis papers, and other formerly print media that readers pay a small fee to read. Others are following this pattern. This market will expand and readers will only pay for what they get.

In fiction market, readers will be taken to next level of participation by finding not only a choice of characters, plots, and settings through interactive websites and media, but through a Choose- Your-Own Adventure type of structure. Similar to online games, users will be able to choose Jane's physical traits and John's personality, and set story into sequence at a setting of their choice. They will choose their favorite outcomes in their online soap operas. (No more, "No! John! You should have married Mary, not left her for Margaret! She's evil!")

As for writers? We won't have to choose perfect beginning, middle, or end anymore. We won't have to decide on one specific audience. We'll be writing for all cultures, all ages, and all interest levels. Where content is king, we'll be knights in shining armor, rescuing reader from boring, redundant, or irrelevant web reading and writing of yesteryear.

Oh, yeah, and we'll be paid as well as Duke of Earl.

*This article originally appeared in Web Writing Buzz Newsletter in April of 2000.