The Autonomous Freelancer: On Your Own Terms, In Your Own Time, At Your Own Rate
About the book
Author: Dominic Kent
Publisher: Self-published
More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Buy and support indie bookstores (+ I earn a small commission):
Bookshop.org (print)
My Review
Big thanks to the author of this book, Dominic Kent, for sending me a complimentary e-copy in exchange for my honest thoughts.
First, a disclosure: I’m not a full-time freelancer, nor do I have any plans to become one. However, I AM an in-house head of content marketing at a tech startup, so I work with a ton of freelancers (specifically freelance writers). I also spent five years writing for a company that educated people on personal finance, including entrepreneurship. So I feel like I have enough tangential experience to be able to review this book (and, honestly, picture myself using its advice in an alternative universe).
You can tell Kent has a lot of experience writing for the web, where attention is low and the need to provide value is high. The book is extremely readable, filled with helpful advice without ever getting bogged down — I read it in just a few hours. He’s taken his years of experience and boiled it down into a few chapters that aim to always help and never judge. (He’s located in the UK, so US readers, maybe skim through the chapter on taxes because the laws are all different — but everything else here is great.)
But perhaps even more valuable than the advice is the realistic hope he offers that it’s possible to go full-time and design a life you love. Because while it’s nice that Mr. Kent can work shorter hours and hop from cafe to dog walks on the beach and back, this kind of flexibility isn’t just a nice-to-have for a lot of people. Parents, disabled people, and so many others are in dire need of a new model of work. I wish that this book had a bit more representation from them, but even so, the inspiration and advice here is very needed.