📚 Content Writing Tasks on Non-Fiction Books (Part-Time/Full-Time, Remote)

Do you like reading non-fiction books like Atomic Habits or Thinking, Fast and Slow? Would you enjoy highly focused writing tasks that engage your ability to summarize information and connect ideas? Do you enjoy having a wide variety of tasks that test a breadth of skills, from writing style to critical reasoning?

We want to hear from you. At Shortform (https://www.shortform.com), our mission is to make the world’s most important ideas more accessible. We’re best known for our high-quality book guides, where we summarize non-fiction books and add smart analysis and commentary to understand the book better. We cover every genre, including personal growth, business, psychology, relationships, and more.

While we’ve covered the most popular books with meticulous human writing, the less popular books don’t generate enough attention to make back the cost. We now want to use AI to help us cover these books so that we can explore more ideas, especially from niche books that deserve more attention.

A key part of this work is developing high-quality datasets we use to train LLMs to produce higher quality work and explain the ideas better. That’s where you come in. We’re looking for talented writers and editors to join our content data collection team. The work involves writing, curating, and reviewing lots of data samples for different stages of writing our book guides, including outlining, summarizing, generating commentary, and editing.

As part of Shortform, you’ll use your command of the English language, attention to detail, critical thinking, and creativity to be a key part of our research team that will produce exceptional content for learners across the world. You’ll join a growing company with a passion for spreading knowledge that helps people make important decisions in work and life.

What Our Customers Say:

+ “The summaries go beyond just condensing content—they provide deeper insights, key takeaways, and even comparisons with other books, which helps me truly understand the concepts rather than just skim through them.”

+ “I appreciate the variety of topics and the excellent summaries. Since I have many interests, using Shortform allows me to explore a lot more while keeping my reading manageable.”

+ “Not only are the summaries very good, but they link the information with other summaries as well, contrasting opinions and research with the main content. Also, they add questions in the end to reflect about what you read. Wonderful.”

What Our Writers Say:

+ “I didn’t expect enjoying the work as much as I do. It’s like doing a lot of small puzzles. It’s flexible so I can take breaks whenever I like. It’s a nice change of pace from my usual writing block.”

+ “I like how focused the writing tasks are. I can really get in a state of flow and crunch through a lot of work. Gets repetitive at times but there’s also a lot of variety which helps mix things up.”

+ "Shortform is a joy to work for. I like having consistent, interesting Shortform work to do daily, instead of constantly hunting for new freelance projects and having unpredictable contracts. I’ve never had an issue with getting paid with Shortform; unfortunately, payment issues are common in the freelance writing world."

Your Responsibilities:

+ Create original writing samples for focused tasks, like “summarize this short passage in three sentences” or “provide researched counterarguments for this idea” or “rephrase this sentence for conciseness.”

+ Curate writing samples from our existing content library.

+ Annotate writing samples, like “score the relevance of this commentary idea from 1 to 5” or “highlight the key idea from this passage.”

+ Review data created by your peers for accuracy and quality.

+ Improve the team by giving feedback on tasks, instructions, and how the team works.

Qualifications:

+ Ability to distill information into its core concepts, then synthesize a new understanding that’s even more effective than the original source.

+ Ability to organize information logically and to express complex ideas in a way a layperson could understand.

+ Clear, engaging writing style with a natural voice. You can tell the difference between good, tight writing and sloppy, rigid writing.

+ Attention to detail and ability to follow complex instructions meticulously.

+ Ability to maintain motivation and productivity during long stretches of solo work.

+ Fast worker and thinker. Our data production needs to be cost-efficient.

+ Serious commitment and work drive. You pull through, deliver on time, and take pride in your own work, without needing prodding. 

About the Position:

+ Compensation is paid hourly at $24 per hour.

+ Full-time availability (35-40 hours/week) is preferred. Part-time work is available for strong applicants (must maintain >25 hours per week on average).

+ You will be classified as a contractor, but this will be a long-term position.

+ Must be available to start immediately.

+ This position is fully remote. You’re free to work wherever and whenever you want.

+ There are opportunities for advancement, including taking on senior team roles.

How to Apply:

Please apply through Mediabistro with your resume, cover letter, and link to 2-3 published clips (if available).

In your cover letter, please describe your prior professional writing experience (if any), your favorite non-fiction book, and your reading habits (books or otherwise).

The next stage in the application process is a miniproject consisting of data tasks similar to what you’d work on if you joined. The final stage is a brief interview call.

Application is on a rolling basis for limited positions, so please apply as soon as you can.

The mission of Shortform is to make sense of the world’s information.

In the past 20 years there’s been an exponential 100x rise in high-quality content - articles, podcasts, videos, analysis. But your free time has stayed completely the same. It can feel overwhelming to navigate the hundreds of books, articles, podcasts, and newsletters piling up.

The ultimate vision of Shortform is to summarize and contextualize every meaningful idea published every day. We want to show people what’s critical to learn about the world, then help them understand it better than any other source out there. We accomplish this with clear thinking and logic, concise writing, smart analysis, and novel connections between ideas.

As a writer, you will directly contribute to this mission. You’ll digest high-quality content to extract the key points, synthesize a better understanding of the work, and focus on making the content actionable. Your work will empower thousands of customers to improve their lives.