Re: Techwriting after the boom

["Brian Das" <brian_das -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

From: "Andrew Plato" <gilliankitty -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote in "Techwriting after
the boom"


> The adjustment will take a long time. Many writers are leaving the
profession,
> many are giving up. I left tech writing about 4 years ago. It was simply
to
> hard to make a decent living and run a business off of tech writing. There
are
> just too many morons and too few jobs.
>

There's been another interesting development in the market -- tech writing
has become a commodity. And when something is a commodity, buyers (hiring
managers) can't really distinguish one brand from another. Like Coke vs.
Pepsi, a different wrapper on the same product won't get you much.

Alternately, you can actually make an effort to distinguish yourself from
the people you're competing with. I'm not talking about just becoming a
specialist in an already-established niche (e.g. SDK-superstar). I'm talking
about creating a package that includes something valuable, something that
stretches beyond the confines of documenting software.

Know a bit about databases and Web pages? Build an online questionnaire.
Know a bit about VBA? Build a set of idiot-proof MS Office templates. Know a
bit about managing a large documentation project? Copyright your
methodology. Once you have your valuable product, go out and sell it.

(And oh yeah -- you gotta learn how to sell, too.)

Or, you can sit in the middle of an over-crowded, homogenized market and
wonder where all the work went.

Here endeth the rant.
Happy Friday,
B

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