Writing Business: Coping with Change
by Howard Baldwin

One of the exercises Dr. Randy White likes to conduct in his leadership development classes vividly forces participants to consider how change affects them emotionally. He asks them to switch their watch from one wrist to the other. Invariably, within a few minutes, everyone itches to switch it back. If he asks people the time, they look at the wrong wrist.

"It's a wonderful analog for change. It's hard to accept, hard to remember, and it feels awkward," says White, a consultant with the Executive Development Group in Greensboro, N.C.

Awkward concisely describes the situation that writers and the publishing industry currently face, as does terrifying.

There's been nothing like this digital transformation in any of our lifetimes," says Holly Brady, director of the Stanford Publishing Course. "This is a hard-left turn."

Journalists are facing an exacerbated situation because we're really facing two kinds of change simultaneously. It's not just a change in business models, where companies are trying to discern how to make money from electronic rather than print advertising. This situation is also marked by technological change, something many people find particularly daunting. To promote themselves and their work, journalists must master Web pages, podcasts, blogs, digital cameras, and other kind of technology far more complex than a word-processing application.

Surely if any industrial demographic understands how to cope with change, it's journalists. After all, don't intellectual curiosity and the next new thing drive our work? Perhaps—but that doesn't necessarily translate into the ability to master change in our own lives.

"People get accustomed to doing things a certain way that helps them feel secure," says Andrea Kay, a Cincinnati-based career consultant and author of the upcoming book, Work's a Bitch and Then You Make It Work (STC Paperbacks, 2008). "They don't like surprises. When it comes to their work, people don't want to have to think about how to fit in, how to adapt."

Moving away from that security is scary, for a very ingrained reason, according to White. "We're afraid of getting it wrong. In school, we were rewarded for getting the right answer, not the wrong one. But the wrong answer usually leads you to a new discovery." That is, we learn more from our failures than our successes.

Besides, argues Kay, "You risk much more by doing nothing. If you do not open yourself up to something difficult, you risk losing what you have. People think there's no risk in staying [in a job], but that's where the risk is. Job security is a myth."

How should journalists cope? Kay recommends, "Do not put off the inevitable, which is a serious assessment of how you fit into the industry in light of all these changes."

You have to rethink the skills that will be in demand in five years, adds Brady, "because you can't rest on the traditional publishing skills that you have developed so far. You have to evolve and hone some new skills." She acknowledges that, with layoffs and downsizing, many people in the publishing industry are now doing the work that three people would have done a few years ago. "There's tremendous pressure to keep your head down and be as efficient as possible. That's probably the worst thing you can do. If you don't put your head up and see where this is going, you're going to run into a wall."

For many, an obvious choice is freelancing, one that Kay herself took many years ago when she left a full-time job as an advertising copywriter to become a career consultant. "If you have the ability to develop a business model for yourself, you have a lot more security. You're in charge of everything — what direction your business goes in, whether it's viable, and whether you need to shift, depending on the marketplace." Even so, the idea of being "in charge of everything" can be emotionally difficult as well, especially when you're accustomed to having editors and publishers make business decisions.

Even those who don't plunge into self-employment have ways to cope. Among participants in the Stanford Publishing Course, Brady says, "the smartest ones have skunk works for new projects. They're throwing things up against the wall and seeing what sticks. You have to develop an instinct of what it means to live and publish on the Web. You have to be willing to experiment."

Ironically, one of the scariest things that writers have to deal with is a sudden explosion of creative options. "If you're creative, you don't have to go through the traditional gatekeepers any more," says Brady. "You don't have to amass a huge following to make a living with your work." All you really need are enough rabid fans to buy your books from your Web site, or enough traffic on your blog to sell advertising.

The key to coping with change with an emotionally healthy outlook, then, is to consider the positives rather than the negatives — that this is a new world for publishing, and the winners will be the ones who understand it first; that there are actually more opportunities for creative outlets rather than fewer; and that by moving forward into the unknown future, you have the chance for greater success than by staying rooted in the present.

How are you coping with the changes faces the publishing industry and your career? If you're interested in telling your story, contact newsletter --at-- asja.org or Howard Baldwin at howardbaldwin --at-- pacbell.net

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ASJA member Howard Baldwin spent nine years as an editor at travel and regional publications before making his own (involuntary) transition into technology and business writing. That was 21 years ago, and he's never been happier.