Earlier this year, I met freelance writer Noah Berlatsky as part of a panel I was moderating on Substack. What caught my attention right away is that he’s been in the freelance writing game for 20 years now, while supporting a family, all without bailing and moving to a different occupation with more dependable work and money. After our panel concluded, I asked if he’d be up for a conversation about his career and how he sustains it in an increasingly difficult environment for freelancers.
Currently Noah runs a Substack newsletter, Everything Is Horrible, that people pay to receive (even though they don’t have to), in addition to traditional freelance work. He also writes and publishes poetry.
Our conversation took place in August over Zoom; it has been edited and condensed for publication.
Jane Friedman: As you know, the impetus for this interview is that you have been in the freelance game for so long and you still, at least outwardly, appear to be … I don’t know. Cheerful might not be the right word.
Noah Berlatsky: [laughs]
You’re not a total Eeyore. You seem to have a dark sense of humor about it, which maybe is necessary. And when I looked at all of the places that you’ve published, you’ve outlasted a lot of the outlets you’ve contributed to.
Yeah, that’s true. Outlasted even more than it looks like, because a lot of places, they’re still doing stuff, but the section that I was involved with is gone.
Precisely. You haven’t yet gone into accounting. [laughs]
You know, if I had accounting skills, maybe. [laughs] The other options for me, I feel like are somewhat limited. I don’t know what I’d do.
Maybe that’s why you’ve stuck it out. You have no choice. Regardless, it takes an amazing amount of stubbornness and a belief that it will work itself out. There will be another gig or there will be another opportunity. Do you have a good network that keeps things rolling along?
There’s a couple of things that make it possible. The biggest one is I’m married to somebody who has a steady job and health insurance. People maybe don’t talk about that or underrate how important that is. But, I mean, that’s huge, right? That means there’s really a cushion. I started before the ACA really kicked in and when my daughter was born [in the early 2000s]. When my daughter was born, we decided that was a good time for me to start freelancing and have a more flexible schedule. My wife, she went into work, so that I could do more childcare.
So, I think that that’s probably the single most important thing, being married to somebody who has a less precarious job.
And the second thing?
After that, I feel like it’s a lot of luck. I’m constantly pitching. I try to pitch somewhere every day, and I try to constantly try to find new outlets and connect with old outlets. Sometimes it’s useful and sometimes I’m just annoying editors. But [laughs] I don’t really know how else to do it. You try to have as broad a range of clients as possible so that when one thing collapses, you’ve got something to continue with. It’s still very anxiety producing, I have to say.
[One outlet] went bankrupt owing me $10,000. So that was terrifying and horrible, right? I thought I’m never gonna see that money. But in fact I did, because they wanted to keep going with some things, so they figured they needed to pay me. So they did eventually pay me out. But it was super stressful. I mean, it was so stressful in fact that I had a seizure. [laughs]
Oh, my God.
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like, “Oh, my God.” But it wasn’t really that. I mean, people have seizures more often than you think. [laughs] Apparently. Basically I was dreaming and I couldn’t wake up, wouldn’t wake up. My wife was terrified. She called the ambulance. I had to go to the hospital. There’s been no long-term effects. But, you know, obviously that’s the side of how stressful it was that I had this kind of medical event. Because it was like, “I’ve lost $10,000. What the hell am I gonna do?”
Every time you think you’ve got a steady client where you can kinda count on them and it seems like it’s gonna be okay, like as soon as you think that, it’s gone.
You’ve done a lot of op-ed work in your career, and it seems that work is hard to come by—or most of it is now destined for Substack, I’d say.
There was a brief period there where I had regular op-ed columns at like three places. And I thought, “This’ll work. I could do this forever.” I was at The Independent, NBC Think, I was working for this kind of blog called The Editorial Board. [But] there aren’t really op-ed outlets anymore. I think in part because like a lot of stuff’s moved to Substack but you know there’s also political incentives.
I had somebody reach out who I’d worked with before. They wanted me to write about the Texas Democrats leaving Texas, right? I said, “Oh yeah, I could write about that.” They said, “Well, they’re in Illinois, so talk about the Illinois context, and, make it funny, and, you know, don’t be like ‘Republicans are the bad guys.’”
And, you know, I did my best … but they didn’t use the piece. I think that that kind of logic has shut down a lot of op-eds. They want to feel like they can appeal to conservative voters … but they’re also afraid of like, you know, getting pushback from Trump or the people who own them like Trump. So those kind of things have caused there to be fewer outlets for op-eds, which is bad for op-ed writers like me.
So that all collapsed. And I was writing for CNN Opinion, and I was writing mostly movie think pieces, which was a lot of fun. Arts criticism is what I would do if I had a choice of what to do. And that’s all dried up too. I used to write book reviews for the LA Times. Their culture section was destroyed, right? … They don’t really have an arts section. All the editors I worked with either got fired or shifted elsewhere.
You’ve also had to deal with getting canceled.
Yeah, there was sort of a content mill I was working for. I mean, it wasn’t a great place to work for and they didn’t pay that much, but it was sort of steady. It was, like, semi-employment in terms of you could write two or three articles a week and that was money I could count on.
And the right-wing people were like, “Oh, this guy’s a bad guy. Don’t publish him.” And [my editors] weren’t saying, “Oh, you’re a bad person.” They were just like, “Oh, I hate cancel culture, but we’re gonna fire you anyway.” [laughs]
People just don’t necessarily treat their writers that well. I mean, the whole reason to hire freelance people is because you can fire them, you know, without really having to do anything.
So let’s talk about what’s going right. We were on a panel together to talk about Substack, and you’re making good money there.
I started writing for Aaron Rupar’s Public Notice, which is a huge Substack. He has a huge subscription list. And I’m basically writing op-eds for Aaron, who’s fantastic. Like, in my 20 years of experience, he’s one of the best handful of editors I’ve worked for. It’s great to work for him, and because of Substack’s network effects, that means a lot of people find [my Substack] through him, which means that I kind of have a sustainable income stream on Substack. It’s around $36,000 a year, $37,000 a year. I still need to get other income, but that’s a good cushion if things fall through.
But I don’t necessarily know that Substack’s gonna last forever either. They don’t really tell you what they’re doing, but I saw a dramatic decrease in free subscribers coming in earlier this year. I mean, basically, I kind of flatlined. I was getting as many people in as were leaving. And then I had a post that went semi-viral, and I got a couple hundred more subscribers. And now I’m back to kind of flat-lining again.
I’m not panicked. I still have new people finding me, I still have people paying. But it’s kind of an indication that, you know, Substack can f— you. [laughs] You know?
That’s the sort of thing I’ve been worried about all along and why I would not move my newsletters to Substack.
I mean, I know Aaron, so I feel like if I really had a problem, I could probably get help. But it doesn’t make you feel stable. It doesn’t make you feel, “Oh, I found the one true solution and I can just ride this to retirement,” right? My livelihood is dependent on these people who I don’t trust or like. That’s not that different than, like, any kind of job. But it’s precarious.
What else are you earning from these days?
I do writing for Mariame Kaba, who’s an anti-prison activist, and she’s amazing. And that’s kind of regular. And we’re friends, and she’s also an amazing boss. I have a couple things that feel stable or stable-ish. But you’re also constantly trying to find new outlets. Whenever I’m like, “Holy sh—, I’m doomed,” my wife is like, “Well, you’ve said that before and it always works out.”
Let’s say you’re at a writer’s conference or some industry event, and a fresh-faced grad walks up to you and they say, “I want to start freelance writing.” What would you tell them?
The best preparation for being a freelance writer, the absolute best thing, the thing that will ensure success and ensure financial stability, is to be born rich.
And if you can’t be born rich, you should marry somebody who’s rich. And if you can’t do either of those things, you’re kind of screwed. [laughs] The way the industry is now, I couldn’t in good conscience recommend anybody do this.
You know, one of the things that sort of keeps you going when you’re a writer is that you have dream jobs. You’re like, “Oh, I would love to do that.” Right? I mean, maybe I’ll never get there, but it’s nice to think about maybe getting there at some point. Now it’s not my own employment that’s disappearing but all the dream jobs.
So what do you aspire to now?
I just aspire to getting to retirement. That’s really where I’m at. I wanna be able to have an income for another 10 years. There aren’t any staff jobs, and the ones there are, people just get fired. Looking at the Washington Post now, all these respected columnists and writers who worked there for years, they all had to leave. They go to Substack, the New Republic has picked up a bunch.
You’re competing with the editors you once worked for, it seems.
Right, right. You’re competing with people who have been staff writers for years or decades. Or if they’re like, “We wanna be young and hip,” they’ll hire somebody who’s young and hip. Which isn’t me. I’m old, I’ve been doing this forever [laughs]. You just hope that you can sort of scrabble along for another 10 years.
You know, I’d love to feel like Substack will just keep growing, and eventually I can transition to just doing that full time. And then retire, and I can keep writing a little. But I don’t really believe in it. I don’t think Substack’s gonna be around for another 10 years in that way.
Well, shoot. I thought we would end on something encouraging.
I can’t really encourage people. I wish I could. I try to point young writers toward editors who might help, but there’s fewer and fewer people. It’s all been devastated, and that’s a problem for theaters, it’s a problem for film, it’s a problem for museums, it’s a problem for local music scenes. Like, anybody who wants to make art or write about art, this stuff has all collapsed.
It wouldn’t take that much money from Democratic funders to revive that. Like, if they took the money that they’re spending on trying to find a liberal Joe Rogan, and they said, “Wait, we have this entire infrastructure. If we’d only support it…” Part of that is that local weeklies used to write about politics, right? So you’d have lots of arts coverage and then you’d have progressive politics, and it was all sort of in one place, and that helps people form an identity around culture and progressive politics.
Democrats have a lot to worry about, but even at the local level, I mean, there’s just no real interest in funding arts or funding writing, treating it as a public good. There’s no real sense that anybody cares, right? We can’t even defend public broadcasting.
Or libraries. [IMLS was one of the first federal agencies to be cut by the Trump administration in 2025. Learn more.]
Exactly. Even in the best case scenario … it looks pretty bleak. Everybody’s getting rid of their critics. There were content mill jobs where people would get started in freelance writing, and those were exploitive and horrible jobs. But it’s even worse now if there’s some sort of AI slop quasi-review, which is just there to get clicks and maybe let people know some movie exists.
Note from Jane: Are you a freelance writer? How do you make it work? Let us know in the comments.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
Thank you for this very real conversation about freelancing. When I was let go from my good corporate comms job in late 2004, I put food on the table through freelance writing and editing work. Always looking for the next contract was continually nerve racking; landing a new job was always exhilarating. Two years in, I found my way into teaching writing at a local college and stuck out short-term contracts until, four years later, I got a permanent position. That was a good day. In retrospect, it was all a good ride. But until I landed that secure (unionized) job, life was a relentless cycle of looking for work, doing the work, invoicing clients, chasing clients to pay, and trying to exhale. That cycle lasted only six years for me, and I know how lucky I am to have experienced all this when I did: the times today are very different.
As someone who’s also been muscling through (for about 15 years), I really appreciate this interview. I’ve found nurturing relationships with editors over the years especially helpful. I also ghostwrite research-based content for medical professionals. This year has been the toughest in some time, though. Making it through, but oof!
Thank you for this helpful information. I appreciate the honesty, the “this is the way it is.”
My approach to freelancing has been much more narrow than Noah Berlatsky’s. I chose the one subject I was an expert in, pro-audio (recording engineering and producing), and wrote for seven magazines serving that industry. But despite being an in-demand writer for those outlets (I’ve written over 500 pieces), it wouldn’t have been enough income to sustain me without my self-owned business: Owning and operating a recording studio brought in the lion’s share of my income. Both pieces of the pie, the recording/producing and pro-audio journalism revolve around my same focus and skill set.
All that said, I’ve seen the same inexorable attrition Noah has experienced in his career. Only one of the magazines I’ve written for, Mix, is still in existence and profitable, the others either subsumed or bankrupt.
To complement my income from recording engineering and writing for Mix, I’ve authored a memoir, Miscalculated Risks, that chronicles my previously private life as a wilderness explorer (not an idle claim: I’ve gone to places nobody in recorded history had gone before) and the several expeditions that nearly cost me my life. I am hoping it grabs enough interest to pad my retirement savings, but I’m clear-eyed about its commercial potential and the competition for eyeballs. (2.3 million books were published in 2023 alone.) Like all other writers and authors, I do what I do because I love it and can’t imagine doing anything else.
One other thing I forgot to mention: Over the span of a couple decades (through 2018), I occasionally supplemented my income doing freelance marcom (marketing communications) work for several pro-audio companies (again focusing narrowly on my one marketable skill set, pro-audio). But those opportunities subsequently dried up as every one of those companies moved their marcom work in-house or commissioned outside writers willing to work for extremely low pay. All of the people I know who did freelance marcom work (including editors I used to write for, who lost their jobs at magazines), and myself, got priced out of the market by newcomers with far less experience who were willing to work for peanuts.
Thanks for sharing this very real-world glimpse into the freelance industry. It pains me to see people pitching courses like “How to earn six figures as a freelance writer” to the next generation. I’ve been doing this for four decades now (Wow! Yeah. That just hurt my eyes.), and I’m the first to admit that it’s not easy. And if you don’t have any other skills to back you up, well *cough*. The trick is to expand your repertoire, and there are many opportunities, from copywriting to ghostwriting. Hope this helps!
Noah, as they say, I feel you. I’ve been freelancing for 30+ years, for small and large outlets, the bulk of which no longer exist, or as you say for the LA Times, the departments have been decimated. I still do some pitching, but am drawing way down on that, working on books. And cocktails.
Still doing some freelance editing, but much less there too. I haven’t gone Substacking yet, for some of the reasons you suggest, and because I’m lazy. Thank god for Medicare, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the current administration effed that up too. Thanks to you and Jane for the post!
I’ve been a freelance writer/editor for the past eight years and can relate to a lot of this – thanks for sharing
Thanks for this, Jane and Noah! I loved it, the way I love box jellyfish. Fascinating but deadly. I was a freelance writer for all of the 90’s and I’m glad to hear Noah’s realistic assessment: you’ve either got to be rich or married to someone with the good job! My husband did the daily grind in tech while I raised the kids and planned the weekend getaways (free backpacking). My income was my dessert for the family: a trip to Australia one summer, and Africa another. I also wrote for a senior’s paper in Seattle, got 5 books accepted and published, and hundreds of articles and short stories. Eclectic was my middle name. I wrote for children’s magazines, national rags like Spa and Writer’s Digest, and inflight magazines. Then later, when we cashed in on the tech bubble and took the family sailing I sold articles to sailing magazines and had more Seattle area guide books published. Good thing it was a cheap lifestyle. I don’t envy anyone trying to make a living this way now. I haven’t tried Substack yet, but I’m leery of any platform now. I’m deep into self-publishing for the first time, with a first memoir already out, and sequels on the way. Oh, and I’m a book/memoir coach so that’s a side gig to the freelancing.
Jane,
I appreciate the honesty of the Q & A, but I took a different path when I was laid off in 2010 and it has sustained me for 15 years. I largely ignored the typical freelance world and, because I was an oped writer and editorial writer for 25+ years I made myself available to help organizations write their op-eds. It is mind-boggling what they were paying PR firms who were truly bad at it to ghost write op-eds. I’m not into ghost writing and typically would say, ok, we can work on this together. Lots of back-and forth to capture the voice of the author. It paid very well. I also pivoted to help organizations I admired with their writing issues – whether it was helping the staff write better or helping the executive director of a non-profit with a fundraising letter. Now I am the go-to writer for a foundation and am in the middle of writing 10+ feature stories on staff members and volunteers. I also have a substack. The point is that writers are communicators. What I do may not be a thrill, but it pays very well and what IS a thrill is that for most of the last 15 years I was able to contribute generously to a 401k. Writers don’t deserve to be paid like serfs. We should not put up with it.
Thanks so much for sharing your path, Maura.
Yes, reality is good. But so much doom and gloom. I was hoping for one little carrot of positive. Perhaps that’s part of the problem…