A: Tell my readers about that person that you do go to. What it is about them that makes you go to them again and again?
R: They’re reliable in terms of effort, writing ability and reporting ability. They’re easy to work with, they’re enthusiastic, they get the magazine and they get what we’re after.
Your worst fear as an editor is to run into a train wreck of a story that’s just poorly done and is going to take hours and hours to fix it up. That’s the editor’s worse fear. It just slows you down. So you’re going to go to someone who you know is going to be a low-maintenance or no-maintenance writer, and will turn in a good piece of work.
A: What are some of the best departments to pitch the Writer, as a newbie?
R: With our magazine, you should be aware of the columnists and pretty much stay away from those areas. For example, copywriting, writing for business. But, aside from that, we have a column we call “Off the Cuff” which is casual essays about writing. We try to look at that. We also look at queries for our “Breakthrough” column and our “Get Started” column which is specifically directed at beginning writers.
We're always very interested in good step-by-step craft articles but those typically come from fiction writers with a decent number of publications.
The common denominator is that we're really about instruction, advice, and take away benefits. We don’t go for a lot of naval gazing or a meandering style. We don’t have that kind of space. We like straightforward, conversational writing that provides advice and benefits for developing writers.
A: Many of my readers are just beginning to pitch magazines, and one of the big questions is the balance between the query itself and the idea that the query is presenting. We tend to get caught up in “the perfect query.”
R: They should be thinking I’ve got to sell my idea and myself in the space of three paragraphs, [which] is the general rule. And, at the end, they should be thinking, Well, I'm going to circle around at the end to some specifics about my credentials and my publications. That’s always an essential part of the query. But other than that, you’re selling the idea.
I do have one bit advice I feel pretty strongly about, and we ran a very good article on this by a freelancer named Sharon McDonald. You can use feature-writing techniques to make your query more interesting. You can start that query with an anecdote just as you would a feature. You can use some of that kind of technique to make an interesting query.
I think I probably see 1,000 [queries] a year, and there are many editors out there who see a lot more than that. You want to try to grab them. Grab them with something interesting at the start and then develop it. Use well-chosen facts and maybe a quote or two, and then circle around to your credentials, such as why you’re good to write this article. Maybe do some pre-interviewing to get more research, so you can really shape that thing into an interesting proposal.
A: Is there anything that you wanted to mention about your magazine or mention specifically to this target audience/freelancers?
R: I do see some queries where it’s clear they haven’t spent any time getting to know you with the publication, and that’s the number-one turnoff for an editor. I think anyone who’s done freelancing, including me, you feel this temptation to just fire off something and not do the prep work of studying the publication a bit. Just take a breath, spend some time with the publication, and get a sense of the tone, the types of articles that they and do not do, the audience. Do they love sidebars? Do they not love sidebars? If they love sidebars, you might score some bonus points if you just mention that briefly in your query. The broader point is just know the publication.
Moving Forward
A: You’re in a unique position as an editor. Have you seen any big changes in the writing world from your vantage point?
R: The first thing that comes to mind is certainly something any former newspaper person would mention--utter dismay at what appears to be a dismantling of print media in terms of newspapers. You also start to wonder about magazines and print media in general. I think there’s fundamental questions about what is going on with print media in the digital era. Nobody knows where this is all going to come out. It feels like we're living in historic times. It’s really interesting and scary at the same time.
There’s a lot of guessing going on and there’s certainly a lot of new emphases at magazines on website development. We really emphasize our website now and I think most magazines would say the same thing.
R: The other thing maybe a little closer to home for our readers [is] what it means for book publishing. It appears that self-marketing is getting put on the writer, which I’ve always found rather amazing. It seems to be even stronger now.
The effects of the economy have to be mentioned, too. It’s not like we just lived through some minor recession, this is maybe the worst economic climate since the Depression. So how is that all going to shake out with opportunities for books and effects on magazines and literary journals? There’s a lot going on right now. It’s pretty striking.
A: Is that making it an exciting time for you?
R: It’s exciting and sometimes a little scary. You do have to learn new tricks. We have to adapt to the changes and learn some new tricks.
