Book Review: My So-Called Freelance Life by Michelle Goodman

It's every person's secret dream: to be able to wake up in the morning at a reasonable hour, pour a cup of coffee, and sit down on the couch with their laptop in their pajamas--and work. The brass ring that is freelancing can seem unattainable to those just now entering the work force, but Michelle Goodman illuminates the potential in any career for the ultimate at-home workday--then she offers practical, friendly, useful advice on how to achieve the goal. In My So-Called Freelance Life, Goodman offers up a cohesive, user-friendly guide for grasping at the perfect job--the kind where the only supervisor is the cat sitting next to you on the couch.

"If you want the world to take you seriously as a creative professional, you need to start bringing home the bacon."

Firstly, the book was a genuine pleasure to read. Goodman's writing style is familiar and funny, incorporating useful tips and anecdotes that supplement her extensive experience and research. Every chapter offers a summary of key points, and the book is supremely quotable, lending itself to return trips and prodigious highlighting. She offers incredible insight into every aspect of working from home full time, from how to network and build a client base to how much to charge for a freelancing job, to registering yourself as a corporation.

"You never know when you might get lucky and meet the freelance lead of your dreams."

But there is much more to this book than simple advice. Goodman encourages the reader to do more than just get excited about the prospect of freelancing. She provides tried and true examples of websites, reliable companies, and exactly what kind of company/resource/service the upstart freelancer should be looking for. She has amazing intuition about which parts of freelancing liberal arts majors will find most thorny. She suggests, for instance, investigating getting an accountant, particularly if you make the decision to incorporate. And she recommends finding a competent web designer with whom you have a good working relationship to help design your website. She defines the happy medium between working for exposure (what she calls PIE) and working for profit. In short, this is the kind of book that, if you don't buy the e-book version, will be destined for dog ears and many, many return trips. With Michelle Goodman's invaluable expertise available worldwide, there is no doubt that brick and mortar offices will soon become a thing of the past. 

My So-Called Freelance Life is available from Seal Press, and wherever books are sold.