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Picture it: You've just signed a contract to write three books in a year and a half while also promoting your backlist and launching a standalone title. That's what happened to Jennifer Bardsley, whose sweet romance and women's fiction books have sold over 115,000 copies worldwide.
"I was incredibly excited to sign with Bookouture, an imprint of Hachette," she said, "but I was also nervous. I had a book releasing from Montlake in spring of 2023, plus a weekly newspaper column to write. How would I get everything done?"
Enter the Freewrite Smart Typewriter, which Jennifer frequently shares pictures of on her Instagram and Facebook accounts. "I'd experimented with distraction-free writing devices before," she told us. "But my first Alphasmart Neo fried in the car, and my second had uploading problems. Old, outdated technology made me nervous, especially when my reputation to meet deadlines was on the line."
Reliability problems disappeared once Jennifer discovered Freewrite. She used a Freewrite Smart Typewriter to write all three of her Sand Dollar Cove books, which launch on February 15, 2024, from Bookouture, sweeping readers away on an unforgettable trip to the beach full of romance, mystery, and humor.
"On my computer, I can draft 500 words per hour," said Jennifer. "But with Freewrite I double that output. Sometimes I even hit 1,500 words per hour." She loves the technology so much that she's added an Alpha to her collection as well.
"Postcards from the Cove, Photographs from the Cove, and Notes from the Cove are my ninth, tenth, an eleventh traditionally published books," Jennifer said. "I've been an author for a while. But I think new writers could benefit for distraction-free writing devices too. One of the hardest parts of writing is putting words on paper, and Freewrite helps you do that."
You can find out more about Jennifer Bardsley — and receive a free short story from her Sand Dollar Cove series — by signing up for her newsletter.
Freewriter Britt Gondolfi has an important message: people need to put down their phones and LOOK UP. The medium she chose to get this message across? Pigeons and poop jokes.
Find out how Britt and her BFF (who happens to be her illustrator) took a silly song and turned it into a book deal.
Astrohaus, the team behind Freewrite, is an American company. Like many American companies, and virtually all consumer electronic brands, our cost base is global. We work with contractors in Europe, in South America, and in Asia. We purchase components from a global supply chain and assemble our product in China, but make no mistake, we are an American company. The majority of our costs, including goods, services, and payroll, are from the United States. Most of our team lives in the Midwest. I founded this company in Detroit, Michigan, and am still here. I am proud to have built an American company that supports 10+ Americans and their families.
But now we are caught in a trade war that threatens our very existence. A war that was building up over time but has crescendoed to a point that no business owner could have prepared for. As I write this today, we have to pay an additional 145% of the cost of any product made in China as a tax to the U.S. Government.Yesterday it was 104%, up from 54%. In March it was 20% and in February it was 10%. Tomorrow?
Astrohaus is an importer because there is no consumer electronics industry in the U.S. China has emerged over the decades as the world's factory. At first, as a low-cost solution, but in 2025, they are undeniably the best in the world.
Now we are in a pickle because we have established relationships with our contract manufacturing partners that go back to when we started in 2014. Yes, some of the folks we work with today have been with us since the very beginning. They took a chance on us and helped us get off the ground. I have personally spent months on the ground in Hong Kong and China working closely with these folks, whom I now call friends.
Everyone, including our contract manufacturing partners, is helping us explore our options, but the truth is that it is incredibly difficult to move factories. It takes careful planning, huge expense, and much more time than we have.
Unfortunately, we can’t wait to let the trade war resolve itself, nor do we have the advantage big companies like Apple have with a diversified supply base in various countries. We must work with our existing supply base in China, and that means adjusting prices to cover some of our new costs. That's assuming a trade deal gets done, because 100%+ tariffs are simply untenable long term.
On Monday, April 14, we will be raising prices. Not because we want to, but because we have to.Thank you for standing by us over the years. We aren’t going anywhere.
Write on,
Adam
Freewrite Founder & CEO
Bryan Young writes for many magazines and online publications. As you get more entrenched within the industry and develop relationships with editors, the process can vary widely. But at the start of cultivating those relationships, it’s usually very much the same. Here's his walk-through of the process.
