Writer’s Market is here
Posted: August 23, 2011 Filed under: analyzing newspaper markets, Uncategorized, Writer's Market, Writers Market online | Tags: finding markets for writing, market listings, Poets & Writers, The Writer, Writer's Market Leave a comment »My copy of the new Writer’s Market arrived yesterday. This fat volume is loaded with information, advice and places to send your work. I can’t remember when I first started getting this book, but I believe it’s essential for anyone writing for publication. Its publishers, Writer’s Digest, also offer an online version, writersmarket.com, which is also handy. In fact you can buy the deluxe package and get both for a year, or you can try writersmarket.com for a modest monthly fee.
Why get the book when you can read it online? Well, I’m the kind of girl who likes to take the book to the beach or crash on the couch with Writer’s Market in one hand and a pen in the other. But writing is an online business these days. Writersmarket.com allows you to search for specific topics and publications, then follow the links to the publications’ web pages, where you can peruse the content and read their submission guidelines.
I don’t want to spend my blog advertising Writer’s Digest, but they do seem to have set the gold standard. You can also find market listings at websites operated by The Writer magazine and Poets & Writers, among others. The latter tends toward literary magazines. I’ll give you some more places to find markets next week.
These market guides are a wonderful place to start if you don’t know where to send your work. They offer names, addresses, lists of what the editors are looking for, the percentage of freelance vs. staff writing, and more. But they are just a start. We need to go beyond the listings to read their guidelines, usually available online. And then, we need to look at the publication. At least peruse what they post online.
Best case, read the magazine, newspaper or zine. Read it all, including the ads, and read as many back issues as you can find. You may find that your work won’t fit in some of the places that sounded good from the Writer’s Market listing. If it does seem to fit, you’ll have a better idea of how to entice them with your writing.
Take some time to browse the listings. They tend to spark ideas. Keep paper and pen nearby.
>Keeping track
Posted: April 7, 2009 Filed under: tracking submissions, Writers Market online Leave a comment »>Let’s talk about keeping track of our submissions. It’s amazing how quickly we can forget what went where, unless we’re only sending one thing out at a time and staring at the computer until an answer arrives. That’s a good way to go crazy, so I recommend keeping as many submissions out there as you can. While you’re doing that, keep track.
You can do it with file cards, one for each query/article and one for each market, a paper list, a spreadsheet on the computer, or one of the many tracking programs available online. If you subscribe to Writers Market online, a submission tracker comes with your subscription. Whatever method works best for you is the one to use. Make it easy for yourself. Just make sure you note what you sent, where, when, and the response. It shows the IRS you’re trying, it lets you know how long it’s been since that query or article went out, and it keeps you from the embarrassment of sending a piece to an editor who has already rejected it.
Tracking also helps us keep a running list of what we’ve sent to those publications we really want to get into. And sometimes, looking at that list, we have to acknowledge that we have sent our best and they didn’t want it, so it’s time to move on.
This week I got one of those “nice rejections.” The editor didn’t have room for the piece I sent, but she wants to keep my contact information in case she needs me for upcoming articles on the subject. It’s still “no”, but it’s a good “no”. I also received a double rejection. The original rejection came in November, shortly after I sent my submission. This week I got another rejection, in which the editor said she has decided to cease publication. I guess that’s better than never hearing anything.
Keep trying. It’s worth the effort.
>How Much Can You Earn?
Posted: September 10, 2008 Filed under: Christian Science Monitor, Community College Week, East of Eden Conference, making money, Metro, San Francisco Chronicle, Writers Market online 1 Comment »>I’m back from the East of Eden conference, where I taught classes on general freelance article writing and on freelancing for newspapers. The most frequent questions centered on money. One woman at the general workshop raised her hand and let me know she was only interested in writing for markets that pay at least $1 a word. I don’t blame her, but I assured her that few people start out at that level.
Bonnie, an old friend I hadn’t seen in over a decade, is getting ready to retire from her tech writing job and hopes to supplement her income from novels with newspaper articles. How many articles would she have to write to bring in $500 a month?
Yet another writer wanted to know if she could make enough to live on by freelancing for newspapers. That is the big question in every class I teach, often from people who have never published anything.
For all those eager journalists, young and old, you need to work your way up. Bonnie spoke of her sister-in-law, who writes for three publications at a time and is always looking for new opportunities. When she gets into a higher-paying market, she drops the lowest one off her list. Not a bad way to climb the ladder of success.
Can you get $1 a word from a newspaper? Not often, but it can happen. Meanwhile, I did some research in Writers Market online to see what papers are paying. Among the ones who are willing to disclose their rates, the pay varies tremendously. For community weeklies, rates seems to range from $25 to $75 per article. But you can get 25 cents a word at Community College Week and $50 to $500 at Metro, an alternative weekly published in San Jose and Santa Cruz, California. The San Francisco Chronicle, which takes freelance opinion and travel pieces, pays up to $500. The Christian Science Monitor, which has some of the most extensive online guidelines I have ever seen, pays on average $200 per article.
Even if you made $1,000 per article, consider how much it costs to pay your monthly bills and you’ll see that it’s hard to make a living just freelancing for newspapers, but it can be a darned good supplement to other writing, teaching, speaking or editing work. To make the most money in this business, write a lot, submit a lot, and aim for regular gigs with at least three publications. Choose ideas that have a lot of juice and reprint, re-slant and update stories until you have wrung every drop out of them. It’s hard work, but it can pay off with persistence and determination.
