California Just Delivered a Death Blow to Freelance Writers Like Me
I have been a full-time freelance writer for over ten years. While I have bylines in everything from mainstream outlets like USA Today and Vice to niche publications like High Times and Parabola Magazine, used to write an environmental column for Paste Magazine, and am currently writing a full-length guide book to my favorite country in the world (Colombia,) one of the keys to my success (survival really) has been the ability to pick up side gigs for extra cash on the fly through writer’s marketplace type sites.
Yesterday, I received an email entitled “Notification to California Based Writers” from Scripted.com, one of the biggest content writers’ platforms out there. I would say that some years (and I have been with them for at least 5 or 6 years) they contributed to upwards of 30 percent of my income. This was usually when I was in need and in between gigs, and definitely saved my ass a number of times.
Here is what the email said:
Hi Ocean,
As you may have heard, a few months ago the State of California passed Assembly Bill 5, a new law that requires many independent contractors based in California to be reclassified as employees starting in 2020.
Scripted has always considered the writers who use our platform to be…
