Tag-Archive for ◊ women’s magazines ◊

23 Jun 2011 Development Pubs vs. Women’s Pubs
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While I am able to easily break into development kind of publications, I haven’t been able to break into magazines, etc. Is sending a query for magazines like Marie Claire very different from sending it for Women’s eNews? I never seem to get a response from women’s magazines. What do you think can be the reason?

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I can think of several actually. Consider this:

1. Development publications of the sort you’re talking about are very different from magazines in that they’re more like newspapers, not only in the way that they’re written, but in the stories that they publish. Even the same story for both Marie Claire and a publication like Women’s eNews would be very different. So if you’re querying both these publications, your queries will need to reflect that you understand the style and substance of the publication in question. For Marie Claire-style publications, they’ll need to be longer, meatier, and more in the style of feature than news report.

2. Newspapers and news magazines finish work on stories within days. You file your story today, it’s published two days or at most a week later. Magazines, well, they can take years. That’s right. Sometimes major magazines (especially in the United States or maybe only in the United States) will sit on your queries, then your first draft, and then on your final draft for months on end. So in order for your story to be published in one of these magazines, it better have a long shelf life. If it’s not relevant six months from now, it’s not a Marie Claire story.

3. Development publications focus on just that– development. Marie Claire and other magazines have maybe one or two pages for that sort of thing, so clearly, it’s going to be a lot easier for your development stories to sell quicker and more frequently to the newsy type pubs. Plus, don’t forget, newsy pubs publish daily, magazines only monthly. So there’s a lot less space and the editors are therefore, a lot more choosy about what they’ll publish.

4. Finally, there’s a lot more competition to get your story published at a publication like Marie Claire (for the purpose of making my point, let’s assume we’re talking about MC, USA) than there is at Women’s eNews. Because newsstand magazines have bigger budgets, they’ll happily fly over reporters from America to India to cover a story, pay for their lush hotel and cover the cost of their food. So not only are you competing with writers in your own backyard, you’re competing with writers who’re intimately familiar with the American reader and in what context she views a story. In addition, since these magazines run fewer features of the sort, they already have a reliable stable of freelancers, national or international, that they trust and might frequently call upon.

So what’s a new-to-them freelancer to do? How do you break into these publications with so much competition? It’s easy (okay, not really). You find a stellar idea that they (or their stable of reporters) have likely not already heard of and you write the most brilliant query letter that you can. Then you cross your fingers and hope they see the same potential in your work. That’s all there is to it. Good luck!

02 Jul 2009 Eye on The Big Leagues
Author:  |  Category: Ask Mridu  | Tags: , ,  | Leave a Comment

You said you had no contacts when you began, so how did you start getting article assignments? I know that low-end publications are perhaps more open to new/unpublished writers, but I know that it can still be extremely difficult to land assignments without them.

I have several published clippings, but they’re only through local newspapers. What would be the best way for me to start getting paid assignments despite not having a huge amount of published articles and certainly none in the high-end publications? I was curious how you tackled the catch-22 of needing assignments to get experience but having a hard time getting assignments without much experience. I’ve heard looking into trade journals/magazines is sometimes the easiest route.
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Right, most writers do actually start out smaller, but that’s not a rule. I know of several writers who started out writing their first articles for major national magazines. One writer I know got her first assignment from Cosmopolitan, another wrote her first-ever article for Brides. One even got her start with The New York Times. I’m sure there are many others as well.

The most important thing to remember is that more than your writing (which has to be top-notch, no doubt), you’re pitching an idea. So if you can bring an editor an idea that gets her excited enough to assign it, you’re good to go. You do have some clips already, so there’s no reason why you can’t start pitching the big leagues right away.

(I’ve laid out a lot about my experience with finding markets, writing queries, etc, in these entries.)

As for contacts, the more you work, the more people you’ll meet. Like I said, I didn’t have any contacts either, and while it’s absolutely helpful to know people in the industry to get a kick-start, it is by no means a necessity. The way I got assignments was simple: I found great story ideas, I looked up publications where I thought they could be published, I found the names of the editors and their contact information, and I queried them. Sure, initially I had more rejections than acceptances, and I didn’t pitch the nationals for a long time, but there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t.

I’m not convinced that trade magazine clippings do anything to impress consumer magazine editors simply because of the difference in the nature of reporting, writing style, and the way the assignments are handled. Of course, it does prove to an editor that you can write, but you know what– so does your query letter.

I’m also not convinced that you have to work for smaller publications before making the big leagues. Yes, the clippings help, and sure, I’ve heard stories about editors who won’t even look at the work of an unpublished writer, but in the end, no matter how many major magazines or newspapers you’ve written for, if you don’t have a story idea that appeals to the editor and works well in her magazine, as well as the reporting chops to pull it off, no amount of prior success is going to help you.

Also, you really have to find your niche. Let’s say you want to write about health and fitness. Well, there are hundreds of writers who already write about health and fitness. What sets you apart?