Query Queen

by Stephanie Olsen

Query, Query,
Quite Contreery,
How does your clip-file grow?

With perseverance
and writing excellence
(And rejections all lined up in a row).

Timing plays such a crucial role in landing assignments that—if I had to choose—I'd place speed over the perfect query any day of the week.

Let's say you read an ad that a new fashion magazine is seeking writers for its first edition. Instead of trying to think up an original article and then prepare a query targeted specifically for that publication, send a quick generic fashion note: "I'm very excited about contributing to Fashion Faux & Fun, and am attaching clips in that style from Travel in Fashion Magazine for your consideration.

That's it. If you keep all your clips, links, names/dates of publications and editors you've worked with in a Word or text document, you'll just need to scroll through it and copy relevant information to paste in the body of your email.

It should take you no more than ten minutes – tops.

Here are two excerpts from contact queries which you can modify for your purposes (and from which I've landed assignments). Please note that the names have been changed to protect somebody… :-)

1. As a CatFurBall writer, I read about Cats 'R Us Magazine with great interest and would be very happy to submit an article. Kindly forward your guidelines together with information as to how much you pay per word and the rights you purchase.

2. I've been assigned six travel articles with sidebars for a NY publication, Travelin' Style, in a voice similar to that of Skylines. Two have run already with four more scheduled for the March and April issues. I'm taking the liberty of submitting clips and relevant URLs for your consideration.

My experience is that the editor responds quickly, saying something like  "Thanks for forwarding some clips. Do you have any ideas for Skylines you want to submit? Please do. Look forward to hearing from you."

Once you get that essential editor contact, then you can formulate some ideas, do a little preliminary research, and take the time you need to bring it all up to speed and send it in a full query. Make sure you use the RESPOND function on the editor's email so that she sees the correspondence history.

Still not quite sure this is the way to go? Look at this email from a writer I received last week:

A question--maybe you can help. I've responded to a few of the wonderful listings on the JustMarkets Daily, and have gotten some immediately bounced back. Has this been happening to anyone else, and do you have any recommendations on how I can reply to these? It's a bummer to put so much work into a query and then have it immediately bounced back.

Response:

That specific ad you cited was sent out Jan 29—and I see that your query was emailed on Feb 1. The person who posted that ad may have pulled it due to an overwhelming response.

What I'd suggest you try is to have most of the body of your query (ie., experience, clips, etc.) in template form, and just buzz off a strong hook – it takes a lot less of your time in case the email address has been closed down or the job's been taken.

The more you query, the more you land. The more you land, the more you'll land when you query.

Happy landings!

Stephanie Olsen is publisher of JustMarketsDaily http://www.justmarkets.com

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