Writing and Publishing News

Are there specific magazines you’d like to write for? Do you yearn to see your articles published in a particular home and garden, parenting, regional, religious or business magazine, for example? Perhaps you want to publish in this magazine for the prestige or the money. Or maybe you want the publicity this magazine can offer for your book.

Whatever your reason for wanting to publish in this magazine, if the editors accept submissions, you should be able to break in. All you need is an article that is timely, appropriate and well-written. After studying each magazine’s submission guidelines and before writing the article, I suggest that you scrutinize the magazines themselves. You may be quite familiar with the magazine, but have you ever truly examined it with an editorial eye? For example:

• Study the articles in order to understand the style and focus the editors prefer.

• Review the ads so you know not to write an article that might offend or counter the advertisers’ messages.

• Read Letters-to-the-Editor to learn what readers are asking for, commenting on, interested in, etc.

• Peruse back issues (archives sometimes appear online) to discover what articles similar to yours have appeared and the focus of these articles. If you see an article similar to the one you want to write, you may need to change the scope and focus of your article.

• See if you can discover a theme running through the various issues and match your article to the appropriate issue. Some editors post an editorial calendar so writers know when to pitch certain topics.

I see a lot of articles by authors hoping to promote their books and writers wanting to start freelancing for magazines. Among them, I see many misdirected articles that will never make it to publication. The main mistakes I see among those new to the world of article-writing is:

• Poor writing skills.

• Lack of understanding about the concept of an article and its purpose.

• Writing the wrong article for the wrong publication.

Folks, successful article-writing is not a matter throwing a few words together on a subject you adore and expecting to get it published in your first choice of magazines. As you can see, it takes skill, study, thought and the willingness to adhere to guidelines.

Tomorrow I will talk about successfully earning a living or promoting your book by writing for small to medium-size publications.

For help with your next article consider reading my book, “A Writer’s Guide to Magazine Articles,”
http://www.matilijapress.com.

Sign up for my article-writing course: http://www.matilijapress.com/course_magarticles.htm

When my primary writing work involved articles, I always carried a camera and a notepad to every event and on every outing. I still do. While I’m not as enmeshed in article-writing as I once was, I continue the practices and the thought processes I adopted back then.

Yesterday, for example, I attended a cat show. About halfway through the day, I realized that I was automatically forming article ideas in my head. As I observed, assimilated, absorbed, evaluated and learned, potential article topics came to mind.

If you write articles for publication or would like to, it helps if you can train your mind to see the article potential in the activity, situation, innuendo, etc. you are observing or involved in. Start by viewing each and every aspect of your experience as a potential article. Here are some tips:

• Look for the story in everything around you. Yesterday, I became aware of cat breeds that I have never seen before and I am pretty sure that the standards for some of the more common breeds are changing because the cats’ looks are changing. Both of those observations, with adequate research, could be expanded into articles.

• Listen in on conversations. I overheard a couple of cat breeders discussing some new regulations or policies with which they were not pleased. This might be an area of interest to other breeders, thus worth an article in a cat magazine.

• I also caught part of a discussion among visitors. They wondered about the judging criteria. An interview with a couple of judges could result in an article or even a booklet or pamphlet for folks who like to attend cat shows, but who don’t understand how the cats are judged.

• The huge array of cat items for sale prompted my idea for a review of various homemade cat foods, the best cat toys for encouraging agility, toys that entertain cats while the owner is away, favorite cat beds and so forth.

• While watching the people who brought cats to show, I began to wonder who they are, what prompts them to want to show their cats, how far they travel to shows, etc. I think an interview with a serious cat breeder and then someone who just shows household pets would make for interesting reading.

• And what about the judges. Most of them at the show yesterday were men. How do they get started as judges? What do they get out of it? Do they judge just certain types of cats or do they need to know the various points of several breeds? I’d be interested in reading this article.

• As I drove home to my own little cat menagerie, I thought about how Max, Lily and Sophie would fare in the show ring. These cats don’t even like getting in the carrier or riding in the car, let alone being handled by strangers and leered at by cooing cat lovers. I wondered how one trains or chooses cats to endure this type of life. Now that’s another article idea.

Where are you going next? To a concert, sophisticated gala event, wine tasting, chili cook-off, charity walk/jog, talent show, street painting exhibit, haunted house tour, walk on the beach, to visit a nursing home, car show, class reunion, the zoo, a playground…? If you are interested in writing articles for magazine, don’t go alone. Carry your camera, notepad and an open, creative mind with you. And plan to score at least one article out of the experience.

Not only could you make a little money selling your article, the event or activity could be a write-off.

http://www.patriciafry.com
http://www.matilijapress.com

Would you like to start contributing articles to magazines and ezines, but you don’t know how to get started? Are you working on a nonfiction book and you need to build your platform—your credibility, your reach in that topic? Good for you! Here’s what I suggest:

• Consider the audience for your book. Who are they, where are they, what publications do they read and why?

• Study some of these magazines, ezines, newsletters and find out what they present that you could contribute to and what’s missing that you could offer.

• Note the types of articles the various publications use—essays, reporting articles, how-to, informational, bulleted, interview, profile, new product or first person, for example. How many words do they typically publish? Not all publications are the same, nor do they use the same type, style and size articles. Study and follow Writers’ Guidelines for each mag/newsletter.

• Write articles that are useful and informative, not self-serving or advertorial.

• Provide your bio at the end of each article including your name, area of expertise and title of your book (where appropriate). Here’s an example, “Megan Smith is a hang-gliding expert living in Spokane. Watch for her upcoming book, ‘Hello Sky’ (High Flying Books). Contact Megan at megans@dot.net” Or “John Rancher has been farming for 25 years in Illinois. He is also the author of several articles on farming and a new book, ‘Grow What You Want to Eat and Sell the Rest,’ www.rancherfarmingbooks.com.”

Many of the people who are interested in your articles will be eager to read your book. The more articles they see from you, the more credible you seem to your readers and the more likely they will buy your book.

I suggest that you start your article-writing campaign before your book is a book and continue it for as long as you want to sell copies of your book. The most difficult thing about article-writing for many people is coming up with article ideas. This is covered thoroughly in both my book and my course. If you want to know more about coming up with ideas for numerous articles over time, leave a comment here and I’ll try to accommodate you in a future blog post.

In the meantime, for more about how to get involved with article-writing, read my book A Writer’s Guide to Magazine Articles< /em>.
http://www.matilijapress.com