Pleased to welcome another guest sharing their own Freelancing Fail today: Destiny Jackson! Destiny found herself in a slightly awkward situation when asking for advice about a tricky editor - and then the editor saw the tweet themselves. Read on for her take moving forward.
What was your fail?
The story goes like this: It's really frustrating that a lot of publications (or at least the ones I've been pitching to) don't take interview requests from freelancers, meaning that a freelancer can't write a Q&A on behalf of a publication.
After many pitches trying to find a home for an interview with a filmmaker on Netflix's Lucifer, I finally landed one at a big trade magazine. I was and still am thankful for the opportunity and chance.
However, the editor at the publication was almost too good to be true and way too lax compared to other editors I've worked with in the past. I didn't know how to handle it when I submitted my interview and I didn't hear from him for over three weeks.
I sent two gentle follow-up emails (as it was during the holiday/New Year season), but to not hear a "Hey, I received your work, I'll look it over in the next few days" was very odd to me.
After not hearing from the editor for that long, I reached out on social media to ask for some advice about being ghosted. It was almost four weeks since I’d received any correspondence and I needed a back-up plan to resell the story (another situation I had never been in before).
At any rate, I received some advice about being ghosted by editors after the fact. But I then came to find out that the editor had seen my post about them being uncommunicative. They don’t actually follow me on Twitter, making it even more baffling.
I got a response a few days later in the form of a lacklustre apology. I remained understanding about an editor being swamped with work - I also get overwhelmed a lot!
I just wished I would have had some form of communication, at the bare minimum, so I could know what was going on with the interview and also keep my interviewee informed as well.
Did you learn anything from it?
I learned how to properly follow up with editors that ghost you and to also request kill fees and/or have back-up publications, just in case something like this happens again.
Although I never dragged the editor by tagging them or naming them directly, this was also a lesson that, even if the editor doesn't follow you on social, they might still end up seeing it.
In this particular case, I wasn’t too embarrassed or ashamed by the editor seeing my tweet asking how to communicate with an uncommunicative editor because all of it is true and the editor acknowledged that themselves.
Thanks for sharing, Destiny! Working with uncommunicative editors or clients is a frustrating, but all too common part of freelancing. The biggest proportion of my monthly pitching stats is always ‘No Reply’. Learning how to navigate these situations can be tricky, and I think reaching out to others on Twitter is actually a smart move from Destiny, but of course, not ideal if the editor realises you’re talking about them.
Maybe it can be a learning moment for both Destiny and the editor…