By Michael Stelzner
So you work you buns off to produce a white paper for your company or your client and…
They will not let you put your name on the paper. What gives?? How do you handle this?
This very question comes from Carrie:
“I recently wrote my first white paper which went well, it was accepted with no revisions and is being posted shortly. However, I am not getting a byline, as the person I did it for says it is not in their format. I don’t understand the rationale for this. Also, this is not so good for me in terms of visibility, as I would like to get more assignments from this, so the best I can do is work around it and post the link on my own newsletter and maybe do a press release. I could not find any info on this, but I did find many white papers online that not only had bylines but extended bios as well! Any thoughts on this? Thanks, Carrie”
Carrie, you are not going to like my answer.
With white papers, bylines are rare.
When they are written by freelancers for companies, the freelancer almost never gets a byline.
I have written over 100 and have never gotten one.
So do not despair!
Realize you are a hired gun tasked to make your client look good, not to make yourself look good.
The best thing you can do is include the sample paper among your portfolio of work.
I would advise against doing a press release on a white paper you did for another company without their permission.
White paper writing is “work for hire” and the company, not you, owns the rights to what you produced. This is different than writing articles.
Those white papers you find online with authors and bios are either self-promotion pieces or are authored by industry experts (yet might be written by ghost writers).
Hope this helps.
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About the author: Michael Stelzner is the author of the book Writing White Papers. Learn more by visiting http://www.writingwhitepapers.com/blog/.
HAVE A QUESTION FOR MIKE? Send your questions to mike@writingwhitepapers.com and be sure to include “ASK MIKE” in the subject line.
