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I sent my query letters out this month. It’s been a long haul of research, drafting the query, revising, throwing it away, and re-drafting again. Then comes the agent research, reading blogs, making a list, sending out the queries, and the dreaded waiting. Yes, it’s been a process. It feels a little bit like writing a whole new novel!

If you’re in the agent/query stage of your journey, I thought I’d share some fabulous blog posts and websites that have been helpful in this joyful querying campaign!

Why You Need An Agent:

• Why You Need An Agent: Awesome post by agent Natalie Lakosil.
• Why You Should Never Submit Without and Agent: An editor’s perspective.

Finding the Perfect Match – Researching Agents:

• Literary Rambles: This is hands down the best site for researching kidlit agents. Use the list in the left-hand sidebar. This website has collected quotes, submission policies, and a plethora of amazing info on each person listed!
• Query Tracker: A free database of literary agents.
• Publisher’s Marketplace: Another great database to research agents and their deals.

Tips and Trick on How to Write and Amazing Query Letter:

• Crafting a Winning Query Letter:  This is an overview of one of the best seminars I’ve attended on querying. Agent Dan Lazar demystifies the query process!
• Query Letter Suicide: How NOT to write a query letter. Tips and tricks from agent Jill Corcoran.
• Tips for Pitching and Querying Agents: An easy to understand overview of how to create a one-line to one-paragraph pitch of your book, from agent Mary Kole.
• Querying Do’s and Don’ts: Agent Rebecca Sherman gives you the down-low on what will work and what wont.
• How to Get an Agent Salivating to Read Your Manuscript: Another great overview on how to query, from agent Jill Corcoran.
• Query Letter: Quote of the Week: The best quick-snippet about what a query letter should be!

When You Get “The Call”:

• 10 Questions to Ask and Agent When You Get the Call:  Good things to think about.
• Agent Janet Reid’s Questions:  A great list!
• Literary Ramble’s List of Questions: There’s a list of links at the bottom of this post with even more questions to ask.

How to Deal with Waiting…and Waiting…and Waiting:

• How to Survive the Waiting: A great post from agent Natalie Lakosil. I needed to hear this!

Dealing with Rejection:

• Rejection Rocks! A post by me on the topic (with a great list of famous people who racked up the rejection slips).
• 14 Best-Selling Books that Were Repeatedly Rejected: You’ll be in good company!

Never give up! In the words of Dory from Finding Nemo: “Just keep swimming.”

Keep on writing!

The goal of query letter is to elicit an invitation from an agent (or editor) to send in sample chapters or the whole manuscript.

A query letter is a ONE PAGE letter with three concise paragraphs: the hook, the mini-synopsis, and your writer’s biography. Don’t stray, if you want to be taken seriously as a professional writer. Keep it simple. Stick to three paragraphs.

Paragraph One—The Hook: A hook is a concise, one-sentence tagline for your book. It’s meant to hook your reader’s interest, and reel them in.

Example:  Bridges of Madison County

When Robert Kincaid drives through the heat and dust of an Iowa summer and turns into Francesca Johnson’s farm lane looking for directions, the world-class photographer and the Iowa farm wife are joined in an experience that will haunt them forever.

Agent Query suggests using the when formula: “When such and such event happens, your main character—a descriptive adjective, age, professional occupation—must confront further conflict and triumph in his or her own special way. Sure, it’s a formula, but it’s a formula that works.”

Note: Many writers use the “when” formula, so use it as a starting point. Write your basic hook and then spice it up.

Example: Non-”formulatic” fiction hook:

The Da Vinci Code
A murder in the silent after-hour halls of the Louvre museum reveals a sinister plot to uncover a secret that has been protected by a clandestine society since the days of Christ.

Paragraph Two—Mini-synopsis: This is where boil down your entire novel into one paragraph and expand your hook. Put in the hard work of practicing and revising, until you get that paragraph to sing the same tune as your whole book. Read the back flap of books you like to get a feel for how to create a juicy paragraph.

Paragraph Three—Writer’s bio: Keep it short and related to writing. If your book revolves around a hospital and you are a nurse, then say that. If you have a published book, been published in some magazines, etc,, or won a writing contest or award, then let the agent know. if you’ve never been published, never won any awards, hold no writing degrees, and have no credentials to write your book, then don’t say it. This just gives you more space for Paragraph Two.

The Closing: Thank the agent for their time and consideration. Let the agent know you have the full manuscript available upon request. Note: Never query an agent unless you have written, revised, and finished your full manuscript.

TIPS:

1. Always address your query to a specific person.

2. Make sure you mention the title of your book.

3. Mention the word count and genre of your book.    

Note: Novels should be 80,000 to 100,000 words. Young adult novels can be significantly less: 40,000-60,000 words. Insert word count and genre at the end of your first “hook” paragraph.

If your novel is 200,000 words – Cut before you query.  No one wants an overweight manuscript. AgentQuery reports unless your manuscript is a historical family saga or an epic science fiction battle, agents hit DELETE on proposed first-time novel over 110,000-120,000 words.

4. Share the reason why you are querying this particular agent. Let the agent know that you have researched them and have a reason for choosing them for representation.

5.  Have someone you know check for typos and grammar mistakes. It is very easy when e-mailing a query letter to click the send button before throughly checking your text.  Writers seem to be in the mode to triple check everything when they snail mail their queries, but since we send so many personal e-mails without closely checking every word, that “Send” button can be easily clicked.  The mistake snail mailing query writers make is forgetting to include their contact information – something you don’t need to include with an e-mail. I know that sounds crazy, but I have seen it when writers have sent me submissions for editors and agents.

Need to see an ACTUAL query letter before you’ll know how to write one? Here is the query letter Author (at the time agent) Nathan Bransford:

Dear Ms. Drayton,

As a young literary agent with Curtis Brown Ltd. I have long admired Inkwell, as well as your strong track record. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, if you searched for a book that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike THE BOOK THIEF (which I absolutely loved), you might just have JACOB WONDERBAR AND THE COSMIC SPACE KAPOW, a middle-grade-and-up science fiction novel that I just completed. Still fun! But no one dies – Mr. Death would be lonely.

Jacob Wonderbar has been the bane of every substitute teacher at Magellan Middle School ever since his dad moved away from home. He never would have survived without his best friend Dexter, even if he is a little timid, and his cute-but-tough friend Sarah Daisy, who is chronically overscheduled. But when the trio meets a mysterious man in silver one night they trade a corn dog for his sassy spaceship and blast off into the great unknown. That is, until they break the universe in a giant space kapow and a nefarious space buccaneer named Mick Cracken maroons Jacob and Dexter on a tiny planet that smells like burp breath. The friends have to work together to make it back to their little street where the houses look the same, even as Earth seems farther and farther away.

JACOB WONDERBAR AND THE COSMIC SPACE KAPOW is 50,000 words and stands alone, but I have ideas for a series, including titles such as JACOB WONDERBAR FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSE and JACOB WONDERBAR AND THE VACATIONING ALIENS FROM ANOTHER PLANET. I’m the author of an eponymous agenting and writing blog.

I’d be thrilled if you would consider WONDERBAR for representation, and a few other agents are considering simultaneously. Thanks very much, and hope to talk to you soon.

Nathan Bransford

Here are a few other places to look:

Nathan Bransford dissects a really good query letter and extoll its virtues.

Click Here to Visit Galleycat. They have 23 Agent Query Letters That Actually Worked.

Nonfiction writers don’t need to have a completed fiction manuscript.  They only need a proposal before seeking representation from an agent. Here’s are books and places to help with writing a proposal:

• “How to Write a Non-Fiction Proposal” Former literary agent, Nathan Bransford.
• Agent Sharlene Martin’s book, Publish Your Nonfiction Book: Strategies for Learning the Industry, Selling Your Book, and Building a Successful Career By Sharlene Martin and Anthony Flacco
• How to Write a Book Proposal, 4th Edition By Michael Larsen

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy

Hi Everyone!

Lists can be extremely useful, especially when they are constantly being updated!

Here are two such.

The first, compiled by the enterprising and enthusiastic Brain Grove, is a list of US publishers who are currently accepting submissions for children’s books – http://j.mp/SVbnCk  – he also, very helpfully, adds links toeach entry to take you straight to the site.  I also recommend his ebook on  query /submission letter writing.

The second,  a veritable database, is continuously being updated by the very proactive authors, Delin Colon and Lisa Kalner Williams – http://bit.ly/writerinterviewopps …

If you haven’t joined www.jacketflap.com, I highly recommend it – an excellent networking site for all things related to children’s literature and books.

Get busy and good luck!

By Krissy Brady.

The best part of being a freelance writer is the freedom to build a writing career that’s wrapped around your specific goals and desires.

Since it’s a process we all take on differently, the best part of being a freelance writer is also the intimidating part.

For example, I’m still adjusting to the freelance lifestyle, so I’m very careful with how I handle sending out query letters. Especially as a new writer still building clips, I know how important queries are in making a good first impression with editors who don’t know me.

While I do research markets for each of my queries, organizing them in tiers based on their pay rate and my desire to break into each market, I’ve yet to send out simultaneous queries. This is something I plan on doing in the future, but for now I want to become more comfortable with the process, giving each pitch and the editor I send it to my full attention.

I’ve customized a query letter “production line” to help ease myself into the process, which as it turns out is also a great way to fend off what I call “rejectionitis”: that deflated feeling a writer gets when they’ve received a “thanks, but no thanks” response from an editor (or no response at all).

1. Send query letter to desired market.

Create a stellar query letter for your article idea, and send it to the editor of the magazine you most want to accept it.

2. Choose a “Plan B” market.

Choose a back-up market you’d like to submit your query letter to if your first choice doesn’t accept it.

3. Create a “Plan B” query letter.

Customize the query letter to fit your “Plan B” market. When customizing your query, use the following checklist as your guide:

• Editor’s Name
  Make sure the query is addressed to the editor of the correct department.
• Market’s Tone
  Some magazines have a more investigative approach, while some have a bubbly, upbeat approach. Tweak your query letter to suit the voice of your back-up market.
• Name of Department
  Change the name of the department you feel your article is best suited for (if it’s different from the department name of your first choice).
• Quotes
  You may need to change out your quotes to better reflect the voice of your back-up market, or, if you’re sending your query to a market based in a different country, change to quotes from sources in that country.
• Publication Name
  If you’ve mentioned the publication name anywhere in your query, triple-check you’ve changed the name to your back-up market.
• References to Publication
  If you’ve mentioned articles from past issues of the magazine, make sure to change the mentions to articles from your back-up publication.
• Revise, Revise, Revise
  Do several read-throughs of your revised query letter to make sure it’s the best it can be.
• Editor’s E-mail Address
  Add the new editor’s e-mail address in the “To” section of your e-mail query.

4. Save “Plan B” query letter as an e-mail draft.

If you receive a rejection from your preferred market, this makes it so that you don’t have time to react to the rejection. Simply send out your “Plan B” query and you’ll be back in anticipation mode.

5. Rinse and Repeat

Repeat the above steps with every query letter you send out, and your pitches will always be out there, patiently waiting to be accepted.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned through my transition from web designer to writer, it’s that no two writing routines are the same. We all have our own transition to create based on our lifestyle and current work schedule.

Create a routine that works best for you, and you’ll be well on your way to creating the writing career you’ve always wanted.

Do you have a unique writing routine? How is it helping to strengthen your writing skills and build your credentials?

Krissy Brady is the owner of Krissy Media Ink and a markets columnist for WOW! Women on Writing. She runs a blog for writers dedicated to keeping the passion for writing alive. Keep in touch with Krissy on Facebook and Twitter for the latest writing-related information.

By Barbara A. Tyler

When targeting markets for your queries, do you review their media kits?

You should.

Magazines spend time and money defining their audiences and creating a package to attract advertisers. With a little know-how, you can put that research to use and sell your ideas.

To get started, find the “media kit” link on your target market’s website. Most of the time you’ll spot one right away–after all, the magazines want it to be easy for advertisers to find it. If you come up empty on the main page, look under “Advertising,” or less frequently, in “Contact Us.” You can also type the name of the magazine and the words “media kit” (with quotes) into a search engine.

Once you have the kit in front of you, examine these three features before you write your query:

1. MISSION STATEMENT (a.k.a. “Positioning statement”)

What it is: A brief statement that defines the style and tone of the magazine. Editors use the mission statement to keep the editorial focused.

How to use it: Tailor your query to fit their mission.

Consider the opening line from the mission statement for Ladies’ Home Journal: “Ladies’ Home Journal is for women who recognize the importance of taking time for themselves.” Now, compare it to the opening line of Family Circle’s mission statement: “Family Circle celebrates today’s family and champions the women at its center.”

Though both magazines serve women with families, each wants a slightly different spin on the material they publish. For example, your pitch about a spa getaway would be better received at Ladies’ Home Journal, while a query about a round-up of historic destinations for families is better suited for Family Circle.

2. DEMOGRAPHICS (a.k.a. “Audience”)

What it is: A snapshot of the magazine’s readers.

How to use it: Slant your query to match the audience.

A publication’s demographics might pinpoint the basics about their audience. You’ll find Taste of Home’s audience defined in terms of age, marital status, college education, employment, etc. Other publications provide much more detail. For example, The Onion knows 52% of their readers drank beer in the last seven days, and roughly a third of them plan to buy a new computer in the next year.

Let’s say you have a fantastic snack recipe. If the magazine has a large percentage of readers with school-aged children, you might pitch your idea as “Easy Afterschool Snacks.” On the flip side, if your target publication has a readership made up of single women with high-powered jobs, you’d pitch “Quick Snacks to Go.”

3. EDITORIAL CALENDAR

What it is: A monthly breakdown of upcoming features and themes.

How to use it: Pitch them what they want AND need.

The editorial calendar is the freelance writer’s crystal ball when it comes to writing pitches. It tells you what the editor needs and when he plans to use it. A quick scan of Reader’s Digest’s editorial calendar shows planned issues about brain power, food, and miracles.

Queries fitting those themes w

AGENT STEPHEN FRASER WORKSHOP RECAP: WRITING EFFECTIVE QUERY LETTERS

by Susan Brody

The most important thing to remember in writing a query letter is to make a great first impression.  The tone should be polite, friendly, and humble, but not self-deprecating.  Whether or not you have been published, you must think of yourself as already being a professional; when you present yourself that way, it becomes who you are.  Believe that your work is worthy of you, and worthy of an audience.  “A good manuscript has a home.”

Be honest.  Strike a balance between gushing (“I love everything you’ve ever done”) and distancing (“To Whom It May Concern”).   Both are equally off-putting.

The purpose of a query letter is to whet the reader’s appetite, not to reveal all.  The letter should not exceed one page.  It must succinctly give a sense of what the book is about.  Begin with identifying the intended audience (age range) and format (PB? YA?).  Follow with a one-sentence distillation of the “essence” of the book.  If you can’t boil it down to one sentence, that might be a sign of a problem.  If you can, you’re helping the marketing department to figure out how to position it.  Try to describe the book by putting it into context, preferably with reference to other books that are household names (e.g., a classic; a blockbuster).  And try to include something “startlingly fresh” – a phrase that will stick in someone’s mind, or a very catchy title.

If you’ve been published before, list books and/or magazine articles, publishers, and dates, to give s sense of where you are in your career.  If not previously published, no need to mention that fact, and certainly no need to apologize for it.  Of course, include your contact information.  And PROOFREAD.  Some agents simply discard letters with typos.

All this being said, “Agents and editors don’t want a great query letter.  They want a great book.”  The role of the letter is to draw attention to the book.  “I can’t remember a single query letter I’ve read.” 

Don’t scare people with “this is a 15-book series.”  Most series start out as just one book.  But if you do envision a series, you need not have completed it, but you do need to have a sense of where it’s going.  If you have a single book, finish it before sending out queries.

Specifics about Stephen:  he reads query letter with the assumption that you are doing multiple submissions.  He answers every query he receives; if you’ve submitted to him and have not heard anything after a month, follow up.  “You deserve an answer.”  Put “NJSCBWI” in subject line (This is for people who attened the conference).  Stephen describes himself as “my own kind of agent.”   Having spent years in publishing, he “knows everyone everywhere.”   In his view, he may not be the most aggressive agent around, but he has good taste, and is persistent and optimistic.  He describes agenting as the best job he’s ever had.

Thank you Susan for writing this recap.  With eight different workshops going on during the eight session times over the weekend, it is easy to feel like you wish you had a clone.

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy

Scratch that. They want to get paid to write essays. Now there’s nothing wrong with wanting to write — and get paid for — essays. However, if you’re an avid reader of popular newsstand magazines, you know that most of them aren’t packed with essays. Many don’t run essays at all; and the magazines that do run one essay each issue, usually on the back page and often from a writer who’s well known to the magazine and/or the reading public.

I like to encourage students and not squash their writerly dreams, so I gently suggest that they turn some of their essay ideas into something I call a “reported essay.” A reported essay reads like a magazine article — you’ve got your lede, your nut graf, original reporting and quotes from sources and experts — but the article includes those elements of essay writing that writers find appealing; the personal anecdotes, funny stories, teaching moments, and/or resolutions to situations that can help other readers.

Here are a couple articles I’ve written that I consider “reported essays”:

Deciding to Have One Child

Cookery Books: Britain’s Gift to America

I could have chosen essay form to detail my decision to limit our family size to one child or written a funny essay about how I travel to England with an empty suitcase to fill with cookbooks, but I’ve grown to love the marriage between personal experience and reportage.

Why should you consider reported essays?

Magazines buy more reported essays than essays.

Go to your local newsstand and flip through a couple consumer magazines. They’re typically filled with stories written by journalists and freelancers who’ve injected a bit of themselves into their articles. These types of articles are staples for a lot of magazines, whereas these same magazines may buy one (or none!) straight essay for each issue. There’s just a bigger market for reported essays over essays with no reporting.

Competition to place essays is fierce.

It’s simple: you’ve got a lot of writers wanting to sell essays and a limited number of outlets that will buy those essays. If you want to sell more work, you need to broaden your horizons.

You can sell a reported essay on proposal.

If you want to sell an essay, you must write the essay first then send it in to the magazine. It’s one of the rare instances where a writer ‘writes the article first” rather than querying for it. Why? You can’t tell the editor, “I’ll write a touching essay about what it meant to find my birth father after 30 years of searching.” He needs to read your 500 words, to feel what you went through during your search, to see how you changed through the experience, and to find some emotional connection to your story that will not only resonate with him, but will elicit an emotional response with his readers. Only by reading the finished product can he learn if your story is, indeed, touching.

If you reslant your idea and position it as a reported essay, however, you can query for it. You might open your query with a brief overview of how you found your birth father, then explain to the editor that your proposed article will show how three other adults fo

When I decided to try to publish my first novel, I went with small publishers, hoping for a more personal experience. A major publisher that shall remain unnamed brought on this decision. The large publishing house had an open call for manuscripts, so I edited, formatted, printed, labeled, and mailed mine. I included a cover letter that I had labored over for hours. I even purchased delivery confirmation so I would know when they received my manuscript. Then I received a rejection notice dated the same day that they had received my novel. It was clear they had not even read it. I was hurt, discouraged, but resolved to try again.

I rewrote my cover letter, using resources I found online, and morphed it into a query letter. The query letter is probably the most important part of the process. It is the first thing an editor looks at when they touch your manuscript.

Several good resources include:

http://www.writing-world.com/basics/query.shtml

http://www.charlottedillon.com/query.html

http://www.agentquery.com/writer_hq.aspx

http://www.underdown.org/slush.htm

I found several publishers on Duotrope.com that dealt with fantasy novels and sent off my query letters. Each publisher had different ways they wanted the manuscript formatted and they had different ways they wanted them sent. I had to tailor each submission to various guidelines, which could be tedious, but not sticking to guidelines is an easy way to get the editor to dismiss your manuscript immediately.

I learned a lot about the submitting process over the course of my first novel. The most important lesson is not to give up. It is easy to get discouraged over rejections, especially when it is obvious that they have not even glanced at your manuscript. Remember that not all publishers are the same. Smaller publishers may give your manuscript more personal attention than a larger one would, so do not be afraid to submit to them, too.

Find out more about Melissa Mickelsen on her Webpage

Read her novel Nighingale

Available at Amazon

FROM PUBLISHERS WEEKLY: “In a world where most humans have a superstitious fear of the elf-like, tree-dwelling anthelai, a half-anthela girl, a rarity considered a demon by the human population, survives the brutal destruction of her home only to be enslaved by the rapacious human Guildmaster Lorcen Caspon. As the mysterious assassin known as the Nightingale, she spreads death and terror until faced by a determined opponent of equal skill: Astin Talros, a general in service to the king. Her struggle to escape Caspon and avenge her family’s death becomes a race against her relentless pursuit by Talros, who, unaware that she acts under compulsion, is sworn to destroy her. Effectively melding briskly-paced action with the internal struggles of both a traumatized young outcast forced into horrific deeds and the wily but honorable Talros. Debut author Mickelsen brings fresh twists and emotional depth to her tightly-written, compelling tale of mercantile politics, interracial conflict, and difficult choices.”

I’m on vacation this week, so I’m reprinting a post that can help you get more work. Enjoy!

I get a lot of assignments — I have to, as I’m the main breadwinner for my family! Since 1997, I’ve written for more than 130 magazines (the vast majority of them multiple times) and close to 30 corporate clients.

Writers often write to me asking why they aren’t getting assignments, and I know they expect me to say, “Oh, if you just did this in your query letters, the assignments would come rolling in.”

Yes: Query letters are important, and you want yours to be great. But they’re hardly the only marketing tactic that should be in the freelance writer’s toolbox. I think that where many writers go wrong is they limit their marketing to just one or two types.

Here are the various tactics I’ve used to get work:

Direct Mail

Guess how I landed clients ranging from Bay State Gas to Pizzeria Uno to Cheshire Medical Center? Through good old-fashioned direct mail. I send a sales letter, and interested prospects e-mail, call, or mail back my reply card. A direct mail packet is something that a potential client can keep in her files for when she needs a writer — as opposed to an e-mail, which is all too easy to delete. Recently, I got an assignment from a prospect who held on to my packet for more than two years.

How you can do it: Interested in trying copywriting yourself — and in doing a direct mail campaign? I recently wrote a guest post for Copyblogger on how I do it.

Twitter

A few months ago, I got a Twitter follow notice from a regional hospital. I sent a direct message saying, “Hey, I’m a freelance writer who writes on health topics. Do you need any help?” The hospital’s Twitter person sent my note along to their marketing person, who asked me for clips. We then had a phone call, and I’m on line to do some web writing work for this hospital.

In the meantime, the marketing person sent my name along to the hospital system’s web guru, who in turn passed it along to the marketing manager at one of their sister hospitals in Virginia. The marketing manager called me, and I landed an assignment worth $3,000.

How you can do it: Keep an eye on your follow notices so you’ll know if someone in a field you write for starts following you on Twitter, and be proactive by following potential clients as well. Send prospects a quick DM letting them know who you are and asking if you can help them. And be sure to keep your Twitter stream clean and professional. I occasionally post about my toddler, but most of my tweets are business-related — no posts about bodily functions or drunken antics.

Referrals

The hospital gig (which came in a roundabout way through Twitter) isn’t the only work I’ve gotten via referrals. One editor of a custom published magazine loved my work, and shared my info with other editors in the group. I’ve now written for four magazines at this company. This has happened at more than one custom publication!

How you can do it: Do kick-ass work for all your clients. Act like a professional, get your work in on time, and write great articles. Oh, and after you’ve gotten to know an editor, ask her to introduce you to other editors in the group.

The Blog

This blog was voted one of the Top 10 Blogs for Writers by Write to Done.

For some reason, this week I got the same question from at least four writers: Should you send your queries to several markets at once, or e-mail to one at a time and wait for a response before sending it along to the next market on your list?

In general, I’m all for sending simultaneous queries.

The reason? Especially when you’re at the beginning of your career and don’t have many editor relationships, you’ll find that editors often take weeks to get back to you — if they get back to you at all. And if that’s the way they work, they certainly can’t expect you to give them an exclusive look at your idea. After all, if you sent to one at a time and had to wait weeks each go-round, your idea could go stale before you had a chance to make a sale.

However, it’s not that simple. Here are some things to consider before deciding whether to send simultaneous submissions:

Do you have a relationship with an editor? If you have a relationship with an editor who would be a good market for your pitch — whether you’ve written for her before or she’s invited you to pitch — send there first and give her a week or two to get back to you. If you don’t hear back after a polite follow-up, send your query along to the rest of the magazines on your list.

Do you have both big and small markets on your pitch list? If you have some dream magazines and some B-listers on your list, you might want to send to the A-list first — because nothing would stink more than selling an idea to a regional pub that pays 10 cents per word and then finding out once it’s too late that your dream magazine wants it.

Do you need a shot of confidence? On the other hand, if you’re new to writing, you may want to send to the easier-to-break-into markets (that is, the smaller pubs) first just because they’re more likely to give you an assignment, or at least a friendly rejection. This does a lot more for your shaky confidence as a newbie than the wall of silence you often get from the national pubs.

Should you come clean with the editor? No — you don’t need to mention in your query that you’re sending to more than one place at once. How you conduct your business is only your concern.

What will you do if two magazines want the story? Let me assure you this is very rare. It’s happened to me only once in 15 years: Family Circle bought my idea, and then a week later Woman’s Day wanted it. I told the editor at Woman’s Day that I had already sold the idea, and she said, “Well, we’ll have to be faster next time.” And I went on to write for both of those magazines.

So that’s what you do: You sell to whoever gets back to you first (assuming you want to sell it to that magazine given the terms of the assignment). If two editors get to you at the exact same time wanting your story, you sell it to the one you like best and tell the other one you already sold it. If the magazines are not competing, you could offer a reslanted version of your idea to the second magazine.

Do you send simultaneous queries? If no, why not? Have you ever had two magazines want the story at the same time? What did you do? [lf]

When agents ask for sample chapters, which chapters should you include? If your strongest chapters fall in the middle, is it OK if I send those? The answer is different for fiction and nonfiction. Read more

I hear it almost every day from the new writers I mentor and teach in my e-course:

• “I don’t have any clips, so how can I break in?”
• “Does this article I wrote for a content mill count as a clip?”
• “My clips are old. Can I use them?”
• “Can’t I just write an article and use that as a clip?”

So even though as one of the Renegade Writers I’m all about breaking rules, I wanted to help aspiring writers by explaining what a clip is — and what it is not — and how you should use it.

Use what you’ve got.

While I’m about to tell you what kinds of pieces make the best clips, I want to preface that by saying you have to use what you’ve got. If all you have is a clip from a content mill, use it. If you haven’t been published anywhere other than your blog, use that. If your only clips are 10 years old — you got it, use ‘em.

I’ve been there. Heck, I got my first assignment — which paid $500 — using as a clip a book review I wrote for the academic journal Language on medieval dialectology. Anything (well, almost anything) is better that nothing.

Clips show more than your writing.

While you can just write an article and use that as a clip, it’s not as good as showing an editor something you’ve actually had published. Why? Because a published clip shows much more than your writing skills — it also shows an editor that you know how to write for publication, that you can write within an assigned word count, and that you can write under deadline.

Essentially, another editor has stamped a seal of approval on your work, making it easier for future editors to take a risk on you.

Don’t bother writing for content mills just to get clips.

Believe me, an editor will not take seriously a clip from a content mill. That’s because there are no editorial gatekeepers…pretty much anyone can write for a content mill, so that fact that you’ve written for one doesn’t indicate that you’re a professional writer or that you understand the editorial process.

Again, if that’s all you have, use it by all means. But don’t think you need to slog through assignments at one cent per word to gain a clip. I’d rather see someone just write up an article and use that as a clip than do it for the benefit of some underpaying content mill.

You don’t have to write for free to get a clip.

Writing for free is a valid and time-honored way to score that first clip. But you don’t have to. I’ve had students break into magazines like SELF and Woman’s Day with no clips. And a multitude of other writers have landed assignments from smaller, but still paying, publications without clips.

And if you do have the hankering to write for free, just to get that first clip fast? Volunteer your writing for a cause you’re passionate about. For example, though I didn’t do it for the clips, I used to write newsletter articles for the SPCA gratis. I’m sure almost any non-profit will be happy to have you — and that way you won’t be writing for free for a publication that will turn around and profit monetarily from your efforts.

Old clips are still clips.

Your clip may be 15 years old, but it still counts as a clip. Chances are you haven’t lo

A couple of weeks ago Susan Johnston brought up a great question in the Comments section of my blog post How to Sell More Articles By Being Yourself: How do I feel about using an editor’s first name in a query versus addressing the editor as Mr./Ms.?

I usually address an editor by first name, but I decided to go right to the source and ask some of my editors what they thought. Here’s what they had to say:

I prefer my first name–Ms. Jones makes me feel old. What might be worse, though, is that I think it makes the writer seems a little too old-school. I still absolutely need e-mails to be professional (as in, no, “Hey Kate, got an idea for you. Let’s do a story on kids!”), but I think using my first name helps a writer balance that professionalism with the conversational, reader-friendly sort of writing I’m looking for even in pitches.
—Editor at a national parenting magazine

Personally I really don’t have a preference. I go through much the same quandary when I have to approach a source for the first time to ask their permission to schedule an interview. Usually I will go with the first name, but on occasion (just by some instinct), I will address my query to Mr. or Ms. Not sure why, but it usually works out just fine.
—Editor at a custom publisher

Safest thing is to use first name. It’s definitely more informal, but so is email. There are plenty of people like me with a first name that can belong to a man or woman. And I get completely turned off by an email addressed to Mr. Smith! Going with first name erases that problem.
— Editor at a health clinic’s magazine

I prefer “Ms.” plus last name because we’re not friends and we don’t have a relationship, but you don’t get deleted for using Dara. But if you use no salutation at all (in order to avoid the whole thing) that’s just weird and I probably will delete you.
—Editor at a magazine for a sporting association

First name, for sure. Salutations are ridiculously formal.
—Editor at a national health magazine

I think first name is appropriate.
—Editor at a restaurant organization’s magazine

So the consensus is that most editors (at least from my small sample) prefer to be addressed by their first name, but even if they don’t, they won’t trash your query if you do so. And if you can’t figure out an editor’s gender, don’t guess…either look up the editor on Google, use the editor’s first name, or use the editor’s first and last name.

Any other editors reading this: How do you feel about being addressed by your first name in a query? And writers: Have you ever made a name snafu in a query? [lf]

This is a guest post by Marla Beck.

Getting stuck sending out your queries or letters of introduction? Time to solve your marketing pitfalls! Follow along and soon you’ll be ready to land better freelance writing assignments.

Pitfall #1: “I hate marketing.”

In six years of coaching freelancers, I’ve never met anyone who resisted the idea of marketing more than Tyler. An experienced journalist, Tyler now earned the majority of her money as a corporate copywriter. Although she was paid to promote the companies she worked for, Tyler was utterly blocked about introducing herself to potential new clients.

“I hate marketing,” she said. “I’m just not comfortable with self-promotion.”

Is it any wonder Tyler couldn’t find the time she needed to land new assignments?

I coached Tyler to learn to make peace with “marketing.” And guess what? She quickly found the time she needed to implement a simple marketing plan. In two-and-a-half months, Tyler landed a yearlong, $2,000/month gig with a brand-new client. Not bad for someone who once hated marketing!

Solution: Transform resistance into action.

The fastest path to landing better assignments is to overcome your resistance to building your business. Here’s how:

1. Identify your fears. I’ve found that writers who resist marketing often do so because they’re scared they’ll make a mistake. They don’t want to come across as awkward or too sales-y. They’re afraid they’ll pester someone with follow-up emails. They don’t think they can write good queries.
2. Learn & practice. If you discover you’re not promoting your work because you’re too scared to market, improve your skills. Then practice. As Linda’s pointed out, all the marketing know-how you need is just a click away. Read blogs like this one. Buy Linda and Diana’s query-writing book or take one of her e-courses. Hire a coach or join a group to support you.
   

   
   Then once you know the basics, get out there and practice. It’s tempting to wait until you’re “perfect” to put yourself out there. But remember: while you’re busy striving for perfection, the writers who land better assignments are busy implementing what they learned. You don’t have to be perfect! Just practice what you’ve learned and course-correct as you go.

Pitfall #2: “I don’t have time to market.”

When I first started coaching Amanda, she was overworked and exhausted. She worked a part-time job and freelanced in the afternoons and evenings. She also had an extensive workout routine and took care of a sick family member. This woman was busy! She planned to leave her part-time job in two months, and Amanda needed her freelancing to support her. With my coaching, she did it.

First I taught Amanda to structure her freelance work sessions, and she began feeling less overwhelmed. Then I showed her ways to chip away at her marketing and income goals without logging more hours. One month Amanda doubled her earnings just by focusing on her billings and invoicing. Another month she challenged herself to write a query a week by working in small, doable work sessions. The result? Amanda’s happily freelancing now…full-time.

Solution: Create a marketing practice that doesn’t overwhe