You’ve Finally Been Published--Now What?

Writers are an odd lot. Some write prolifically while others write one or two successful pieces and then nothing. Getting published for the first time is a tremendous goal. It takes a lot of time and energy. But afterwards, many writers feel let down. Why is that?

Most likely it’s because they focused so much on that one piece, whether article or short story, and not on all the information they gathered for it. But a professional writer knows that information is his or her biggest asset.

Many beginning writers get published for the first time, then turn to a completely different subject, marketing that to a different editor or publisher instead of building a relationship with the first.

Writing is not just about words, it’s about relationships. No matter what sort of writing you do, you need to build on past successes. If you begin at the top, you have no where to go but down, so it’s important to begin slowly and build relationships with your editors. This can be either by getting to know what a particular editor wants or building on new contacts.

For some writers, perhaps you, that first published piece is a fluke. It may not have been totally an accident—most likely you sent out numerous queries or finished manuscripts—the piece succeeded. But more than likely the piece succeeded in the wrong market. Sure, you were ecstatic about getting anything published, but it happened for the wrong reasons.

To get your career started, you need to build on that first publishing success, even if it happened in the wrong market. Editors want to know about your track record—they want to see clips of published pieces. But if you don’t have any, you’re as bad off as if you apply for a loan without any credit history.

As soon as you achieve publishing success, immediately send several similar ideas to that same editor. In fact, while you’re waiting to hear back from that publication, assemble a list of salable ideas that you can send along later. While this publication may not be your ideal, it’s better that you get more pieces published in an established market instead of trying to forge new ones.

Perhaps the editor liked your writing style or perhaps your subject. What probably happened was that the editor liked the timeliness of your subject. Your subject was right on target, even if your writing skills may not have been up to par. Take a serious look at that market and send the editor some other ideas.

It’s important to build a rapport with your editors. Normally, they don’t remain in their positions very long. Editors flit from publication to publication about as fast as hairdressers do from salon to salon. If you have a good relationship with an editor, he or she will often take you with them to their new publication. It’s usually an upgrade to a better position for them, resulting in a marketing upgrade for you, which can mean higher pay and more prestige.

Success as a writer is all about climbing the proverbial ladder. You’ve got to do it one rung at a time.

Where Do You Start to Publish Online

There are plenty of markets online. Many of them focus on small niches, which makes your chances of getting published even greater if you have a specialty. You won’t find a richer resource of publications anywhere that’s easier to access than online. However, you do need to approach submitting to online publications a little differently than you would submitting to print publications.

The Internet is growing. More people are spending more time reading online, which increases the chances of your work being read. But those who do read articles online, read about specific things. While the number of specialized print magazines has grown dramatically in the last two decades, Web sites have always been tightly focused, thus attracting specific readers—readers who are interested in the information they have to offer about their particular subject.

Good Web sites and e-zines are constantly growing their readership. Perhaps you’ll get lucky and a small ezine that only 100 people read a month accepts your work. A few months later that publication might be read by 1,000 people a month. It’s not unusual for readership to increase by over 1,000 readers in one month. Remember that the Internet is also known as the World Wide Web for a reason. If your work appears online, people from other countries who might never have read your work may do so online.


Writing for Web sites is a little different than writing for print. Generally, you’ll want to write your articles in the second person. While thousands may eventually read your work, you’re dealing with one reader at a time, so addressing them using the pronoun “you” in the second person instantly makes a connection.

However, selling to Web sites and e-zines is essentially the same as selling to print markets. Start by studying the markets. While there are a few databases that list online markets, you’ll actually be better off searching for them yourself. First you need to find them. Begin by searching for the subject you’re interested in writing about as if you were a reader interested in reading about that same subject. Google is the best search engine out there. While others may target specific subject areas, Google literally covers the world in its searches.

Another source you can try is the Directory of E-zines.

Create a special folder entitled, “Online Writing Markets,” then as you discover potential sites and e-zines, bookmark them and save them into this folder. Don’t be too particular at first. If you search for a specific subject, you’ll find what you need. Once you have found a number of sites which may be possibilities, go back and study them one by one.

How good your results will be depends on your search. To search for a specific word or phrase, enclose it in parentheses. Go back to the ones that look like they may be good markets and notice how often they’re updated. If a site sits idle for a couple of months, it’s a good bet the owner isn’t paying much attention to it. On the other hand, if a site is updated frequently or on a specific schedule much like a print magazine, then it’s a sure bet they’ll need plenty of content to keep going. Also, notice if articles on the site have been written by different people. If they’re all written by the same person, move on, because that site won’t be accepting other writers—at least for now. In print this is known as “in house” while online if could be referred to as “on site.” You may want to check back later because the owner may begin using other writers.

Once you know which markets may be good for your work, find out if they pay anything and how much. Also, determine if they have any writer’s guidelines, and if so, download a copy.

Remember, all your transactions should be electronic. If a site or e-zine owner says your should send your work by regular mail, cross them off your list immediately. You’re working in the 21st century when smartphones and computers connect many Americans.

Submitting queries for your article is the same as for print. The form is the same and so is the content. The only difference is that you’ll be sending your queries by Email included within the message itself. The same goes for the text of your articles. Make sure you send them in as a Microsoft Word document. You can use any wordprocessing program you wish to prepare them, but you must use a universal program like MS Word to send them. To be on the safe side, send your text as an attachment in MS Word 2003 or higher.

And just as with print, keep tract of your submissions. While your Email program’s “Sent” folder will do that, it’s a good idea to keep a record of your submissions in your computer, then you can easily go back to check on the status of each article submission.

NEXT WEEK: Promoting Your Online Work

Mastering the Possibilities

For years, Mastercard brought in customers with the now-famous slogan, “Master the possibilities.” You can also apply it to your freelancing career. But with freelancing it’s less about using your credit card than figuring out how to find outlets for your work.

Today’s publishing environment offers a wealth of possibilities. It used to be that freelancers had only the print world of magazines and newspapers to choose from when searching for markets. Now that rather closed market has been expanded to include all sorts of publications, both print and digital.

Readers resisted the digital publications for quite a while, but the appearance of e-readers and tablets like the Kindle and Nook gave readers an infinite number of choices.

Writers, too, were a bit hesitant to write for digital markets because most of them didn’t pay. Unfortunately, many still don’t. But breaking in is a lot easier digitally. You can easily study past issues of an online magazine or Web site just be searching for it. Searching offers another advantage—you can see easily see what subject matter is trending. You’re shots in the dark will be fewer. 

Before you go searching, however, you have to figure out exactly what type of writing you want to do. Are you planning to write articles for publication, either in print or online or both? Or are you planning on writing mostly books, using shorter pieces to promote them? And while both require the same writing skills, each requires a different mind set and marketing know how.

As little as 20 years ago, all you had to do was send your pieces to publications that might print them and you’d get paid—maybe not very much, but you would get something. Since there weren’t very many publications or writers, competition wasn’t as keen. But with the advance of technology and the creation of the Internet, all that changed. The publishing world has exploded with what seems an endless list of possibilities.

Unfortunately, just as there are many more opportunities to get published, so are there many more, especially online, that don’t pay anything. For at least the first 10 years, readers and writers looked at the Internet as a chaotic medium for amateurs. Publishers who did have online publications had very low budgets, so they didn’t pay for articles. And while they were a good way to build up your publishing clips, you can’t live on non-paying markets.

With the ease of online publishing and self-publishing through e-books, many more would-be writers are finding it easier to get published, even if they have to do it themselves, thus by-passing the hurdles of the traditional route.

A good way to start out and get your work out there is to write a weekly blog. When blogs first began, the recommendation was to publish a blog daily. But a weekly blog becomes more like a column and readers will follow it if you offer them information that they can use.

While you’re blog starts to build a following, you can study one of the annual market guides—Writer’s Market or Literary Marketplace.

The first on the list, Writer’s Market, published by Writer’s Digest Books, has been around since 1921 and is the least expensive with a list price of $50, although you can purchase it online directly from Writer’s Digest for $30. You can also get it by monthly subscription. It features over 8,000 listings of newspaper and magazine markets, book publishers, including small presses, playwriting and screenwriting markets, and even those for greeting cards. Each listing gives you the information you need to see if your work will fit. And while there are many markets in which your work will be a good match, there are 10 times as many that it will not. And while the book has it’s good points, it offers a lot of markets that just don’t pay well or not at all. Plus, it’s so widely used that many of the publications listed get overwhelmed with submissions.

Literary Marketplace claims it’s the “ultimate insider’s guide” to the publishing industry. For a whopping $360 for first-time buyers, it ought to be. It offers 54 sections in which it organizes publishers, agents, advertising agencies, associations, distributors, and events. It features twice the number of listings as Writer’s Market, but concentrates mostly on book publishing. Since its cost is prohibitive, you’ll have to use it at your local library.

Whether you use one or the other or both of these annuals will depend on how often you’re repeatedly writing for certain markets, how good you are at selling spin-off material, and where you wish to focus your publishing efforts each year.
                                       
As you progress in your freelancing career, you’ll find more markets that aren’t listed in the above annuals. Publishers of all kinds choose whether they want to be published in them. Many refuse because doing so opens them up to receiving tons of correspondence from too many wannabee writers who have neither the skill or talent to write well. They prefer to be more selective. Also, new technologies create new markets. In the last five years many opportunities have opened up for educational and recreational material for home and school computers.

Because editors play musical chairs and their requirements change regularly, it’s a good idea to use the latest edition of each of the annuals. It’s important to know the exact name, spelling, title, etc., of a publication’s editor. If you’re going to impress editors, you must get their names right.

In the case of Writer’s Market, you can check out last year’s edition from the stacks at your library, find what publications look good, and make a list of them, then go back to the library and find those on your list in the latest edition in the reference section and note the changes. Because of the high cost of Literary Marketplace, you’ll have to do all your work using the reference edition at the library.

Once you've decided on a specialty, you should subscribe to the best publications in your chosen field, or track them down regularly wherever you can. If you’re serious about book publishing, then you’ll want to read Publishers Weekly regularly at your local library or online.

Whether markets appear to be a broadening or a row of locked doors is entirely up to you, your energies, ambitions, and skills as a writer, promoter, and, most importantly, a salesperson.

Writing Your Way Out of a Slump

The writing business can have its ups and downs. If you’ve been successful at any time in your writing career, you know the rush you get when things are going your way. But what about the times when there’s little or no work or when you just feel empty? How do you get yourself going again or at least maintain some sort of status quo?

Too many writers only look forward to the next article or story. And if you’ve been writing books, the next book. But sometimes you put so much energy into moving forward that your mind just stops and says, “Wait a minute. I need a break.” This especially happens after working on a long book project where the writing adrenaline has been pumping hard for weeks or months.

To get yourself back on track after taking a break or when your motivational power is at its lowest ebb, try looking back. Whether you know it or not, you’ve amassed an incredible amount of information as well as product inventory. What about all those articles or short stories you’ve got in your files that have been published once. And don’t forget the ones you sent out numerous times only to be rejected each time.  Recycling that information or those pieces in your files may just be the answer.

The simplest form of recycling is to sell reprints. This is easy money. All you have to do is find new markets for pieces you have laying around. It used to be that these had to be secondary markets, but in today’s hodge-podge publishing world, you can sell anything to anyone as long as the piece has been idle for some time. In fact, you may want to freshen up a piece before sending it out or in the case of an article, slant it to a different readership. Doing so makes the piece a whole new product.

Another way of recycling is to rewrite a piece completely. This could even be done to a short story that you gave up on a while back. Since you haven’t really looked at it in a while, you may see why it didn’t sell in the first place. You may even consider writing other stories along the same lines to produce a series based on the same theme.

Redoing an article is somewhat different. Articles can be updated, even ones written 30 years ago, as long as the topic is still relevant. Or perhaps the topic is even more relevant today than when you first wrote it. Take the subject of solar energy. Solar technology is finally at a point that average homeowners are asking about it and seeking special grants and financing to get it installed. When you first wrote about it, it may have been just coming to the public’s attention and was super expensive, which limited the publishing potential for your article.

If you write non-fiction, look to trade publications. While they don’t pay as much as consumer publications, they usually need more articles. You can turn articles you’ve written into marketable pieces once again.

As with Mastercard, master the possibilities. Take parts of articles and combine them into new ones. Or expand sidebars you once wrote into shorter full articles. Editors love shorter pieces, so they have a better chance of getting published.

And while you’re searching through your inventory, you may run across an idea for another book which eventually will put you back in the running. Whatever you do to get yourself out of a writing slump, keep it short. Don’t get involved in lengthy projects. Work with what you have. You’ll be amazed at what develops.

Today’s Rollercoaster of Freelancing

Remember the days when rollercoasters were the most fun ride in an amusement park. The cars crept slowly up the incline, seemed to hesitate for a moment, then gravity took hold and they plunged to the depths, riders screaming all the way.

Today, the cars still plunge, the riders still scream, but at ever-increasing, sometimes dizzying, speeds. Believe it or not, the same thing is happening to freelance writing.

Technology has taken rollercoasters to literally new heights with more curves and many more screams. It has done the same to freelance writing. Since the 1990s, computers have changed the way freelancers do business. They’ve allowed writers to work anywhere and find information on practically any subject in seconds. But those same computers have also given editors an extra edge that previously only freelancers could provide them. You’d think all this technology would provide loads of publishing opportunities for writers, but unfortunately, the opposite is true.

Sure, there are loads of additional opportunities for writers, like blogs and ebooks, but most of these pay little or nothing. And as a freelance writer, you can’t live on that.

Technology has also cut into traditional freelance markets. And while communication happens in an instant today, there are more writers out there than ever before—all trying to make a go of it as freelancers. That number also includes all those editors and staff writers who lost their jobs because of publications closing.  So even if you think you’ve sent an idea to an editor quickly, someone else will have sent the same idea faster and gotten there first.

Freelancers used to use the U.S. Mail to not only send queries with ideas, but also finished manuscripts. Today, if you don’t use some sort of electronic form of communication, you’re out of luck. However, there are still some editors who haven’t adapted to 21st-century communication and insist writers send everything by snail mail.

In today’s freelance writing environment, writers experience higher highs and lower lows. When they fall, they fall hard. So much today depends on the idiosyncracies of technology.

For instance, one writer developed a long-standing regular gig writing content for Web sites.  The same person, his biggest client, owned a group of sites. He began pulling some sneaky tricks, trying to get more hits on Google. Google discovered this and pulled all of the client’s sites from its listing which effectively knocked out his sites, putting the freelancer out of work.

Because many people get their news from the Internet and T.V., the newspaper market, which provided many freelancers with bread-and-butter work, is virtually dead.  And while there may seem to be more magazines available today, many specialize in one subject. And a specialty market will only support a limited number of publications.

This Could be the Year

Do you know your Chinese horological sign? Why not look it up right now. This year is the Year of the Sheep. The Chinese are very superstitious people. Most won’t do anything important until they consult their daily horoscope. Your Chinese horological sign—Monkey, Pig, Tiger, Snake, Rooster, Rat, Rabbit, Horse, Dog, Ox, Dragon, or Sheep —comes around every 12 years from the year your were born. For some people, those years turn out to be the best in their lives. Is this your year? If so, it could also be the year you get published. There shouldn’t be anything holding you back, but for many beginning writers, the fear of getting published overwhelms them.

You’ve probably been writing for several years if not longer. During that time, you looked ahead to the day your dream of getting published will become a reality. So why haven’t you been published yet? You’ve slaved over what you consider your best work, but each time you send a piece out to a publication, it comes back with a vague rejection letter or Email, if the publication even returns it to you.

As the New Year moves forward, it’s time for you to take the bull by the horns, as the old saying goes, and make a concerted effort to get something—anything—published. Make that your primary goal for 2015. And if you’ve already been published, try to get more pieces published in better markets.

Fear can be a mind-numbing thing. It takes hold of every part of your body. It prevents you from thinking of new ideas. It stifles your creativity. It hinders you from acting logically when sending out your work to publications. Do you get shivers down your spine each time you hit the “Post” button on Facebook? Just imagine what it will be like when you finally publish a print book or ebook.

Writing for the public is like speaking in public. Either way, you bare your soul, then sit back and wait for all to judge you. So how can you take control of this gigantic fear and get something published?

Write with a single person or reader in mind. This could be a friend, a member of your family, or someone you know only slightly. Write to them and for them. Speak to them with your words. Talk directly to them.  Forget about the rest of society. If what you write is good, the rest will jump on board soon enough.

As far as publication goes, begin with a small audience. Small publications are far less restrictive and their readerships are far less demanding than those of the big markets. They’ll support you as you improve your writing skills. Too many aim for the best magazines or look up to bestselling authors. In writing, you have to start at the bottom and work your way up. Forget those dreams of sudden fame—they’re fleeting at best.

Get over the idea of perfection. Most beginning writers freeze up when they think that everything they write needs to be perfect. Perfection is a subjective thing. It’s all in the eye or mind of the reader. Let’s face it, not everyone will think your work is great. And that’s okay.

Every writer has something to say—even you. And what you say may just help someone. Always think of that when you’re writing. You learn by making mistakes and sharing those mistakes with your readers.

And just for one moment, forget what other people may think of your work. It’s what you think of it that matters most. Remember, there are other writers out there fighting off their fear as well. By attempting to overcome your fear of publication, you’ll become a better writer.

So You Want to Write a Book

Is your goal as a writer to write a book and get it published? Do you think that doing so will instantly propel you to success? Does writing a book say “Look at me. I’m a writer?” If you answered yes to all three questions, then you better consider doing something else besides writing.

Writing isn’t a game. It isn’t a way to gain popularity. What is it is a form of communication. If you can write well, you can communicate well. And communicating well is the secret to success as an author—a person who writes books.

Writing wannabees see those celebrity writers who make the news or the New York Times Bestseller List and want to be just like them. They dream of writing a hit best seller and having instant success. That happens very rarely and when it does it’s a combination of lots of luck and perhaps a good book.

For all the good books published each year, there are over 10 times as many bad ones. Just because a book gets published doesn’t mean that it’s going to be bought, and more importantly, read.

And to get readers to read your book, you need to have a solid marketable idea. Just having something to say isn’t enough. You have to make sure there are people out there that want to read what you write. So before you do anything else, you have to do some market research to find out if there are other books on the shelves like the one you plan to write. If there are, how many are there? If not, why aren’t there any? If the market is already flooded with similar books, the chances of your book even getting published are slim. If there’s no interest in your subject, that may also ring the death knell to your book idea.

But getting a good marketable idea is only the beginning. Do you have the advanced writing skills to write a book? Also, do you have the organizational skills to put one together. If you plan one of those “write-a-book-in-a-month” marathons, you’ll be sadly disappointed. Sure you can write it and publish is as an ebook, but will it be good enough to bring in more than a few dollars?

Writing a book is a major project. Perhaps that’s why so many writers start one and never finish it. It takes a chunk out of your life. It’s all consuming. You’ll be thinking about when you’re bathing, when you’re driving, when you’re sleeping. It will overwhelm you at times.

Instead of starting out by writing a book, try something more manageable, like an article or a short story. Publish a few of them and then, and only then, should you consider writing a book. You’ll make more money writing shorter pieces anyway. For the amount of time it takes to write a book, it’s a poor investment unless Oprah Winfrey features your book on her show or you just happen to get on the New York Times Bestseller List. You most likely have a better chance at riches by winning the lottery.

Breaking the Bubble

Have you dreamed of quitting your 9-5 job and becoming a freelance writer? Sure, you have—and so have a lot of others, but only a few ever act on it. Have you ever wondered why?

Linda Formichelli, author of Write Your Way Out of the Rat Race, recently posted a blog for Writer’s Digest in which she extolls the virtues of quitting your day job to take up writing as a career. And while she touches briefly on a few of the negative points, she mostly presents a rosy picture of this transition. And why shouldn’t she? After all, she’s promoting her book, published by Writer’s Digest Books, on this very subject.

But there are a lot of pins, needles, and knives out there that will try to break your dream bubble before you even get started.

To break into freelance writing, you have two choices—literally jump right in by quitting your day job one day and beginning your writing career the next (definitely NOT recommended), or you can plan ahead for a smoother transition.

There’s more to making dreams come true than just wishing them so. Formichelli mentions feeding your family several times in her blog. But she doesn’t clarify what that means. First, how many people are in your family? Feeding them is only the tip of the iceberg. What about clothing, and medical and dental care?

Let’s face it, you have a better chance of succeeding in freelancing if you’re single. No, you shouldn’t divorce your spouse. But buying for one, you’ll eat less food, use less fuel in both your car and home, and need fewer clothes. Unfortunately, you’ll have to pay for your own healthcare now that you’re not working for someone else.

You may counter this by saying that if you’re married, you can add in your spouse’s income. That’s fine if you’re both working 9-5 jobs with a definite income, but as a freelancer, you income will be spotty, especially for the first few years. Will your spouse be willing to provide all the income for your family?

Few people are truly passionate about their jobs. Those who are find real satisfaction in working every day. If you’re planning to write full-time, you better well be passionate about writing. Otherwise, it will end up as just another job—albeit a job with LOTS of headaches.

Can you visualize your life in 25 years? Will you still be as passionate about writing then as you are now? There will be ups and downs. Writers experience burnout just like everyone else. Are you going to be able to deal with it? While your current boss may be demanding some or all of the time, he or she is the one ultimately responsible for keeping their business afloat. When you work for yourself, you shoulder all the responsibility.

But shouldering all the responsibility isn’t all bad. As a freelancer, you’ll have to power to control what you do. You’ll be able to choose your markets. However, there may be times when all your markets collapse at the same time. You lose all your income overnight. While you may think of giving up, what about feeding your family? If you have others that are dependent on you, you may have to think twice about giving it all up and returning to the rat race.

And while your income as a freelancer can be unlimited, the reality is that a writer can only work so many hours in a day or week. You can’t work 24 hours a day, no matter how much money you think you can make. Only a few freelancers ever see the big bucks. Luck has a lot to do with it. Most earn less than they ever could working for someone else, expect possibly working for a fast food chain on minimum wage. There will be times when you’ll be earning less than minimum wage. And don't forget the benefits like paid healthcare and contribution to a retirement account.

So while freelance writing may seem glamorous from the outside, once you’re on the inside, it’s a whole different story. Think carefully before you take the leap.

CAUTION! Hazards Ahead

As you proceed in your freelance writing career, you’ll come upon many hazards. Some of these are writing related, some market related, and others personal. Some of the main ones include the predators looking to use published writers for their own gains, the lure of cheap commercialism, the perils of success, and loneliness and fatigue, both mental and physical.

Other hazards come and go, such as market fluctuations, natural disasters, and legislation. As a working writer, you’ll have to get used to living with them all and continue to write.

One of the most frequent hazards concern pay. A market to which you frequently contribute falls on hard times and before you know it, the publication falls behind in payments to you. They still want material and promise to pay you as soon as things get better. While this may sound good, it’s really the death rattle of a publication trying to stay afloat.

And then you’ll run across someone who loves your work but can’t pay you. You’re not in business to give your products away, but, on the other hand, will this freebie possibly lead to some paying work? It’s a chance you may have to take. To turn this around, you may want to search out some Web sites that need content that you can provide. While they most likely won’t pay anything, they could lead to other work because of the promotion you’ll get from them. In this case, you’re in control.

Another hazard you’ll face from time to time is a lack of ideas. Try to stay ahead of this one by stockpiling ideas as you get them. Write them down or use an app for your smartphone to record them. You never know when they may come in handy. Chances are you won’t use many of them, but it never hurts to have an inventory of good ideas.

Markets come and go. You can never tell if a particular market for which you’re writing will be in business in a year or two. Editors change. That’s a biggie. An editor with whom you have had a good working relationship decides to move on. On the plus side, he or she may take you with them to the new and perhaps better publication. But on the downside, the new editor probably will want to work with his or her own stable of writers. There’s no “forever” in this business.

Another thing that can work against you is the economy itself. Upturns and downturns are commonplace today. The most recent recession is an example. While it may not have affected all the writing markets, it will have hit some—and hard. One of the hazards that occurred here was the massive layoffs of newspaper reporters and editors. Since the newspaper business is in the throes of change, they couldn’t find jobs there, so where did they turn? You guessed it—freelance writing.  Those who you may have worked for have now become your competition.

What happened in New York City in 2001 shows what can happen to a particular market. After 911, travel markets went into a state of turmoil. People were afraid to travel. Advertisers couldn’t pay for their ads so they stopped advertising. Many publications went under. That happened a dozen years ago, yet the travel publication market hasn’t fully recovered.

Writing is hard work. And after a while, it can get to you. Too many deadlines can be extremely stressful. And stress can then cause problems with your overall health. It’s important to eat right and exercise. Sure, I know you’ve heard that before, but this time it’s imperative that you live a healthy lifestyle. Remember, if you get sick or perhaps seriously ill, you don’t have workman’s compensation to help you. You most likely don’t have any backup at all. And that the biggest hazard of all.

Tapping Into a World of Ideas

Ideas are around you all the time. As a busy freelancer, you’ll discover that as you get on a regular schedule of researching and querying markets, you’ll uncover an abundance of ideas and places to offer them. Your problem, however, is to keep your workable ideas in perspective and to discard or file for later use those that aren't ripe yet.

So where do you get your ideas? There’s a whole world out there just filled with ideas. All you have to do is tap into them. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But you’d be surprised how many writers find it hard to come up with good ideas. Would-be freelancers often find it difficult to recognize the right idea or angle.

Look first at what constitutes a good idea—a subject and a specific angle on that subject. The same applies to fiction as well as non-fiction. Fiction writers come up with a premise on which to build a story while non-fiction writers come up with an angle, based on who will be reading an article. Knowing who the reader will be in an important part of non-fiction writing. And while it’s also important when writing fiction, a fiction writer doesn’t have to be as targeted.

Take the subject of retirement, for instance. A non-fiction writer might think of a number of possible article ideas that will be of interest to retirees. However, knowing which group of retirees will be reading the article will further help to focus or slant it to them. Will the article be aimed at those who want to travel or will it be aimed at starting a new business? A fiction writer, on the other hand, might write a story about how a particular person dealt with being "put out to pasture" or the idea of not being useful to anyone anymore.

Also, an article idea will sell more quickly if it’s important and timely. A good idea should take into consideration basic human drives—sexual gratification, maternal love, self-preservation, greed, acquisitiveness, ambition, etc. These selling ideas, which are of vital interest to readers, should also offer something extra—new details on an old story or added insight into an age-old problem.

Since ideas are everywhere, you should be looking for them wherever you go—at the supermarket, at professional meetings, at the bank, at the doctor’s or dentist’s office. There’s an idea hidden in everything you do—cashing your checks, doing laundromat, cooking dinner, or traveling to a relative's.

But observing isn't enough. Once an idea has clicked in your mind, jot a note to yourself so that you're clearly reminded of it when you need it (See the previous blog on creating an idea book from Dec. 11, 2009).  Otherwise the clever notion will disappear with yesterday's online news or in the heat of today's frantic schedule. And as soon as possible, draft a query about your idea and the angle you'd follow—a couple of brief but very specific paragraphs will suffice at this point—and list at least six possible markets for the story. If you’re writing a short story, create a synopsis of several paragraphs telling yourself what the story will be about. Then list 10 possible markets.

With this plan, you have already conquered the vagueness that surrounds most beginners' writing wishes, and have committed yourself to a professionally conceived follow-through.

Remember, there are two kinds of writers—the first writes whatever comes out of their head without much thought or planning (the “I-have-a-book-in-me crowd”) while the second comes up with lots of ideas that will keep them writing for a long time to come.

On the Road Again

Have you dreamed of traveling around the world then writing about your travels and getting paid for it? A lot of beginning writers and lots of other people have done just that. There’s something glamorous about travel writing. You’ll definitely impress your friends when you tell them you’re off to another far-off land. For them, travel comes maybe once or twice a year during vacation time. But to travel whenever it beckons you is to them a dream come true. But is it that easy?

True there’s a touch of glamor surrounding world-journeys-for-pay. Getting started in it isn't all that difficult if you hustle enough, but since 9/11 things have changed, not only because of what happened on that fateful day, but also because the publishing markets have changed.

Fifteen to twenty years ago, most readers got their information about other places from reading articles in magazines and travel guides. Since then the market has drastically shifted to include videos, podcasts, and hundreds if not thousands of Web sites with information on where to go and what to do. So the market for travel articles isn’t what it used to be.

Secondly, for the most part, you’ll make more if you work for minimum wage at McDonald’s than if you traveled the world and wrote travel articles. Have you seen what it costs to travel today? Compare those travel costs with what editors normally pay for travel pieces. No, I don’t mean the ones in Travel and Leisure and National Geographic Traveler. I’m talking about the majority of travel markets. The pay is pitiful for the amount of time and energy involved.

But still many writers try to break into this field. That’s because it seems to easy to everyone. Retired doctors who have the bucks to travel think they can dabble in travel writing. Retired teachers, who have the time and some bucks want to do the same. But how would they feel if you, the writer, wanted to dabble in medicine or teaching. You might be able to do the latter, but certainly not the former. To say the field is overcrowded is an understatement.

If you want to succeed in travel writing—and not just dabble in it—you have to work hard and be extremely organized. Remember, every moment you spend traveling is time spent, time for which you need to get paid.

Today, you pretty much have to have the means to travel to do travel writing full-time—or a spouse who will pay the bills while you travel and write about it. It used to be that airlines, hotels, and the like gave writers discounts or free transportation or accommodation. That isn’t so true anymore. Many hotels still give discounts and free rooms, but you have to get there, and the cost of doing that could hit you out of the ballpark. It doesn’t make sense to spend a $1,000 on a trip, only to make $200 on the article that results from it. So that means you’ll need to write and publish five $200 articles from that same trip to make up for the cost. And in reality, you probably won’t get paid $200 for each article, but less, which means you’ll have to publish a whole bunch of articles to make that trip pay for itself—and that doesn’t include any profit.

If you’re serious about travel writing, there are some things to do before you start packing. Discuss your travel plans with several editors—in person, by phone, or by email—regarding  places you'll be visiting, people you'd consider interviewing, and so forth. Often one or more of them will give you a noncommittal letter of introduction from them. This letter doesn't actually commit them to publishing any of your writing, but it helps open some doors, especially in foreign countries. At the least it should help establish that you are a working writer looking for good material. If you cannot get such a letter—and as a beginner that’s nearly impossible—then  take with you some backup material such as copies of your articles to present when strangers ask who you are and why you're asking all those questions.

Once you get established as a travel writer, you may, with luck, get a letter of assignment from an editor. This is the only way you’ll get any help with costs from hotels and such. Editors won’t hesitate to give one of their regular writers one of these, but they usually don’t give them to writers they don’t know.  Letters of assignment can get you out of tight situations when traveling, but more so they can get you into many museums and private libraries for your research and perhaps get you private tours with curators.

NEXT WEEK: More on travel writing.

On a Clear Day You Can See Forever

There's money to be made from freelance writing—lots of it. For a few writers, this means big bucks. But for most writers, freelancing provides a modest income.

Today, the markets have changed drastically. While there may be fewer magazines and book publishers out there, other opportunities have opened up. We live and work in the digital age, a time when anything is possible. As they say, think outside the box. In fact, throw the box away.

There’s a vast expanse where whatever you write can find a home. The diversity of the marketplace is such that there are more ways for you to strike pay dirt than even some longtime professionals realize.

The flip side of the coin is the horde of writers and would-be writers after the bounty. There’s some 70,000 people in the United States alone that call themselves writers and have clippings to prove it. That’s a lot of competition.

Some major New York book publishers receive over 10,000 unsolicited manuscripts a year, out of which they may publish one or two. Today, it’s the sales department that decides what’s going to be published. It has less to do with the writing and more to do with the profit potential if a book gets published or not.

The average high-circulation magazine receives approximately 200 manuscripts a month. Some contend that the odds of selling to those outlets are overwhelmingly difficult. That's not necessarily so. If you’re a mediocre writer, then yes, you don’t have a chance in hell. But if you’re a more than competent writer, the chances of you selling are far greater. Perhaps only 20 of those 200 manuscripts will be good enough for an editor to take the time to read them.

Bear in mind that the flood of material that washes over editors' desks in publishing houses and magazine offices, in newspaper and syndicate offices, in television and movie producers' studios, consists mostly of badly written material. Well-conceived, well-written, and well-targeted material is scarce. Currently marketable material is even less available. The trend-setting story or article series is an absolute rarity.

Keep the following thought uppermost in your mind as you approach each new and potentially successful day: The many benefits of the freelance life and riches from your writing efforts, like the gold that lies under the mountains, come to those with the knowledge and ability to dig in the right places, the proper tools, and the overriding ambition to find it despite the often back-breaking work that's required. If you’re one of those 70,000 freelance writers, then you’ve made it.

Beyond Book Royalties

The potential sales of a book are your real leverage when it comes to negotiating a contract. Think beyond royalties.  Never ignore the income that may be generated by resale of all or part of your book. Even when the advance and royalty schedule agreed on are better than you'd dared hope, keep your negotiation aggressive—suggest to the editor that he make up for your concessions by giving you a better deal on subsidiary rights.

Subsidiary rights specified in the contract determine, among other things, your share of any money resulting from a resale of the book to a paperback reprint house, book club, or as an ebook. A standard contract usually provides for a 50/50 split between you and a hardcover publisher. But the amendments you're looking for may change the contract to provide you with an increased percentage if the resale exceeds a certain dollar figure—for example, 55 percent for a sale over $50,000 or 60 percent for a sale over $100,000. You may not expect such a bonanza, but neither may your publisher. So nail down your chance at the lion's share from the start.

Every writer dreams of a big sale to the movies or for TV dramatization. While such possibilities are remote or the odds so great for either nonfiction or fiction, neither you nor your publisher may be motivated to bargain for the division of the spoils should there be a miraculous stroke of such luck. But no matter how conservative your expectations, it would be foolish to ignore such possibilities from your  contract negotiations.

It used to be that publishers would give you 90-100 percent of all movie rights without much fuss.
But that was before film producers began asking for the rights to non-fiction books—In Cold Blood is a good example—and short stories such as “Legends of the Fall” and even articles. Today, everything depends on the particular book, short story, or article. If you think a filmmaker might be interested in your work, then you ought to make sure you get your share of the film rights.

Since options for possible film use are considerably more common than outright sales, a good contract will spell out not only the percent of the proceeds that you’ll receive from selling the film rights but also whether you or your publisher will have the right to negotiate the contracts with potential buyers.

You should also follow the same process when negotiating foreign reprint rights. Make an educated guess about the potential market for your work in the countries not covered by the basic contract. Ask for anything up to 100 percent of all foreign sales, and be sure the contract specifies who will have authority to negotiate with foreign publishers.

Other subsidiary rights include permission to use all or part of your text in magazines, newspapers, and  on the Internet. First serial rights refers to publication in such outlets before the book appears while  second serial rights refer to reprint after book publication. You should receive 100 percent of first serial rights.

Most book contracts grant you only 50 percent of the sale price for second serial rights. But when your track record or expertise help gain such a sale, the contract should be amended to provide an escalating percentage for you as sales multiply.

Generally, publishers handle the disposition of subsidiary sales through departments set up to manage them. They especially consider resale for paperback reprint their prerogative, and some may even resent your interference in their transactions. You may or may not be informed of the attempts by your publisher to find secondary markets.

It's important not to duplicate your publisher's efforts to get part of your book into a top selling magazine or to sell the whole thing to a reprint house, even if you believe your publisher isn’t looking out for your best interests.

However, when it's clear that the publisher isn’t pursuing secondary rights as aggressively as you would like, then you might consider pursuing them yourself. If your book has drawn heavily on the expertise you've acquired in the course of writing shorter pieces, chances are you have a network of markets and potential markets for this kind of material. So when your book is in print, you're in a good position to contact other markets that may already know you. Among these may be a publisher who may be familiar with your work but never considered it.

Let's assume your book has received some good reviews—especially on book review or social networking sites. Collect and copy all the good notices as they appear and package them to promote your efforts at resale to magazines or newspapers.

Create a small brochure of quotes from the reviews of your book and mail it along with query letters to a broad range of regional publications. It may bring a number of requests from editors to see a copy of your book, and a good number of reprint sales may follow. However, before randomly sending out copies of your book to editors, see which ones are interested, then mark the section of the book you think particularly suited to the needs of each publication and send them off.

Betting on a Hunch

What do horseracing and freelance writing have in common? Actually, quite a bit. Before someone places a bet on a horse, he or she has to study the racing sheet—the lineup for the race. Based on the knowledge they glean from constantly studying these sheets, they pick a horse that they hope will be a winner and place their bet. But sometimes they play a hunch.

Hunches, intuition, and instinct can play a major role in freelance writing. A writer bases all of them on prior knowledge and experience and draws conclusions from what has been learned in similar situations.

Before the days of the automobile, people lost in blizzards or too drunk to drive let go of the reins and counted on the instincts of the horse to get them home. They took a calculated risk, knowing from past experience that their horse would probably make it home. Developing your understanding of your instincts, hunches, and intuitions coming from your subconscious to a fine point so that you’re in a position to take the necessary calculated risks is something you’ll need to work on.

You’ll have to rely on them many times for guidance in the management of your career as well as the shaping of your imaginative work. The trick is to induce your subconscious to work smoothly with the rest of your mind.

Unfortunately, all three of these are notoriously hard to schedule exactly. In spite of your encouraging them, they often doze in some dark corner of your subconscious. Perhaps the best way of luring them out is to lay out a rational game plan. By having such a plan you can lure your hunches to help solve problems.

You could apply this principle to plotting a course for your work over the next year. If you sit down and examine what you did last year with an eye to deciding what you’d like to do this year, you’ll have something to guide you when the hunches start occurring. Besides listing the projects you can count on, add some others just in case those don’t work out. Most likely you’ll get hunches about market trends, but you may also get a hunch or two about that sort of pieces may best fit the adjusted scenario.

In all probability you won’t sell to exactly the markets you targeted. But from experience—instinct—you know which ones will most likely buy the type of writing you do. Plus, you already know the editors with whom you have a working relationship. You already know how much time different types of projects take to finish. All of this gives you an instinct to search out places where your work is more or less guaranteed to be sold. By planning ahead, you’ll be able to find the right ideas early enough to stay ahead of your competition.

Hunches, instinct, and intuition can also play a part in predicting when markets will go bad. Sometimes, the writing, as they say, is on the wall. Unfortunately, you probably have looked up from your computer long enough to see it. Has a publisher been repeatedly late with payments recently? Is an editor forgetting that he or she made an assignment? Have market trends in a particular subject area been showing that there’ less interest in that subject? And is the opposite also true? Has a particular subject gotten more press lately, making it more visible?

Betting on a hunch in any of those areas is a calculated risk but one that may yield great results. 

Budgeting for Success

Freelance writing is one part creative skill and one part business sense. The only problem is that too many writers who get into this business don’t have much of the latter. Unfortunately, this came from what most learned in school—albeit subconsciously.

Writing has always been looked upon as an intellectual endeavor. Therefore, it shouldn’t be tied in any way to business. But when you’re in business to make money, having a bit of business sense is a prime concern. And if you’re going to make money in this business—at least enough to live on—then you have to know what’s coming in and what’s going out. If these aren’t relatively balanced, you’ll be out of business sooner than you think.

To keep tabs on your finances, you’ll need to create a budget based on what you’re spending now and what you predict you’ll spend in the not too distant future. The best way to do this is to create a budget sheet for each month for at least six months. Doing so will let you know if you’re going down the right marketing path and making enough money to cover your expenses. Once you know how much you can afford to spend based on your earnings, you’ll be able to take control of your finances. If you're always coming out in the red, you’ll find it easier to change your work patterns once you're faced with the actual figures.

One of the best ways to start budgeting is to faithfully record the details on your budget sheet. After you've recorded these for a month or two, you'll have a better idea of what sums to enter in your budget for the month. At the end of the year, add them up and divide by 12, putting the resulting figure in the proper slot, even though you may pay some bills quarterly, semiannually, or annually. With an accurate monthly record, you'll be able to more easily adopt counter measures if your receipts aren't tallying with your expenditures.

Lay out your budget sheet like this: Divide it into three columns.

The first lists your sources of income for that month, your uncontrollable expenses, and your net income (the first minus the second). Under that, list your regular expenses—mortgage or rent, gasoline, equipment, office supplies, utilities, travel, etc—and the their totals. At the bottom, create a line for profit or loss.

The second column lists the predicted and the actual amounts in each category in the first column.

The third column lists the predicted and actual totals for the year to date.

A budget sheet faithfully kept will show clearly where your problems lie. Are expenses in one category heavier than you imagined? Is disaster looming around the corner if you continue to work for a specific market? Where and how can you cut down on expenses? Will you have to negotiate for a higher fee from your best client? Should you aim for more sales volume? Do you need to consider getting a part-time job? Are you paying too much rent? Are you billing properly? Has your inventory of stories and ideas been turned over quickly enough?

Obviously, this budget sheet, too, needs to be balanced monthly. Be sure you carry over the figures on the following month's sheet where indicated. To accurately record figures on this sheet, you'll have to tally up those petty-cash slips you've collected. Keeping an account of each expense as it occurs will help you tremendously in following a budget plan.

Count in the current inflation rate when you're setting up your future budget pages, saving yourself from too many unpleasant surprises when new costs arise. For instance, is your phone/Internet plan slated to increase next year? What about your health insurance premium?

By keeping an accurate tally of your income and expenses, you’ll be able to tell when you may possibly be getting into hot water. If you don’t, you may find yourself reaching for that life preserver all too soon.

Getting Paid What’s Due

It’s hard enough working as a freelancer, but add to that the frustration of not getting paid on time or not at all and it can become a nightmare. For most writers, bill collecting is a time-consuming and distracting endeavor. But in today’s economy it has become a fact of life. Just as the people you owe come after you if you haven’t paid your bills, so should you go after those who owe you.

Often you’ll see the signs early on. An editor fights with you for a few more dollars payment. Or perhaps he or she doesn’t let you know up front that the publication will be paying up to two months after publication. If you notice clues like this, it’s better to back away from this market because you’ll surely have problems down the line. But many writers hesitate to do that or to hassle their editors about payment for fear of losing the work.

Timely billing is the first step toward timely payment. Send an invoice with every piece you produce. Make sure that you put your Social Security number on it. Sure, everyone is telling you not to put your Social Security number on anything, but this is a bill and today, businesses use that number to identify you.

Also, make sure you state your terms of payment, unless otherwise arranged. It’s a good idea to ask an editor when the publication normally pays writers before you begin working for it. State on your invoice exactly how you want the check made out—John Doe or John Doe Communications, etc.

If you’ve incurred any expenses that you’ve previously discussed with the editor, include them on the invoice. Some editors ask that you bill them separately for expenses. Enclose copies of receipts if your editor requires them. If you’re sending your invoice by Email, scan your receipts and send image files of them. If sending by regular mail, send paper copies. If you invoice correctly and keep good records, you’ll find you can prevent problems from arising. Remember to keep copies of all your invoices. Mark those paid when you’re paid and keep an eye on those not paid as yet.

If you haven’t received payment when you expected it from an editor, send a pleasant Email reminder. Jog the editor's memory if a few weeks have gone by without payment. Editors get busy and many are  overworked and understaffed. Your invoice may have gotten misplaced. If you receive no answer within 10 days after this reminder, however, the editor may be ignoring you.

A firmer letter, sent by regular mail, should remind the editor that you met your obligations and you request that he meet his or hers. If you receive no response from this, then call the editor on the phone to find out what’s going on.

If none of these tactics work, then you can resort to charging interest on unpaid accounts over 30, 60, or 90 days, just as you’re charged if you're delinquent in paying your bills. While you may not receive the additional amounts, you'll get a businesslike message across.

If all else fails, you can always take the publication to small claims court. Depending on how much you’re owed, this can be more of a hassle for you than just admitting defeat and claiming the unpaid amount on your income tax. If an editor contacts you and tells you that the publication is having problems, back off a bit, but not too much. After all, you deserve to be paid for what you have done.

Generally, slow-paying markets don’t pay expenses. If you’re having problems collecting payment for the writing you’ve done for them, chances are they’re too strapped or cheap to pay for expenses.

Avoiding Deadends and Deadbeats

As you move forward in your freelance career, you’ll no doubt run into deadend markets and deadbeat editors. Perhaps the only problem you’ll have is to wait for the acceptance of your pieces. But chances are you’ll have many more negative experiences.

Editors are busy people. When an editor says he or she will send a reply to your query tomorrow, you can bet it will probably not arrive, at least not for a while. It pays to follow up with all your correspondence. Sending a polite reminder is good business, not hassling an editor.

Maybe you’ve been working with an editor for quite a while. You believe you have a good relationship. He’s told you that he likes your work. Then one day, you fail to get a response. It turns out that he moved on to a completely different type of publication—without telling you. You can try to track him down, but you’d be better off finding a new market.
                                         
In these uncertain economic times, it’s not unusual for a magazine to fold precipitously. You may have been waiting patiently to get paid, and it isn’t until several months later that you discover that the publisher went bankrupt.

Writers used to have to worry about whether the U.S. Postal Service delivered their manuscript. And even if your manuscript arrived it then got stuck in the mailroom. There seemed to be a definite relationship between how many floors a building had and how long your article sat in the mailroom. And if you sent your work to one of the higher paying periodicals, it most likely ended up in the slush pile where it may have sat for several weeks before an unpaid intern took a look at it.

Your article is accepted; you're jubilant. Then you get word from the editor that she had to kill your article. Even then you have to wait an unduly long time for the kill fee. Needless to say, the article's timeliness has been its undoing—the poor thing now is dead. You can’t even send it elsewhere.

And if you think that one or more of these may happen to you at various times, think again. It’s not uncommon in the freelance biz for nearly all of them to happen at the same time or at least one right after the other. It’s enough to drive a writer crazy.
                                               
Can you spot these possible disasters beforehand? In some cases, yes. But most of time, no. In fact, you may have no indication that a problem exists until the worst happens.

You can prevent some negative experiences from happening by taking a few precautions. Many writers refuse to do more than send a query to a new publication, then sit back and wait for the results. You’ll soon discover that there’s always a shakedown period at a new publication. You don't want to get caught in the fallout. Some magazines just don’t make it.

Magazines that pay on publication are notorious for creating problems. Publishers want to hang on to their money for as long as possible. Many times "pay on publication" means "several months or more after publication." But then, you may be trying to get into a new market. The number of publications paying on acceptance has dwindled with the recession. Do your homework and study the markets before you decide to send any work to them.

One tactic you might use is to wait the required time for an answer from a publisher or editor, then send a registered letter advising you're withdrawing your manuscript or query. You’ll then be free to submit it elsewhere.

To avoid problems once you get an assignment, you should make sure to immediately follow the conversation with a follow-up letter of assignment—sent by Email or regular mail—detailing the article topic, length, agreed-upon rates, delivery date, and expenses to be paid.

Lastly, save all Email messages from editors. When you do have a problem, you can then send forward the original message to the editor who may be denying what he or she said in the first place. It’s only then that you’ll exclaim, “Thank God for Email!”

Setting Goals

Just as an ice hockey player sets his eye on the goal with the objective of getting the puck past the goalie, so you should set your eye on the upcoming year. But instead of just one goal into which to cast your lot, you should have several.

To begin, take a look at what you’ve accomplished in the past year. Make a list of your writing accomplishments. Don’t limit them to just pieces you’ve gotten published, but to what you think you’ve done that was not only good but super, even if editors didn’t think so.

What’s missing from this list? Were there pieces you wanted to write but didn’t get time? Did you miss the mark on the better markets? Was there something special you wanted to write about but never had the chance? And finally, did you make enough money?

After you’ve analyzed your accomplishments, it’s time to set down some goals to make this year, 2013, better than last. Your main goal in your freelance writing business is to move forward. If you fell back a few steps or remained stagnant, then it’s time to give yourself a kick in the butt and get moving.

Goals come in two types: long term and short term. The former helps you plan way ahead while the latter helps you stay focused on the here and now.

Long term goals usually span three to six months, sometimes even as much as a year or more. These might include creating and working on a book idea or breaking into new markets. Ask yourself where would you like to be with your writing in, say six months. What would you like to accomplish?  What skills need improvement to enable you to achieve your goals?

Short term goals are more current, covering as little as a week or as much as a month. They’re also more specific. For instance, you might set a goal to get a particular article or story published. Or you might promote yourself on one of the social networks.

For both long and short-term goals, you’ll want to list what you need to do to accomplish them. Limit these needs to three. That’s realistic, given the amount of time you’ll have to devote to accomplishing them. More than three may overwhelm you, causing you to avoid that particular goal.

Above all, keep things simple. Don’t list too many goals for a specific amount of time. Set only the number of goals, both long and short-term, that you can easily accomplish in the time you’ve set.

Once you have your goals in place, set time to review them. The obvious is at the end of this year. But you’ll want to review your short-term goals as they come due, much like a certificate of deposit. Did you accomplish what you set out to do? Did you fall short and if so, by how much?

If you failed to accomplish a goal or two, don’t fret. Just roll the unfulfilled goals over to the next time period. For your yearly goals, there’s always next year. And for your short-term goals, there’s always next week, next month, or next quarter. Generally, review all your goals at the end of each quarter, at least for the first year. Doing so will enable you to see where you’ve been, what you’ve accomplished, and what you need to do to move ahead.

                                  
                                       

Reaching for the Top

It’s the end of another year and time to take stock of what you’ve accomplished. Take a moment to list your outstanding and most successful projects. Perhaps you’ve reached a plateau at which you’ve been selling a variety of short articles to regional or trade magazines. You’ve definitely succeeded but not at the level you want. Do you still long to write for the top markets in your subject area? This year may be the time to make that longing a reality.

No one can promise you'll be able to make that enormous leap into top-paying markets. But if you’ve bolstered your credits by doing good work in the lesser markets, you’ve put yourself in the running for a shot at the top. If you’ve learned how to formulate queries that sparkle with excitement and precision so that top editors will take you seriously, then you’ve got a chance.

Too many beginning writers start out by sending queries or manuscripts to the editors of top publications only to be shot down or, worse yet, ignored. They wonder why their work is constantly rejected with form letters or Emails. Most never stop to think that perhaps they’re just not good enough. In order to crack the top markets, you have to be able to write well and have a bit of luck.

Improving your writing skills is easy. The more you write, the better you’ll become. However, you may need some help along the way. Be honest with yourself and list the writing skills you either lack or that need improvement. Once you have that list—and it shouldn’t be that long—you should do something about improving your skills.

Lady Luck also plays a big part in getting plum assignments. Being at the right place at the right time or offering the right story to the right editor at the right time is the key. That’s a lot of “rights.” And you can’t hope to always be in the right position for a particular publication. To do that successfully, you must study the periodical, inside and out, forwards and backwards, for at least a year’s worth of issues. Get to know how the editor thinks. Read their commentary at the beginning of the magazine, then read the readers’ comments and the editor’s reply to them.

Explorations into this rarified territory may lead to frustrations. Sometimes you'll be ahead of your time with an idea or concept. Have you ever been out of step? Have you ever appeared foolish because you forecast what others can't yet envision. Is your style of expression too avant garde for all but the most fearsome publisher to toy with. Don’t write for the culturally elite. Write for the masses. There are quite a few magazines aimed at the super rich. If you aren’t a jet-set type of person, then you won’t know how those readers think. For example, if you always camp out when you travel, you’ll have a hard time writing about ultra luxurious hotels with any credibility. Your budget-minded approach will constantly force you to question the high price of everything.

With a strong belief in your idea and a good deal of perseverance coupled with patience, you may find that your ideas will eventually pay off handsomely.

To reach for the top in freelancing, you'll want to consider all the possibilities. Other than negotiating for a position as a special correspondent or a columnist, or adding photographs to your package, or reexamining your ideas to see if they were ahead of their time when you first presented them, your path through the freelancing ranks might begin with writing for newspapers, then move to the pulps and small-circulation magazines. Eventually you might get a few pieces published in middle-market periodicals paying from $300 to $500. From there, you might move up to those paying $750 to $1,500 per article.

If you find yourself poised to reach for the top rung of the freelance ladder as the new year dawns, stretch as far as you can and perhaps you’ll make it.

Writing vs. Selling

Many beginning freelance writers are so consumed with the act of writing and producing material that they forget about selling their work until the last minute, after they’ve finished writing it. But writing and selling should go hand-in-hand. One job needs the other to be a success. So before you even begin to work on a project, have an idea of where you’ll potentially sell it.

The best salespeople begin their sales campaigns by developing a list of prospects. They glean names from whatever source they can, building a list of people to contact. Though over time you’ll amass a list of people you can count on to help with research, you also need to begin a list of potential markets—and not just markets but personal contacts in those markets. You can achieve this by sending out queries for projects or sending material out on speculation that some editors will begin to buy. Once you have your foot in the door, insert a doorstop and keep that door open.

After a top salesperson has a short list of contacts, they’ll sort through it to find the best-sounding prospects so they'll save time and money by avoiding blind alleys. They make their initial contacts, then review what happened, noting all reactions. Then they use these notes for follow-ups. They’re constantly looking to expand their market.

While many freelancers tackle the first step—creating a partial list—they fail on the remaining ones because, let’s face it, most freelance writers are lousy salespeople. While creative burnout and procrastination often plaque their writing, the same thing happens when they're trying to sell their work. In order to expand your freelance writing business, you have to avoid this. Remind yourself that at times freelancing may be 50 percent writing and 50 percent selling. And while large businesses have sales departments to handle selling their products, you don’t.

Be realistic about your markets. Remember, there’s loads of competition—a recent statistic puts the number of freelance writers in the U.S. at nearly 70,000. To get anywhere, you have to stand out from the crowd. Your material and your presentation of it have to offer editors the best and more of it than others can provide.

The first step is developing your prospect list. You’ll need to study the market and learn the possibilities so well that the market seems to evolve by itself. And don’t start at the top. You’re sure to fail. Begin at the bottom and work your way up. Start with the easiest markets, which most likely will also not be the highest paying. But the easier ones have less strict requirements and demand less work overall than the highest paying ones. Plus, you’ll have a much better opportunity to get published in them. But remember that you’ll only be working with them for a while to build up your credibility as a writer.

If you’ve already begin to publish your work, review your original markets. If you're working well with them, negotiate with the editors for higher pay or perhaps ask if can become a contributing editor. As such, you won’t get any more pay, and you won’t be doing any editing. But you will have your name on the magazine’s masthead, which will impress other editors higher up the pay chain.

When the same bland renewal notice for a magazine subscription arrives in the mail, you usually toss it in the trash. If you intend to renew, you most likely don’t do so on the first notice, but two or three later. The same goes for the reaction by an editor to the same presentation. If you want to renew an editor's interest in your material or build up assignments on a higher level than in the past, think about upgrading your presentation. How well does it sell your ideas? Is your timing and the sequence of your ideas logical? Is the market holding you back or are you holding yourself back through lack of expertise, timidity, or just plain fear?

Today, freelance writers have all sorts of sales tools at their disposal—Email marketing, Web sites, social networking, etc. But just like regular advertising, you also have mass mailing. Have you ever thought about designing a brochure showcasing your work and sending it along with your queries? Can you do the same digitally and send it along with Email queries? Have you given any thought to developing your own Web site. Not a personal one, but a professional business site that’s aimed at editors? (These and many other marketing topics will be appearing in future editions of this blog.)

Remember, some of the nation’s top freelancers spend as much as three or four hours a day on the phone and the Internet keeping in touch with publishers and editors. Start making the time to do the same if you want to become a success in this business.