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